Rick and Cheryl on Adventure

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...