Last Lessons #84 – RETIREMENTS

“I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:14

 

In the year 2000 two “retirements” took place in Bible Study Fellowship. The most important one was when James Montgomery Boice went home to be with the Lord. Jim was only sixty years old when he died from pancreatic cancer and his loss was huge to the Church. Dr. Boice was the pastor of the Tenth Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, the author of more than 60 books, the speaker on The Bible Study Hour, founder of the PCRT, and the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Most important to BSF is that he was on our board of directors and author of two of the studies, The Life of Moses and The Book of Romans. For me, he was a mentor and a good friend, and I still miss him. But his work on earth was done so God took him home.

 

The second retirement in 2000 was mine as I left BSF to work fulltime with Rafiki. I had served as General Director of BSF for twenty years and loved every minute of it, but it was time for me to leave since I was seventy years old! So BSF gave me a “platinum parachute”, including a spectacular farewell party and, of course, a watch! Since I would continue to lead Rafiki, they had most generously built two buildings on a separate parcel of BSF land where Rafiki would work. They asked me how long I planned to work for Rafiki, and I told them, “Ten years.” Although the BSF board didn’t believe I would last that long, they graciously said the buildings would be rent free until the end of 2009. God was good to Rafiki and to me and I will be forever grateful. BSF has always kept its promises so I was free to begin to work fulltime in seeing that Bible studies would be provided and that orphans would be cared for in Africa. With funds to build at least one orphanage, and freedom to travel to Africa when needed, I was ready to move on from BSF. But imagine taking on such a challenge at age 70! I was very much afraid, but I was more afraid not to do what God was leading me to do. Retirement, meaning stopping work, was not God’s plan for me, nor was it mine.

 

So what did I learn?

1. That God has work for each of us to do. There is no retirement for Christians.
2. That God keeps us alive until he has finished with us. Jim Boice had finished the work God had for him to do. Apparently, I have not finished my work.
3. We are never too old to take on a work if it is God’s will and he will make his will clear. 
4. Retiring and “taking it easy” is really boring!

Last Lessons#83 THEOLOGIANS

“But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine.”  Titus 2:1 

A defining moment for Rafiki happened in 1994 when James Montgomery Boice, the pastor of the Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, asked me to be on a council made up of theologians to form the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals (ACE).  I told Jim Boice that I was not a theologian!  He said, “No, but as the director of BSF and Rafiki you are putting into practice what we theologians will be writing about.    

The purpose of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is to call the Church, amidst a dying culture, to repent of its worldlines, to recover and confess the truth of God’s Word as did the reformers, and to see that truth embodied in doctrine, worship, and life.  I was very honored to be involved in the beginning of ACE.  It would do for BSF and Rafiki what needed to be done; that is, to make sure that both organizations were on solid ground doctrinally.  I knew that God would bless organizations that teach sound doctrine as stated in the Scriptures and we wanted God’s blessing.  Both BSF and Rafiki needed theologians who were well trained and who could articulate, especially in written form, sound doctrine and God gave us what we needed in the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. 

Although I was, and am not, a theologian, the theologians in ACE befriended me and helped me to learn from them.  As they wrote their books, especially commentaries, I read them and learned.  I started with books by three ACE authors: 

Foundations of the Christian Faith by James Montgomery Boice 

A number of the sixty plus books written by James Montgomery Boice,  

No Place for Truth by David Wells 

Losing Our Virtue by David Wells 

Putting Amazing Back into Grace by Michael Horton 

Later I read more from ACE writers, particularly: 

Jim Boice’s last book The Doctrines of Grace that had to be finished by Phil Ryken. 

The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul and a number of his other books 

God in the Wastelands by David Wells 

Above All Earthly Powers by David Wells 

The Courage to be Protestant by David Wells (dedicated to the staff of Rafiki) 

I would recommend all these books to you if you want to become well-read doctrinally.  Little did I know that these ACE theologians that I came to know would be the ones who would help us put together the Rafiki Bible Study years later.   

There is one book I would like to recommend to you that has just now come out.  It’s Recovering Our Sanity by Michael Horton.  It speaks to the current fears we face with the way to overcome them.  You will love it! 

Last Lessons #82 PROGRAMS

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world." James 1:27 WIDOWS PROGRAM Having determined Rafiki’s goals of helping Africans to know God and raising their standard of living, the question our board faced was how we should achieve these goals. We were sure that to help a person to know God meant studying the Bible. We already had BSF classes to do that. But when it came to raising the standard of living for Africans, we were not sure. But God soon let us know. In 1988 on one of our trips to Africa, we met with Bishop Kweka, the leader of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania Northern Diocese (ELCTND). One of Rafiki’s distinctives is that we always ask a church what it wants or needs rather than to tell it what we have come to their country to do. Therefore, on that trip I asked Bishop Kweka what his church needed most. He did not say MONEY! As I had expected from long experience with our friends in Africa, he asked that something be done to help the many handicapped in his diocese, especially widows. These women were poor with no way of making a living. It just so happened that my three daughters and I had been handcrafting ceramic jewelry and selling it to help support their husbands through medical school (That’s another fun story but too long to include here). I suggested to Bishop Kweka that we could send missionaries to set up a business where handicapped women could sell handmade ceramic jewelry to tourists. Bishop Kweka was delighted and offered housing and a place where the handicapped lived in which to set up the business. My daughters in the United States taught two couples (one from Colorado and one from California) to make ceramic beads and craft them into beautiful jewelry. We sent the two couples as missionaries to Usa River, a town between Moshi and Arusha, Tanzania. That was the beginning of the Widows Program which is going to this very day. ORPHAN PROGRAM In 1992 on another trip to Uganda, we were invited to meet with Janet Museveni, the wife of President Yoweri Museveni. She was, and is, a strikingly lovely lady. She knew that our Rafiki missionary and several BSF board members who were at the meeting with her were Christians. She insisted that I sit next to her and unexpectedly asked each one of us to give our testimony regarding Jesus Christ. She then gave us her testimony! The bonding was immediate, and she turned to me and asked if Rafiki could help her with the one and a half million AIDS orphans in Uganda at that time. I promised her that I would pray about it, but Rafiki had no funds to build facilities for orphans. That night the BSF board members and Rafiki staff who were on the trip kept our word and went up on the top floor of the Nile Hotel that overlooked the city of Kampala. There we prayed for the city and the orphans in Uganda. The First Lady asked us to visit the one orphanage that she had started in Mausolita, a town not too far from Kampala. We did so on the next visit to Uganda and were saddened by the spartan facilities where about 20 orphans were housed. The place was clean, and the workers were kind and loving, but the food was cooked outside on an open fire and the children slept on the floor on woven grass mats. They had a cow for milk and raised some vegetables for food. We had taken some toys (donated by my grandson Joel Cook) with us and the children were astonished that such toys existed. Needless to say, we wanted to do something for the millions of AIDS orphans in Africa, but we had no money and no way to help them. That is, until 1999! As I was preparing to retire from BSF at age 70, the board asked me what I would like as a retirement gift. They were sure I would like a gold watch or maybe a new car, but when I asked for an orphanage in Uganda, they said, “How much would that cost?” I had no idea, but what came into my head was $100,000. The board stated that they would give me that amount to build an orphanage and try it for a year. I stated that it would not be right to take in children for one year and then drop them. We would need to keep them for at least five years. Then the amazing happened! The board promised to give Rafiki $100,000 each year for five years! When I left the boardroom that day, I asked God, “Did you just give me a half million dollars to do something wonderful?!!” And that is exactly what God did. We hired an architect to give us a more specific cost for a place to house and feed 60 orphans. He told us that we could build two orphanages that size for half a million dollars. He also produced a “fly-thru” video to show us what it would look like. Then I asked the Rafiki missionaries in the five countries where we had started work if they wanted to start an orphanage. All five of them said YES! That was the start of the Orphan Program.    

What can we learn from all this? 

1. That God is the one to takes care of widows and orphans and he uses his people to do it.  Rafiki has been given the privilege of being used by God to show what religion should look like in acts of kindness to those who are helpless – widows and orphans. 
2. That the Widows Program has grown to the point where now several thousand widows receive enough money from the sale of their handmade products to live and to feed and clothe their children and grandchildren.  These handmade products from Africa can be purchased through the Rafiki website (www.rafikifoundation.org)  
3. That some of Rafiki’s orphans have already graduated from college because of the generosity of donors to the Orphan Program.  Sponsors are still needed for the children who would be living on the streets in Africa if they had not been brought to a home at Rafiki. To learn more about how to sponsor an orphan contact Rafiki (www.rafikifoundation.org).  

 

Isn’t God wonderful to let us do things like this?

Last Lessons #81 TWO-RAFIKI

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”  Psalm 37:4 

BSF CLASSES IN AFRICA 

As hard as it was for me to lose my mentor Wetherell Johnson, I was delighted with the possibility of sending missionaries to start BSF classes in Africa.  It was the desire of my heart to help people know God through Bible study.  We wanted to send Kitty and Bob Magee to Kenya, but missionaries were not given work permits unless one of them had a job that could not be filled by a national.  This was true in most of the countries of Africa.  Therefore, we began BSF classes in Kenya and Tanzania by sending out missionaries as teachers and doctors through a new department called the Third World Outreach (TWO).  We sent Bob Magee to teach in Nairobi, Kenya, with Kitty as Area Advisor for BSF. We sent Dr. Reynolds Young and Dr. Larry Messer to the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center in Moshi, Tanzania. Their wives Cecil Young (my sister) and Sharon Messer started a women’s BSF class while their husbands started a men’s class.  That was the beginning of 40 BSF classes started in Africa during the 1980’s.   

BEGINNING RAFIKI 

In 1984 Bob and I, along with my brother Don McEachern and Richard Walenta (a BSF staff member) traveled to Moshi, Tanzania, to do two things: visit the men’s and women’s BSF classes led by Cecil and Reynolds Young and to see if my brother Don (an engineer) and Richard (a builder) could put a solar hot water system on the roof of the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center.  At that time, the hospital was using an outdoor wood stove to heat water for this 450-bed institution!  Can you imagine?  While we were there the roof solar system was designed and we found that the BSF classes were going well, so we headed home.   

But our hearts were touched by the many practical necessities in Tanzania besides the need for Bible study. We saw AIDS for the first time, and it was becoming a terrible problem. My husband wanted to do research on finding a cure but in the meantime many doctors and nurses were needed.  Besides that, children were jammed into schools where there were not enough teachers and facilities were woefully inadequate.  What could we do?  BSF was not willing to do anything other than teach the Bible, which I understood and agreed with totally.  But the four of us knew that we had to do something to help those we loved in Africa.  So, on the plane headed for the USA we were convinced that the Lord was leading us to start a mission-sending agency that could send missionaries to help African countries teach the Word of God, heal the sick, and educate their people.  We decided to call the organization RAFIKI which means “friend” in Swahili.  

It was a momentous decision, and we had no idea how to do it.  All I knew was that I had wanted to be a missionary from the time I was a teenager and God allowed me to be one.  My heart was in Africa and my desire was to help people know God and to raise their standard of living.  It seemed possible that God might give me the desires of my heart by sending missionaries to teach the Bible and to raise Africans’ standard of living through medicine and education.    

So, in 1987 we registered Rafiki as a non-profit 501c3 organization in Texas with a board of directors consisting of Bob and Rosemary Jensen, Don McEachern, and Richard Walenta.  We set up an office in a Jensen upstairs bedroom and hired our daughter, Tova, to organize us on a computer.  As Rafiki missionaries began to raise funds for their terms of service in Africa we opened a room behind our garage and hired another person to manage funds and write an operational manual.  Rafiki grew so we rented a small office close to BSF headquarters.  From that time on until I retired from BSF I was the director of both BSF and Rafiki.  That being the situation, the two organizations worked very well together!  However, early on one of the BSF board members, Jim Boice, suggested to the board that they might not want me to die quite yet, so perhaps BSF could provide space for Rafiki in the BSF headquarters buildings.  God was gracious.  We moved Rafiki into a BSF building and were off and running!  God truly gave me the desires of my heart! 

It had been a long time since I was a teenager, and God has mysterious ways of working his wonders (Isaiah 55:8-9).  I had to learn to be definite in what I wanted.  Thus, we made sure that Rafiki’s goals were two-fold: to help others know God and to help them raise their standard of living.  Those two goals are still Rafiki’s goals.  Only the ways that we have achieved them have changed through the years.  I learned that if you don’t know what you want, how do you know when you get it?  I also learned that our gracious God is the one who puts desires in our hearts and then delights to fulfill them. 

What desires has God put into your heart?  

Last Lessons #80 – GAIN AND LOSS

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: ...a time to weep,and a time to laugh; a time to morn, and a time to dance.”  Ecclesiastes 3:1,4 

GAIN 

During the twenty years that I was the Director of BSF, there was much gain.  Personally, Bob and I managed to provide weddings for our three daughters.  We then became grandparents for nine grandchildren.  There were many times we laughed and many times we danced!  Our grandchildren are all amazing, of course!  

But there was one gift that we gave each one of our grandchildren that probably helped them gain as much as anything we did for them.  As a high-school graduation present, instead of a material gift of some kind that grandparents usually give their grandchildren, we took them on a trip with us to Africa.  Although two of their mothers (Kathy and Tova) had been born in Africa, none of the grandchildren had seen first-hand a third-world country.  It has been interesting to see how God has used that trip they took at age 18 to impact their lives in different ways.   

I have learned that it is very important for young people to gain an understanding that there are those in the world who do not have the same advantages that they do.  There are many who are poor, in need, and who are different from us, and as much as possible, we must safely expose our children to the realities of life in poor countries.  Trips help. 

LOSS 

In 1984 Alverda Hertzler (the former administrator of BSF and Wetherell Johnson’s housemate) decided that she and Wetherell should move back to California.  Texas was too hot for Alverda (not surprising!), but Wetherell did not want to move because as she said many times, “I just want to be close to the work.”  Because she never married nor had children, BSF was her love, her baby, and her life.  Alverda prevailed however, and they moved to a house in Carmel, California.  I felt the loss of my mentor and my friend and Wetherell lost closeness to BSF and me.  She called me every day crying and asking if I could get her back to “the work”.  Her cancer came back so she lost her health as well as her joy.   

GAIN 

At the same time, I wanted to start BSF classes in Africa, so I asked the BSF Board if we could send missionaries to Africa to start classes.  They did not want to do that saying that BSF was not a mission-sending ministry, and that they did not believe that Africa wanted missionaries anymore.  None of them had ever been a missionary!  When I persisted, they said they would send Bob and me on a fact-finding trip to see if missionaries were really needed to start BSF classes in Africa. I suggested taking BSF staff members Bob and Kitty Magee, who had been missionaries in Zimbabwe under another ministry, with us.  The four of us went to East African and South African countries to investigate and found that in every place we visited they wanted BSF and missionaries to help them get started!   

LOSS 

When we were part-way through that investigative trip, I received a phone call from my BSF secretary in Texas telling me that Wetherell Johnson was dying.  We were in Kenya.  Knowing that we had more countries to visit, the four of us prayed that God would keep Wetherell alive until I could finish our trip and get home.  God answered our prayers.  We visited Uganda and then headed home.  That was December 18, 1986.  I arrived in San Antonio on December 19th, left for California on the 21st arriving in the evening to meet the chairman of the BSF Board, Dr. Ernest Hastings, so he and I could go to the hospital to see Wetherell.  

I will never forget the time I had with her that night after Dr. Hastings left.  I was able to tell her that we were going to put BSF classes in Africa and she weakly put her hand on my cheek and said, “Thank you.”  Then I asked her if she was looking forward to seeing Jesus.  She said, “Isn’t everybody?”!!  I left her about 10 PM.  She did see Jesus the next morning about 10 AM, December 22, 1986.  She was 76 years old. 

Alverda Hertzler went to be with the Lord on January 1, 1990, in Carmel, California.  She was 90 years old.   

It is true that those of us who loved and learned from them lost two amazing Christian women, but their legacy lives on to this day as much gain.  

“The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”  Job 1:21