Lafage July 2018

Dear friends and family,

Serving as a short-term missionary with Rafiki is rewarding and challenging. Even after training, thorough information, reflection, and prayer, it is a leap of faith for MMs, or as I like to call them, Ministers to the Missionaries

Rafiki children, day scholars, and RICE teacher trainees love new faces, and they crave the individual attention that short-term missionaries give. We career missionaries enjoy the fellowship and encouragement that they unfailingly offer us. Often, long-delayed tasks or “very nice to have” projects are done, and done well, by our visiting short-termers. We thank God for sending them.

Whatever skills or experience they bring, short-term missionaries work hard while they are with us. Projects range from repairing library books, building picnic tables, inventorying laptops, tutoring on basic computer skills, assisting in the classroom, performing music, to playing with, and reading to children. We have been particularly blessed at Rafiki Village Uganda this year. Kevin, Janelle, Dr. Bob, Butch and Judy, Alan and Celeste, Michael and Joyce Anne, all returned to us for their second and even third missions. Abby is spending her entire summer with us before attending college. Rae and Joe came for the first time. Five young Managers on a Mission (sports managers at various colleges) have come to run our school holiday activity schedule for the Rafiki kids. Jetlag, strange food, fatigue, and the challenge of putting together 100 children’s names and faces sometimes takes a toll, but short-term missionaries invariably return home feeling enriched, just as we are enriched by their presence.

All of the following pictures are some of our “Ministers to the Missionaries.

For the first time ever, an overseas Missions Training session took place in Singapore in April. It was hugely successful: fifty people attended, and God sent two young MMs immediately to help out in Uganda.

A second overseas Mission Training is planned for April 2019 in Paris. The American Church in Paris, my sending church and faithful sponsor, will host the one- day session. This year my summer furlough is partly devoted to promoting this event by visiting friends of Rafiki and American Church partner churches in Paris, Zurich, Basel, Brussels, and Stockholm. The reception has been warm and the interest high. Please join me in prayer that God will touch hearts and bring us new MiniMissionaries to help us in His work.