“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” Deuteronomy 6:5-7
To continue the narrative of our mission experience in Africa:
After living in Bumbuli, Tanzania (then Tanganika), we came home for furlough. After a month in Washington DC while Bob worked at Walter Reed Hospital, Bob left to raise funds for a hospital in Tanzania and the children and I went to live with my parents in Miami. We put Annie into a school there for first grade.
The children and I stayed in Miami for nine months, but Bob needed to be in Africa because he was in the process of working with the Tanzanian Minister of Health and the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania, Northern District, Stephano Moshi, to plan for a referral hospital in Moshi. Therefore, we returned to Africa and spent our next four years in Moshi, a town on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro. We had a nice enough house with a spectacular view of the mountain. Mt. Kilimanjaro is 19,341 ft. high, and the top is covered with snow year-round. The most beautiful place I have ever lived.
My job in helping my husband was to be his secretary, entertain government and church officials, architects, and host missionaries. We very rarely sat down to a meal without guests in our house. I was also able to watch and help Bob go over hospital plans again and again until they were perfect. By the end of our time in Moshi, Bob had raised over six million dollars (a huge amount in those days) and had a beautiful plan for a 450-bed hospital named The Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC). To this day, this hospital is the finest in Tanzania, and serves all East Africa. It truly is a Christian hospital that shows Africans God’s love in concrete.
Something that was very painful for me was the loss of both my parents while we lived in Moshi. My mother died of cancer at age 67 and my father from a heart attack at age 72. I was not able to be at the funeral of either of them. My consolation is that they were both faithful Christians and I know where they are – waiting for me.
What God made clear to me in Moshi was the need for good education for children. When we first arrived in Moshi, I was told that we should send our seven-year-old Annie to the mission boarding school because that was the only place where she could get an
English language education. The problem was that Kiamboi was ten hours drive away! I cannot tell you what a difficult decision we faced. I struggled and prayed to God that he would not make us send our little girl away. In the end, I surrendered to what I thought was God’s will and sewed name tags into every piece of her clothing. We talked non-stop to Annie about how wonderful it would be for her at that school and how great it would be for her to come home every three months for school vacation. Just two days before she was to leave for school, someone told me that the little Kibo International School in Moshi would need to close for lack of a teacher. What?!!! I was a teacher and so I went to work! Furthermore, the Kibo school was within walking distance of our house. I taught there for four years and one of my students was Annie. Kathy and Tova went to a kindergarten/early grades school started by some Americans in Moshi. God always does what is best for his own children.
Bob and I had gone to Africa as missionaries to help in the ways that the people needed. Bob was a doctor, and he not only healed the sick, he founded a large hospital. That effort put us in contact with church leaders and national presidents. We watched East Africa gain independence and were introduced to the presidents of Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. All this would be used in later years as Rafiki was established.
During those nine years, I learned why God sent me to Africa. He was preparing me for how he would someday enable me to help Africans know him and to raise their standard of living. Two things stand out:
1. In Bumbuli I learned to know God more fully, and for Africans to know him fully they needed Bibles and good Bible studies.
2. In Moshi I learned that to raise the standard of living for Africans, they needed quality education.
I am a slow learner, so God had to not only tell me, but show me, what I was to do with my life. Otherwise, I would have had no idea! And there was still a lot for me to learn before Rafiki was even a thought. But God is patient, and he knew exactly what he was doing.
He knows what his plans for you are too and I love it when you tell me.
P.S. I will not be writing my blog during the Christmas holidays, but God willing, will be back with you in January.
Thank you for telling us of the hard work Bob did and how God blessed it to last. I am sure those lengthy separations were hard for you. My heart went out to you as I read the heart-rending decision you had to make in releasing your little girl to a boarding school. How lovely the Lord is in not requiring the sacrifice but provided the lamb in the thicket for you instead. Thank you for telling us all of this. There is much encouragement for us in it.
ReplyDeleteThank you for another very interesting look into your past in Moshi through your blog comments. I think I've told you this before but years ago you said something that burrowed into my mind and how true I see it is. I can also see it in your life, and that is "God put something into you that he wanted to get out of you later on." That way we can't take credit for what we do as if we came up with it on our own after we have worked very hard on something. You worked very hard on things and they have turned out VERY WELL and have blessed thousands of Africans. And some of us have been hanging onto you coattails since you had a great idea with the Rafiki Foundation. The RJBF is another one. This will change the face of Africa!
ReplyDeleteHope you have a wonderful Christmas!
Merry Christmas, Rosemary! I have so enjoyed your posts! I’ll share quickly with you how God has gifted and used me and used you to help train me! I spent a long time studying Audiology at the University of Florida. Then before I had children God used two conversations- one in graduate school and one at work later - to show me that I was biblically illiterate! I stumbled providentially of course upon BSF! I soaked up all the teachings for a year and then was a group leader off and on for five while I also became a momma of two little boys and also stopped working to be home. Then God called me to be a teaching leader for BSF for another 5! I had my third and then fourth children, both girls, in those last 5 years. My last lecture I gave while in early labor (the pains stopped while I was teaching) and then I gave birth the next day! God has beautiful timing! I resigned from BSF and have spent the last 10 years homeschooling, and teaching adults and then children in my own church! Currently I am teaching 5th grade Sunday school and we use the Rafiki Matthew curriculum and I teach confirmation classes at our Presbyterian church. God used BSF to train me up and then sent me out! I thought I was to be an Audiologist! And God blessed me beyond anything I could imagine with the life he has led me toward. I have been able to use my hearing and balance education to help guide homeschool families whose children have auditory processing issues and I was also able to quickly diagnose my husband when he came down with a rare balance disorder and get him to the right doctors quickly. So God uses all of the training he provides. I’m thankful to have the short time to express this to you because you were a part of my training and I listened for hours to your teachings and others and was able to visit headquarters. Thank you for sharing your experiences! It grows my faith and helps me reflect on God’s goodness to us. He is merciful, loving and patient!
ReplyDeleteI also have been impacted by your life and ministry, Rosemary. I first met you when both you and Ray Stedman trained a group to be TLs, and since then I've read everything you've written in the BSF Magazine and Rafiki correspondence and now RJBF and this blog. God has used you to inspire me to move ahead toward the possibility of becoming the Director of our local Pregnancy Support Center. I will be 70 in March, which I thought disqualified me, but remembering you and all you have done since that age has compelled me to move forward, trusting God to give me the courage and strength that I will need for this daunting task. Thank you for being the example to us that God calls us to new things even when we are "past age" to do them - so that He will get all the glory. If you have any advice for me, I certainly would love to hear it! May God bless you significantly this Christmas, Rosemary.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't sound as if you need any advice from me now. Just keep going as the Lord advises you every day, and put your whole heart into giving his love to those in the Pregnancy Support Center. Just keep going!!!!
DeleteThank you. I will remember to "just keep going!!!!" (with my whole heart) and to trust God in the process.
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