Espinosa March 2025

“Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).

Hey y’all, me again. Rafiki Village Malawi has been very blessed with two new arrivals over the past few months. Back in December, we were joined by the first new arrival, the McDaniel family. Bryan is the Village Administrator, and Alexis is the new Finance Manager. They and their three children have been a huge blessing to the other two missionaries here, May and Anna. If you would like to learn more about what has been going on in the Village, then I would highly recommend you read Anna Liebing’s most recent newsletter. The Lord has continued to bless my work here. The missionaries here say that they are very grateful for my help in the different departments: the Rafiki School, Rafiki Institute of Classical Education (RICE), and Plant Maintenance and Grounds (PMG).

For the school, I have been working on an absolutely massive project: book sorting. Every year on the container comes a large number of boxes from “Books for Africa.” We have a lot piled up here, and it has been my duty and pleasure to continue the process of sorting them for our different school libraries. There are dozens, nay, scores of boxes to go through, and this kept me busy. Another school project has been working with our Athletics Director to plan a Sports Day for the end of this term. We are loosely basing this event on school field days I have previously participated in. The third thing that I have been consistently part of is the school choir. We are working on the Hallelujah Chorus, and the director has been having me help out the tenors. I have been putting together flash drives with the students’ individual parts for them to be listening to during the week.

For RICE, I have most recently been assisting with curriculum inventory. Curriculum is another item that comes in large quantity on the annual sea container. It was another duty and pleasure of mine to go through the various stacks of paper and inventory each subject (art, music, science, history, language arts, literature, poetry, etc.), and then report to the RICE Dean. Then, I was responsible for creating spreadsheets detailing what curriculum was still needed for the dean to submit to the Rafiki Home Office to print and ship. Speaking of computer work, another way I have been helping the RICE Dean is with ordering items for the next container. Various books and other things for the RICE art, music, and PE programs are ordered from Amazon, and the dean had me sit down with her to look for everything. That was actually pretty fun.

For PMG, I have not been as active. I mostly finished cataloging the keys, figuring out which keys go to which doors, making a list of which employees have which keys, which keys do not go to anything anymore, and finding which keys we do not have enough copies of. I have also continued to work on small projects that are not urgent enough to divert our PMG guys from their other work. There is no shortage of projects here in the Village. I hope to be working more closely with the PMG over the next few weeks, as we have a couple big projects to get done. There was also one week where I was responsible for leading their morning devotion a few days. This was a good time for me to intentionally spend a couple hours a day studying and teaching from the Bible. We were in the first few chapters of Proverbs, so we spent most of the week looking at the themes of humility, the way of the upright versus the way of the wicked, and why we should treasure wisdom and guard it within our hearts.

Over the last few months I have been able to do some fun outings. The day after Christmas (or as the British would say, “Boxing Day”) we took a day trip to Lake Malawi, this time to a spot called Chintechi, and we had no vehicle issues. A couple months later, a South African friend of ours here took us to hike this place called Elephant Rock. It is a rock that is shaped like a large proboscidean mammal. At another point, I went with him to abseil next to a waterfall. He provided the ropes, tethers, carabiners, and harnesses, and due to my extensive background in working at the Day Camp ropes course a few times, I was responsible for establishing the anchor points and tying the knots. We did not lose anyone! We also had no vehicle problems during either of those outings. During our most recent outing, we were going to Livingstonia to spend a couple days at the famous Mushroom Farm. This time we did have vehicle trouble. We made it about an hour out from the Village when I noticed that the temperature gauge was in the red. We were in Rumphi at that point, so we stopped at a gas station (or as the British would say, “petrol station”) and asked for a mechanic. One thing led to another, and we were back in Mzuzu. The Mushroom Farm will just have to wait.

Me back at the lake

It doesn’t look like an elephant from the top

I hope this brief written excerpt from my life has been illuminating. If there is anything else that you would like to know or would like me to know, please write me! Oh, I almost forgot, the second of our two new arrivals was a three-month-old German Shepherd. We acquired him at the end of February, and he will be trained as a guard dog, hopefully the first of several. He will be a major asset to the security of the Village. Thank y’all so much.

Magnus is here

Please pray

• for the Lord to give me wisdom and humility to know and make good decisions that please Him.
• for me to be further sanctified in all my experiences.
• for me to have more opportunities to share the Word.

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