Rick and Cheryl on Adventure

Step by Step Cheryl and I continue to find ourselves being stretched as we continue on this journey we are on.  Since I stopped working back in 2015 it has been our intention to  sell our character home and relocate to Saskatoon.  For me, I had more or less linked these two events and over the past year we had been rethinking this plan as we found ourselves getting more involved in our Church and the process of selling property had become a long and more drawn out affair.   After zero offers during the listing period last year we had the idea to put a simple for sale sign in the window in December. Since there was a house for sale a few doors down, and we thought there might be some drive by interest.  This plan seemed rather dubious since the past two years with realtors had yielded no solid offers but there was no downside to putting a for sale sign in the window. In late January we had a couple come and view the house and very quickly it turned into a ...

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...