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?