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?