Nealey September 2025

With each newsletter I write to you, I get to share about new and challenging experiences that I have navigated through here in Africa. I have learned how to do so many things here at the Rafiki Foundation that I would not have dreamed of doing back in the United States. Just the fact that I am living here in Malawi is a stretch for me. Here I am, officially retired, yet I am the Dean of the Rafiki Institute Classical Education (RICE), a teacher training college. Never did I think that in my golden years that I would be able to use the expertise that I acquired over the years of public school teaching to train other teachers in the areas that I was able to hone and enhance. What is even more satisfying is that my position as RICE Dean also allows me to disciple young people who have already committed themselves to Christ, who will in turn disciple students that they will teach upon graduating from our college.

Rafiki’s mission is for people to know God and raise their standard of living in all ten Rafiki Villages. What better way to do that than to train teachers who in turn train students. Our Rafiki Classical Schools have a waiting list because it is one of the best schools in Malawi. Our goal at RICE is to train teachers to teach in our schools. At the same time, we partner with the University of Livingstonia (UNILIA) to offer a diploma, as well as a bachelor’s degree, in Primary Education. This enables our graduates to be able to work at any primary school in Malawi. The UNILIA degrees allow them to be certified by the National Council of Higher Education (NCHE) to teach in primary schools anywhere in Malawi. We just completed our first semester, and we are busy planning for our new semester that will start at the beginning of September.

RICE lecturers, Rafiki Missionaries, UNILIA leadership, and (deputy vice chancellor sitting in the middle, director of quality assurance on the far left, and university registrar on the far right along with new students).

This is some of the staff and me. We are celebrating and promoting our college at the 150th year anniversary of one of our church partners, the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP).

My goal is the same as Rafiki’s as the Dean of this program. Our vision is to provide excellence in training classical Christian education teachers. Our mission is to train them to teach and lead with biblical fidelity, personal humility, intellectual curiosity, and moral integrity to the glory of God. To accomplish our mission, our RICE curriculum is intentionally designed to ground our graduates in leading Christ centered lives with Christian core values such as diligence in following our academically rigorous schedule that includes an eight-hour day for five days a week. We start each day with the Rafiki Bible Study which is also discipling them as they will conduct daily Bible study with their future students. They learn how to apply biblical principles in their daily lives which grounds them in living a life of integrity, where good stewardship and servanthood is firmly ingrained in their daily lives. They understand the importance of faithfully loving our Lord and our neighbors. They know that everything they do is done with excellence to the glory of God.

Our first group of students proved themselves to be more than capable of completing the task with a successful end of the first semester. Our RICE faculty and staff were also instrumental in our success. They went above and beyond their positions because they also helped equip students along with preparing the academics as they planned our second semester.

Please lift us up in prayer as we are just in the beginning stages of our program. We need more students to make our program economically viable. Right now, we have four lecturers and eleven students. Please pray that we gain at least twenty more students this semester. We also ask your prayers that all six members of our faculty and staff are retained for the following year. Pray that we all submit to the authority that God has placed over us and do everything to His glory. Thank you to all my sponsors and prayer partners and please pray that they will continue to sponsor and pray for me.

Grace and peace.

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