Last Lessons#75 – RBS SEMINAR

 “I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.”  Psalm 119:15-16

This week I want to tell you of a most wonderful happening.  Using the Executive Director of Rafiki, Karen Elliott, God put together the first annual RBS SEMINAR.  We invited all 350 Rafiki Bible Study Group leaders to the Rafiki Home Office for two days of teaching by three of the eighteen theologians who wrote the RBS lessons plus a Nigerian leader who told us what the church is facing in Nigeria today. 

Not all RBS group leaders were able to come, but those who did attend were greatly enriched. The teaching on Philippians, Hebrews, and 2 Peter was outstanding and the information from Tersur Aben on the persecution of Christians in Nigeria was fascinating and sobering. 

The attendees shared how their RBS Groups were doing and how much the members were learning.  It was absolutely thrilling to hear what God is doing in the lives of people as they meet in person, discuss the questions, pray together, and then take printed notes home to read.  Every group that has studied one of the 66 books of the Bible has ordered more.  Some groups have studied as many as 12 books!  The number of weekly lessons in a book ranges from 4 to 32.  If any of you are interested in starting a group, all the information can be found on Rafiki’s website (www.rafikifoundation.org).

When I have been asked about all the things that Rafiki has done in our 37 years of existence, I always say that the most significant is the Rafiki Bible Study.  I believe it is the best Bible study available today.  And I say this because I did not write it!  All I did was put it together by God’s grace and for his glory.  

We trust that God will enable Rafiki to conduct a two-day RBS Seminar every year in January, and that the one in 2023 will be overflowing with RBS Group leaders who will be enriched and encouraged beyond measure.

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.”  1 Corinthians 2:9

Last Lessons#74 – TEXAS

“He said to them, ‘It is nor for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.’”  Acts 1:7 

As the Jensens (with Barbie) headed to the United States, we had no idea of God’s timing for the lessons we needed before being positioned as a part of God’s plan for spreading his Word world-wide.   

Two days before we were to leave Okinawa, Bod slipped a disc in his back and had to be evacuated on a stretcher to San Antonio, Texas, where he would be in Brooke Army Hospital.  I left Okinawa with four teen-age girls and flew to the Presidio in California, picked up a car that we had ordered, and drove from northern California to San Antonio.  It took us three days because none of the girls were old enough to drive.  But by God’s grace we made it, bought a house, and moved – all while Bob was hospitalized.  God has to stretch women to act independently sometimes. 

After Bob healed, he finished his time in the Army and retired with 26 years active duty.  That’s been helpful to me in my old age as I live on pensions.  When Bob retired from the Army, he began working for the State of Texas as the Superintendent of the San Antonio State Chest Hospital.  Again, God’s timing is perfect since he would have a patient later who was to influence our lives almost more than anyone! 

In Texas, our family also grew.  We brought in another foster daughter.  Margie was a sweet sixteen-year-old whose parents were Mexican.  She too came to faith in Christ by God’s grace.  She is the only one in her large family to finish high school. She still lives in San Antonio.  

The other addition to our family was Bob’s father.  He came to live with us after Bob’s mother died and he was alone living in northern Minnesota.  He was a very interesting man who had immigrated from Norway when he was seventeen years old.  I say he was an interesting man because he had made his way by homesteading in Minnesota that took grit.  He knew how to work and taught his two sons how to work as farmers and fishermen.  He also got an education and eventually became the County Agent for Agriculture.  But he was also interesting, in that he was a hard-headed Norwegian who had a number of physical ailments and chewed tobacco!  Bob’s father (Grandpa) lived with us for eight years and it was not always easy for him nor for us.  He had grown up as a Lutheran who had been baptized as a teenager in Norway, but he was afraid of dying without confessing his sins and taking communion.  God gave me the privilege of reading the Bible to him every night as I put him to bed and at age 81 he put his faith in Christ alone for his salvation.   

God taught me so much through Grandpa.  Mostly I had to learn patience.  Patience is still hard for me and I am still learning to wait on God’s timing for many things.  

In San Antonio, we joined a loving Lutheran church, and I was asked to teach Sunday School because I had been a missionary.  Honestly, even though I read the Bible every day, I really did not know how to teach the Bible. But I taught my own children’s class because I wanted to make sure they understood the doctrine of election which I did know from my own upbringing in the Presbyterian Church.  I wanted my children to know that being elected, they could not lose their salvation.   

My heart was still to teach people to know God so I began teaching Genesis to a small group in my home, made up of church women and a few friends.  One of those friends changed my life.  Brenda asked me if I would like to read some material she had on the Book of Genesis.  I told her that I had several commentaries that I used so I didn’t need any more.  The next week she brought the material anyway.  It was her copy of the notes and questions written by A. Wetherell Johnson for Bible Study Fellowship (BSF).  Looking at the notes and her scribbled answers to questions, I was not interested.  She asked me each week if I had read the material and finally, I knew I needed to at least read some of it. When I started to read, I could not stop.  I did not pay attention to the questions, and I did not look up the references, but I read straight through the notes – mesmerized!  I had never read anything that spoke more clearly to me what I knew was the truth.  When I asked Brenda how I could get this material, she said that the only way was to teach a BSF class.  What I did not know was that women in San Antonio had been praying for a teacher for a BSF class for several years and they thought maybe I was the answer to their prayers.  After much prayer and discussion with my family, I agreed to go to California to be taught by Miss Johnson how to teach the Bible. 

What I didn’t know was that decision would direct my life for the next twenty-seven years.  God planned to help me know him more fully through Bible study, then show me how to teach the Bible, and then use me to teach others how to teach the Bible.  I had no vision for anything at that time, all I knew was that God was giving me my heart’s desire – to know him and to help others know him. 

Last Lessons #73 – WORLD-WIDE

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  Galatians 3:28 

One big lesson I have learned is that world-wide means “wide world!” so there were three more lessons I had to learn before God would involve me in a world-wide work.   

1. He took me to another continent.  When the Army paid for Bob to study at Johns Hopkins he had to pay back the time in active military service.  The Army decided to send us to Okinawa for two years where Bob would work as the Director of the Health, Education, and Welfare department during the reversion of Okinawa to Japan.  The Orient was a fascinating place to live and while we were there, we were able to travel to Taiwan and Thailand.  I learned very little Japanese (a very difficult language!), but fortunately most people spoke English.  The Okinawans were polite (!), kind, generous, and small.  In this blog, I would like to suggest for your reading Francis Shaeffer’s book No Little People.  How gracious of God to give us the privilege of living for two years with these small Okinawan people.   
2. The second lesson I had to learn was how to start and run a business.  Because I was an officer’s wife, I was expected to join the Officers’ Wives Club.  I had zero interest in that because I was a missionary and I wanted to teach people to know God and help them raise their standard of living. Officers’ wives didn’t fit in my thinking until I was convinced by the Army general’s wife that I could be the club’s charity manager and decide where the money that the wives collected went.  I liked that job!  What I also came to realize was that officers’ wives were stuck on a small island and were bored stiff.  That’s where Stretch and Sew came in.  I taught over 400 women to sew on knits in my living-dining room.  I brought in the fabric from the USA, sold it with patterns to my students and made a profit.  As a bonus I taught my three daughters to sew, and we even put on a fashion show at the Officers Wives Club!  How’s that for marketing! But not exactly mission work!  I did put a bookcase of Christian books in my house for sewing students to check out but that was not much “good works”.  What I didn’t know, but God did, was that I needed to learn how to run a real business, keep books, organize labor, buy and sell products.  He knew I needed to learn these things because someday Rafiki would have a widow’s program where all this would be necessary. 
3. The third lesson I was taught by God’s grace was the importance of individuals.  It’s one thing to want to reach the world, but it’s another to reach individuals.  What happened in Okinawa was that we were asked by the military chaplain if we would be willing to house for six weeks a girl who was in the hospital from an overdose and would be sent to juvenal hall if she had no place else to go.  Her name was Barbie, and she was fourteen years old.  Her mother was Okinawan and ran a bar and her American military father had long-since left Okinawa, but Barbie was an American citizen.  We had three daughters of our own around Barbie’s age and as we prayed about it, we all agreed that we could do this – with certain restrictions on her, of course.  Barbie was not necessarily happy about the deal, but we were better than juvenal hall!  She didn’t like the restrictions and she thought we were weird to have family devotions every night after supper.  To make a long story a little shorter Barbie’s mother asked us if we would take power of attorney for her and take her back with us when we returned to the United States.  We did (which is another story!), and Barbie came to faith, finished school, married a Christian man, and now has children and grandchildren.  She now works at Rafiki!  

How necessary it is to learn that God changes the world one person at a time.  Having the tools to manage a world-wide ministry is important, but so is every person created in God’s image. 

Last Lessons #72 – NATIONS

“And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”  Matthew 24:14 

Today, as I look back, I see that the Lord had to teach me many more lessons before he would use me as his tool in a worldwide ministry like Rafiki.  He had shown me clearly that Africa needed Bible study and Christian education.  However, apparently God’s plan for Rafiki was bigger than just Africa and he had to show me more countries.  I am convinced that the best education comes through reading and travel. 

Thus, when we left Tanzania in 1966 headed for the United States, we took advantage of seeing as many different countries as possible on our limited budget by staying with good friends.   

We stopped off in Ethiopia where the people are black, but tall and fine boned, unlike sub-saharan Africans. 

Then we went to Egypt to see the pyramids and where the kids got to ride on a camel. 

From there to Israel during the time when Jerusalem was even more divided than it is today.  Of all the places in the world, to me, Israel is the most fascinating.  I am grateful that we have been able to visit there a number of times over the years. 

But Bob, (ever the student!) wanted to study the German language, to better work with the German doctors he left at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center.  Therefore, we stopped off in Ansbach, Germany, for ten weeks while Bob studied German.  We bought a Volkswagen squareback, put the children into a US military school, and rented a two-room flat above a bakery.  Although I thought Ansbach was a beautiful town with all it’s hanging flower baskets and steep tile roofs, I will admit that of all the places that I have lived, Ansbach was the place I liked least.  Maybe that was because we had to bathe, wash clothes, and wash dishes all in a bathtub in a small bathroom.  The children were not too happy either since the three of them slept in two beds pushed together.  Poor Tova always had to sleep in the crack!  The saving grace was the wonderful aroma of baking bread that came up to our flat every morning!

I did learn what it was to live in a country where I did not know the language and therefore could not communicate enough to know people except to see first-hand the difference between the stricter German people and the gentle open people of Tanzania.  And for sure, Germans need the Bible too.   

When we arrived in the USA we landed in Maryland where Bob wanted to get his boards in preventive medicine at Johns Hopkins.  In Africa he had been convinced that prevention was more important to the people than the curative medicine he was trained to do as an internist.  The problem was that we had no money.  We borrowed $200 from relatives to live on until Bob went back on active duty in the Army.  Going on active duty meant that the Army would pay for his training at Hopkins with pay-back time when he was finished.   

We put the kids in public school where they were way ahead of their classmates because in Africa their schools were much better, being classical.   

As for me, God gave me an amazing opportunity to learn something I would need later.  My mother had taught me to sew when I was a child, but where we lived in Ashton, Maryland, the founder of Stretch and Sew, Ann Person, taught a class on how to sew a knit shirt from start to finish in half an hour!  I was intrigued.  Little did I know how this would help me learn some lessons I needed for world-wide service. 

One lesson I learned for sure is that God will put into us what he wants to get out of us.  And in some cases, he will literally show us the lessons he wants us to learn.  I’m grateful that he showed me many different nations.  All of them need Christ and his Word.   

What is God showing you about the world as you travel and read about other countries?  Then, what will you do with what you are learning?