Restoring Water
Several years ago, God gave Dave and Amanda a plant-based organic formula for cleaning and restoring water to its natural state.  While God’s purpose for their product and business was clear,  “Extending God’s kingdom by uplifting impoverished communities through delivering water management  solutions that bring life, health, healing, and restoration,” there was disagreement about the rest of the business plan and setting up the business had stalled. Because the potential impact of this product is so great and many people want a piece of it, Dave and Amanda have had to carefully steward the innovation, making sure their actions and decisions about it were in line with God’s will. 

What the rep venture offered Dave and Amanda was help on the business side and showed the importance of all 10 P’s (Purpose, People, Positioning, Presence, Product, Process, Place, Planning, Partnering, and Profit) to a business.  During the venture it was hard to get them to focus on the business aspects until the second week, when one day Dave and Amanda came to class after an all night prayer session where God had revealed to them that the time to launch the business had begun.  In the morning, He had miraculously aligned everyone’s thoughts and they are now going to apply the principles they learned from rep in their business.

Restoring People
Engela was inspired to leave her job as an accountant to start a film business dedicated to producing movies which told God’s stories and brought Him glory.  Her first documentary is about the life of Ntsikana, a Xhosa man.  God met him as he was walking one day.  Immediately, he washed off his body paint, told his second wife he could only have one wife, and taught many people in his tribe how to read and write.  Initially, Engela’s target audience was the white population because she wanted to increase their awareness, understanding, and respect for the Christian tradition among black South Africans. 

Through the venture’s prayer and visioning sessions, God expanded Engela’s vision to make the target audience of the documentary everyone, especially the black population.  Her goal in reaching the black population is to motivate them to follow Ntsikana’s example of turning and giving back to their own community as up to now there haven’t been many missionaries from within.  By showcasing Christ’s care and direct interaction with the black population, Engela’s documentary is part of a restoration of all people in Africa back to God.

Restoring Relationships
Marius, and his wife Karien, own an employment solutions company.  Their business was doing fine, financially, but at the beginning of the venture, Marius would not allow Karien to visit the office, and their marriage was facing serious problems—in fact, others had even recommended divorce to them. 

After much prayer during the venture, God performed a miracle in their hearts and restored their marriage.  Once the relationship was restored, God revealed many new ideas to Marius, including a new meaning for their name, Empsol: Eternally My People Says Our Lord.  Also, by the end of the venture Marius thought of Karien as a full partner in the business.  On the final day, Marius and Karien dressed in their wedding clothes and recommitted themselves to their marriage.  We all shared in a prayer for the couple and took communion with them.  And this was all before the actual presentation began!


At the end of all the presentations, it was strange to realize that this would be the last time we would see many of the people we had spent so much time with in the past two weeks.  It was such a blessing to work alongside God and fellow brothers and sisters in Christ in order to bring more glory to Him.  The past two weeks have been hard, but so rewarding.  We met the awesome team in South Africa who taught us so much in the way they worship God, we met such faithful servants in our clients, who have committed their businesses to God, and we were blessed with amazing team unity and fellowship. 
 

Today was the last structured day with the clients. It was incredible! We covered the last 2 P’s among other things including the first 2 presentations (2 of the client’s managers couldn’t make Friday so they joined us for the last 90 min). It was incredible to hear how God worked in the personal lives of these 2 men while on the venture as well as in their perspective of business. Of course with Friday being the “big day” there has been lots of scurrying around working on presentations, filling the gaps and finishing up on the P’s and Friday is sure to be a day to remember.

Today was an exciting and different experience of visiting South Africa’s parliament building and sessions, hosted by Steve Swart. Steve has been a member of parliament since 1999, and represents one of the 4 members of Parliament of the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP). www.acdp.org.za.

As Steve shared with us some of the political battles that his party was fighting for, based on Biblical values (e.g. upholding child spanking, restrictions on abortions, etc.), it was encouraging to see how even this small number of people (4 out of 400 members of Parliament) were having a major leadership impact in the direction of South Africa. Just the image of this beachhead for God in the midst of the country’s political process was a powerful reminder of the presence of God’s church, even in small numbers (Matt 18: 19-20).

During the course of our day, we also held “visioning” sessions for many of the clients. This included time of intercessory prayer as well as seeking God’s vision for these leaders’ lives and their businesses. This was such an impressive time of just being able to witness God’s desire to direct and be involved with the details our lives. It would have been easy to come into these sessions as the consultant with a well thought out and spiffy plan to help the business. But the real impact happens when we wait on God’s input and revelation. Often it can lead in the opposite direction we would have expected (such as expanding a client’s vision vs focusing it), or even more awesome is God revealing a personal or relational insight that has far more important implications for the leader’s impact than anything related to the business.

In several cases, we had what seemed to us highly productive visioning sessions, only to experience a brief word or picture from God at the end that had an impact to the client that dwarfed all that we had discussed the hour before. This experience just profoundly reinforces a message that I heard most well put by Martin Luther, “I have so much to do today, that I need to spend the first 3 hours with the Lord.” Basically, that one clear word from God can have more impact on our lives than a whole day full of words from our own logic or abilities.

            You may know this country is in desperate need of jobs.  The unemployment situation is so dramatic that crime is on a scale we in America can’t even begin to imagine.  Many homes we often see here are walled, fenced, barred and guarded because of the desperate lack of employment and the theft that results from the lack of work.  Therefore the work we are doing in this country and with the businesses here that can create jobs, is a wonderful privilege.   

            We had hard work to do today because of the heightened awareness that the client presentations are due on Friday.  That is now just four days away.  Since clients are required to focus and produce a written document for their presentation the time for discussion, analysis, debate and consternation are over.  It’s time to put things in writing and move forward.  We don’t know how long the Trinity “purposed” the universe or discussed the positioning, place, presence or profit before the creation.  But God did in fact finally speak.  And now is the time for our clien ts to create and bring forth.  For this reason there is a new atmosphere in the conference room and as Brett, Doug, Lynn, and of course God drive us to the finish line it seems that the Holy Spirit is hearing from everybody at once.  It’s very nice, and comforting to know He is not constrained by bandwidth issues, storage capacity or CPU time to respond to all of the needs.

            Please pray then especially for endurance and strength for all involved.  Extra measures of the fruit of the Spirit are always needed and I thank you all for reading this and caring enough to listen to the needs of a distant land, a distant people and a distant problem.   If we really are able to help then jobs will be produced, books will be published, water will be purified, (to name a few of the businesses we are re-purposing).  Lives will be changed, jobs will be created and crime will go down, hence a safer place just to name one kingdom impact.  My own clients’ hope is that HIV/AIDS will be prevented on a massive scale through the publication of a very sp ecial book about love.  The book is aimed at young people 11-15 who are just now becoming sexually active.  Sadly, sex (that often leads to death) is to many the only relief these people have from the desperateness that is their daily life.  We appreciate your support in building God’s kingdom around these unfortunate people.

This is my second Rep venture, and it doesn’t get old!  I can live like this!

We’ve been working with clients for a week now on repurposing their businesses.  We’ve had the honor and privilege to be part of their lives, and it’s a wonderful experience!  Carl, Mark, Natalie and I have been discussing Carl and Mark’s business.  We’ve been listening to their beautiful vision of caring for families through their businesses.  When they design a house, they look at how family relationships would work in that design.  And when they have customers in their water park, they think of how to serve that family and help maintain their relationships.  Their vision is to provide an atmosphere of love towards the families, so the environment can be inviting for healthy relationships.  It’s an amazing experience to work with people who care about what God cares about.  They care about their community and care about partnering with others in the community.  When they work with investors, they work towards a common goal of family care and community health.

Over the weekend, we had the opportunity to visit great sites that reminded us of God’s creation and beauty all around.  We visited Cape Point, the [almost] most southern of tip of Africa!  It was a beautiful site of water, mountains, green, whales, and much more!  What was even better was the fellowship as a team.  We had a great day together refreshing from a hard week of work.  We enjoyed the company of each other built stronger relationships with each other as a team.  We also had a great seafood lunch right by the ocean, actually, where the two oceans meet!  The Atlantic and the Indian oceans!