Rick and Cheryl on Adventure

Is there a bridge between China and Africa? My time in Zambia was spent in the City of Kitwe, which is located in northern Zambia. Unlike Zimbabwe where there is not much industrial development and investment in the economy, there are things going on in Zambia.  There are roads being built and a lot of building and activity in the mining and manufacturing sector.  The vast majority of this investment is by the Chinese and so there are many Chinese expats living in Zambia that work in these Chinese operations or are in the country and operating some sort of business.  Large compounds are built to house these workers and there are two near the mission property where I was staying. There are dozens of these compounds around the country and and one of the Bishops from the Pentecostal Assemblies of Zambia has a compound filled with Chinese workers  right across from his church.   Bishop David as I will call him, was considering how best to minister to these wo...

From Z to Z Our team left Zimbabwe on November 18th and spent a couple of days in Pretoria, South Africa.  We had some down time and took a day to drive around the area and visit a game park and since we were a group of four men we went to a very well known restaurant called Carnivore.  Not only was it a culinary experience that was like nothing I have had before it was an extremely cool design and it felt like you were on safari and staying in a lodge in the bush.  A photo of the menu shows what our meal consisted of and the process was that each of the meats were cooked on a open charcoal fire in the center of the resto, and  as they were ready  one of the chefs would bring a large skewer the size of a sword to the table and slice off or remove some of the meat on offer.  My favourite was the blesbok, kudu and zebra.  Along with the huge variety of meats there was salads, a number of great sauces and veggies. Vegetarians should look away, and ye...

Cultivating Integrity in Zimbabwe The main reason I am in Africa is at the invitation from co-directors Don Mann and Bill Pipke to accompany and observe two summits for their initiative called Cultivating a Lifestyle of Integrity (CLI).   Bill and Don were pastors for many years in Canada and are now full time global workers doing work in Africa and China. They have developed a discipleship manual that is delivered via a cohort of ten over a period of weeks.  This initiative is intended to shift the paradigm in society away from corruption and toward a life that is built on six pillars of trust, authenticity, honour, influence, truth, and dignity.  Using a discipleship model the cohorts are on a journey together to solidify these values in themselves, hold each other accountable and then go forward and gather a new cohort to repeat the process.  this type of movement grows organically as one group of ten can become 100 and 100 can become 1000 and thus a moveme...

Africa Leg 1 Travelling to South Africa takes a long time!  I left Regina early morning on the 13 th and after three flights and 19 flight hours arrived in Johannesburg at 10 pm on the 14 th .  I met up with a pastor from London, Ontario and we travelled together from Toronto and we soon found out that we knew some of the same people from within the PAOC family.  Gary was a pastor in Rosetown, Saskatchewan where my aunt and uncle still attend and he went to school with my cousin at Horizon College in Saskatoon.   It was good to have a companion to chat with during our layovers. Our hosts Don Mann and Bill Pipke met us at the airport and welcomed us to South Africa and soon reminded us we had to be back at the airport in 7 hours to get on the plane to Zimbabwe.   It was a fitful sleep even after not really sleeping for most of the previous 40 hours or so.  As we met up and travelled to the airport the news was starting to trickle out of Zimba...

My time working with the De Weerds and Every Day Ministries Canada (EDMC) in Nagua, DR has come to an end. I am sitting in Regina at my dining room table writing the last post for this trip.  The last three full days  in the DR were quiet as Ryan had a lot of administration to catch up on and the passion fruit project was in suspension until the second and third passes with the discer could be made.  The tractor was  supposed to be there on Saturday the 18th but did not show up.  Next steps in that work is to get the land worked and then source and transport the 3 meter posts that will serve as the frames for the passion fruit to grow on.  I left on Thursday and the plan was to get the ground prepared and the first 200 plants in the ground on the 25th. Aerial view of the area to be transformed into passion fruit plants  Adrian and Sharon Thomas, the founders of EDMC, have been in Canada for several weeks and are hoping to be able to return to Nagu...

Since my last post we have made progress in the preparation for the passion fruit planting. Lorenzo Garcia was hired to disc the soil and did the first pass on Tuesday. The soil is quite sandy so the breaking disc was able to get deep.  It is not the smoothest land so the first pass was a bit crude.  He returns on Saturday to make two more passes and we will assess whether we can start putting up the posts and wire.  We are still trying to source this stuff and our Ag consultant is working on finding the posts. Six foot breaking disc going over the land Last Saturday our consultant came by to check on our progress and to drop off passion fruit seeds, some small bags and a few sacs of topsoil. The task assigned to me was to build a 12 X 4 foot frame under a shady tree to house all of the seedlings for the few months they will be growing, until they are of a size that they can be transplanted.  So the last three days I have been filling little plastic bags with di...

It has been just over one week since I landed in Nagua.  I head for home in just over 2 weeks so my time here is short.  After reading the passion fruit document I feel like I know just enough to understand the process we are embarking on to prepare the land for the planting. The land we are using is part of a 27 acre property purchased a few years ago, and will be the main Ministry HQ for Every Day Ministries Canada or as they are known here Ministerios de Cada Dia.  Their plan is to build a ministry center for teaching and conferences, build accommodations for ministry teams from Canada and for ministry center events, develop a fruit orchard that will make a profit to help with costs and some additional buildings to house staff and act as a storage/warehouse for the agriculture operations. Grand plans to be sure but it makes sense to me as I sit and listen to all of the things that have been going on for the past decade or more since the Thomas family first arrived. Thi...

Rick is currently in Nagua, Dominican Republic to fill in for a couple who had to come back to Canada for personal reasons.   He returns to Canada on March 23rd. It was a rapid deployment with only a couple of weeks notice, and so he had to coordinate the trip with a couple of other projects he is working on.  Travelling to this part of the world from Regina is a long and at times, ardous process.  First to Edmonton and then long layovers there and in Toronto as many tourists joined the flights on their way to the sun and sand. It took almost twenty four hours from the time he got dropped of at the airport to arrive in Nagua.  It is official, sleeping on planes in not really something possible for Rick. thankfully the trip home is more direct and only takes about 8 hours.  I will switch over to first person now! Ryan picked me up in Puerto Plata and the drive to Nagua was very pleasant along the north coast.  a short stop for a bowl of delicious Dominican...