Last Lesson #88 — RBS

“I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord; teach me your statutes! With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth. In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precept and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.” Psalm 119:11-16

From the time I was a teenager (a long time ago!) I learned that I needed the Word of God every day of my life. Everybody does. Therefore, when we started Rafiki we made sure that everybody in our Villages studied the Bible every day. We taught the children by using Bible story books, our missionaries taught workers, and the missionaries themselves went to the local BSF classes where available. I had hoped that BSF would allow Rafiki Villages to use BSF materials, but, understandably, they refused. 

What could we do? For sure, I knew I couldn’t write good Bible studies. But the Lord reminded me that I knew some people who could. They were the theologians that I had come to know through the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, and other people I knew who had written good Bible commentaries. So, I wrote 18 of these theologians to ask if they would write adult lessons on all the Books of the Bible—all 66 of them! They agreed and Rafiki contracted with them to write the lessons—all 547 lessons! Then we found “level writers” who volunteered to write the same passages of Scripture on five levels for children. They did it and their reward will be in heaven! We will be forever grateful to them. Of course, we hired a theologian to make sure every children’s lesson was doctrinally correct.

Then I asked David Wells to read all the adult lessons to see that the doctrine was sound. Finally, I got some Rafiki staff members to help me edit and proofread all the lessons. It took us a year but we were able to complete it and launch the Rafiki Bible Study in Africa in 2007. 

There is no question that the RBS is the most significant work that Rafiki has done. It is really good! I can say that because I did not write it. All I did was put together the good lessons that others wrote and edit them all. Yes, I did write the questions for some of the lessons. 

The RBS is used now in all the Villages in Africa—with orphans and schoolchildren, with mothers and workers, and in RICE. We have given it to our partner denominations and to their seminaries. It is taught in every classroom in every church school and recently reorganized as Sunday school lessons for their churches. 

The good news is that the RBS is now available worldwide. In the USA there are about 600 RBS small groups operating and more starting all the time. They may order any of the 66 Books of the Bible they wish to study and most groups have ordered multiple studies.

I have learned that we can never study the Bible too much. The more we study, the more we want to study. We hunger for the Word of God. What is important, however, is that we encourage others to study as well. Do you lead a RBS group? I do! 

RBS packets can be ordered through Rafiki at www.rafikifoundation.org 

Last Lessons #87 – RICE

 “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

When Rafiki built schools in our Villages and taught our Christian classical curriculum, everybody in the neighborhood wanted their children to go there. Go figure! It was hard to keep up with the demand for day students who wanted to join with Rafiki resident children in such an excellent school. So Rafiki built more school buildings and admitted as many fee-paying day students as they would hold. The problem was finding enough Christian teachers who understood how to teach using the classical method. Actually, there were none! That’s when the Lord led us to consider building our own teacher training colleges where government-qualified teachers could take a three-year course at Rafiki, learn from our missionary teachers, and practice in our Village schools. We called our teacher training colleges RICE (Rafiki Institute for Classical Education). A former missionary and Rafiki staff member, Dr. Carol Kranz, with other colleagues put the RICE courses together and set up the program. In each Village we built a RICE complex that included a building with six classrooms, a gymnasium/auditorium, offices, and a lunchroom, plus separate buildings for the teaching of music and art. The whole complex is quite impressive! God has worked in the hearts of generous donors so that we now have RICE buildings in all but a couple of countries. The headmaster of RICE in each Village is a missionary who raises his/her own support, so we are able to offer the training free to the students.  

The first graduates of RICE were our own Rafiki Village schoolteachers. By God’s grace we will be able to train many teachers who will work in church schools to improve the education system in Africa. Since Rafiki is now able to provide Christian classical curriculum and teachers trained to teach it, who knows what God will do to change Africa?! 

I learned the importance of educating children in Africa when I taught school there in the 1960’s. I was a trained teacher, and I did the best I could teaching fifth, sixth, and seventh grades in one room of 18 children. But I had not been trained in the USA to teach using the classical method. By God’s grace I knew how to teach the Bible, so the children did well, but what I wish I had learned is what Rafiki is providing in Africa today for teachers in RICE.

Today we need Christian classical schools in the USA and there are a few hundred. We need thousands! And as far as I know, there are only a handful of Christian liberal arts colleges that prepare teachers in the classical method. 

I know that God answers prayer, so I am praying for more Christian classical schools and more Christian classical teacher-training colleges in the USA. Will you pray with me? Won’t it be wonderful if God answers our prayers by sending some US classically trained teachers to Africa to work in Rafiki’s RICE program? 

“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” Job 42:2

Last Lessons #86 – SCHOOLS

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”  Proverbs 22:6

You may wonder why Rafiki Villages started their own schools.  There were several good reasons.

1.   The local schools were very poor and overcrowded.  The local government schools had as many as 100 students in a class with one teacher.  They had no books—or very few books that they could share.  Students often had no desks and I witnessed children sitting in the pane-less windows or having classes out under trees.  There were some private schools and we tried sending our orphans there, but we soon realized that our children were not being taught well and often they were bullied or encouraged to lie or steal.  They were certainly not taught Christian values.

2.   There were a few Christian schools, but they were boarding and very expensive.  Obviously, Rafiki wanted our orphans to be home at Rafiki plus the fact that Rafiki did not have funds for boarding schools.

What should we do?  Our orphans needed to go to school and be taught from a Christian worldview.  In 2002 God provided our answer through one of our missionaries, Rose Allinder.  Rose was, and still is, a remarkable person.  She has a doctorate in special education and curriculum development and was teaching teachers in the University of Nebraska when she felt called to the mission field.  We sent her to Ghana.  It was obvious that she was the person who could start a school and write the curriculum for it.  Rose did a wonderful job in starting a school in Ghana, so we sent her to our Rafiki Village in Kenya to head the school there.  She was willing to move again, so we sent her to Zambia where she still works as the headmistress of an excellent school.  

During the time Rose was working in Africa, I received a call from Susan Gianforte who lived in Montana asking if she and her BSF teaching leader could visit me in Texas.  I was intrigued to know why she would come all the way to San Antonio to talk to me. Little did I know that that visit would change the whole way we taught children in Africa.  Long story short, Susan and her husband Greg, had started a classical school in Montana and she offered Rafiki the possibility of making our schools not only Christian, but “classical”.  I was absolutely delighted!  The Gianfortes were willing to fund the development of classical curricula that would include Bible study in every grade from pre-school through twelfth grade.  We took the Gianfortes up on their offer and began by hiring a local curriculum developer who had worked in a successful Christian Classical School.  Then we found teachers to begin the process of writing the material.  Some of the teachers were our missionaries in Africa and some were in the United States.  The process has been long and expensive, but it is now done!  Rafiki has developed a “school in a box”—literally thousands of pages of classically written material all done from a Christian worldview.  We believe it is the best Christian classical school curriculum available from pre-school through twelfth grade.  And we give it to ten African English-speaking countries!  No one else is doing this in any country in Africa.  What an awesome opportunity God has given us to train up children.

I have learned that if you want to “train up a child in the way he should go” that doing so takes more than a village!  It takes good curriculum, good teachers, good buildings, and lots of time and money!  But it will always be worth it.  Our children are our future and educating them in the classical method where every subject is taught from a Christian worldview will raise up a new generation of God-worshipers and people-lovers.

Christian classical education is what Africa needs, and I am convinced that it is what is needed in the USA today.  That is why we have made Rafiki’s Christian classical curriculum available to those in the USA who want to purchase it from Rafiki.  Check our website www.rafikifoundation.org. 

Our children are precious, and we know that how we train them up as children will determine how they will live “when they are old”.  

I for one, do not want my great-grandchildren being taught by a secular government where their minds might be wrongfully influenced.  Therefore, I will do everything I can to help children in Africa and in my own country to get good Christian (and if possible) classical education.  Maybe you can help do the same by: 

• Funding a Rafiki schoolchild in Africa
• Sending your child to a Christian school
• Homeschooling your child
• Getting a group together to start a Christian classical school using Rafiki curriculum
• Financially supporting a Christian classical school

Let’s do all we can to help the next generation.  And God will enable us to help as we ask him to.

Last Lessons #85 – VILLAGES

“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” Psalm 127:1

To continue the history of Rafiki, the first decade of the twenty-first century was spent building Villages, although we did not call them “Villages” in the beginning. We started with building an orphanage in countries where we were invited and where we were given 30 acres of land.

The first country that wanted an orphanage was Kenya, but Ghana offered land first. Through the efforts of BSF missionaries, a man in the town of Kotoku said he would give us 30 acres for an orphanage if we also built a school where his children could attend free. A contract was signed and Rafiki began to build.

Then an amazing thing happened. I received a phone call from Seattle, Washington from a man who told me that he was from Malawi and that he had heard that Rafiki was building orphanages in Africa. His name was Egbert Chibambo. He informed me that in the town of Mzuzu where he was mayor, there were thousands of orphans and that I must put an orphanage there. I told him that I had never been to Malawi and that we would need 30 acres of land, that we would need to be registered as an NGO, and that I would need to meet with the President or the First Lady before considering putting an orphanage in Mzuzu. He assured me that he would see that those three requirements would be met. The rest is history. We went to Malawi, registered Rafiki as an NGO, I met with the First Lady, and we were offered 175 acres of land to be given by the chiefs in the Mzuzu area!

As I left to fly home, I asked God why he would give us 175 acres of land when we needed only 30. I said, “God, we could build a whole village on 175 acres!” It suddenly occurred to me that that was exactly what we should do! Build a village that would house an orphanage, a school, a clinic, and even send widows-made products to be sold in the USA. What an exciting prospect! In Malawi we accepted 75 acres from the chiefs, and from then on, we asked for 50 acres of land for a “Rafiki Village” in the next eight countries that asked for them.

In 2003 Uganda and Nigeria gave us land and we built Villages.

In 2004 the Kenyatta family gave us property with beautiful buildings already on it on the outskirts of Nairobi. We built more buildings there and Mama N’gina Kenyatta (wife of the first president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta) dedicated the Village.

In 2005 the Rafiki Village in Malawi was finally finished and dedicated.

The year 2007 was very fruitful with Villages built in Zambia, Liberia, and Tanzania. Zambia’s land was given by the Chieftainess of the area. The Liberian Village was dedicated by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Tanzania’s Village was built on land given by the Lutheran Church and dedicated by the Archbishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania.

Finally, in 2009 the last two Villages were built in Ethiopia (dedicated by President Girmo) and Rwanda (dedicated by First Lady Janette Kagame).

I learned so much from the process of building these Villages. For instance:

• I learned that we should limit the number of Villages to ten because we could not supervise more than that number. What I found out is that you cannot EXPECT what you do not INSPECT.
• I learned that we could depend on God to enable us to do what he wants us to do as we cooperate with others.
• I learned that unless God built our Villages all our labor would be in vain.

Building something for God’s glory is so exciting. It takes a lot of work! But whether it is an actual building, an organization, a book, a painting, a church, or an orchestra, building is exciting especially when it is done with others who have the same goal and passion to build something for God’s glory!

Are you in the process of building something for God’s glory? If not, why not?