A day with the CEO of Fundamo

Tuesday - May 08 / Day Two / Visiting Our Clients
Today, all the consultants visited with their clients. Most went to their client's offices one by one after breakfast at the lodge and our group prayer meeting. My client is the CEO of Fundamo, which is a company that provides mobile banking solutions. They are working to provide mobile banking services to people in emerging economies. There are many barriers for people in developing economies to gain access to basic banking services. Many people in these economies don't live close to a bank and may not have developed a lifestyle of saving and budgeting, so they might not even understand basic financial concepts that would lead them to a traditional bank. They often live in a cash-based society where most people pay with cash or check. Imagine a young man who lives in a remote village of Africa, which often is one or two days drive from a major city or town. He wants to help provide for his extended family, so he moves to a city to find work. After he has earned money he needs to send it to his family. How can he do this? Taking it to them might involve a significant time commitment that he can't afford to do. Often he will pay someone to take the money to his family. It's not uncommon for the person who transports the money to charge him 30 percent of the total amount sent or to keep 100 percent of the money! So the transaction cost and risk is very high. Believe it or not, in many of these remote villages have cell phone coverage or are very close to a mobile network. Using a mobile phone, people can use Fundamo to transfer money to other people and get a transaction record of their payments and bank activity. Mobile banking has the potential to give a huge portion of the worlds "unbanked" population access to basic banking services, which in turn can help them keep more money in their pockets or bank accounts. The concept of microfinance is starting to gain traction around the world as a way to lend small amounts of money to micro enterprises. Mobile banking enables entrepreneurs who tap into microfinance to receive and make payments to fulfill their loan. It gives them access to banking services, because often their local area doesn't have a traditional bank. So far it's been really interesting learning more about Fundamo and how it can change people's lives. I really admire our client's vision for the company and what they are doing. We have been praying and considering ways that the company or our client could be repurposed (if needed) to serve God's larger plans for people in developing economies. Stay tuned...

Kiva is a great way to get involved with microfinance and help entrepreneurs who own and run micro enterprises to gain access to much needed capital.

The Kick Off & Waka Waka

Monday - May 07 / Day one with our new clients
After setting up all the tables and equipment on Sunday night in the meeting space of the Stellenberg Church, we had many last minute details to coordinate on Monday morning as we kicked off our two-week consulting venture here in the Cape Town area. Overall, everything ran very smoothly, as our new clients joined us for an inspirational talk by Graham Powers. Brett followed up with a brief overview about the organizational transition from "equip" to "rēp" and some details about the LEMON Leadership sessions he led Friday with the Power Group. During the day Brett, Jodene, Tom, Doug, and Lynn laid out the rēp (marketplace ministry) framework we will explore with our clients in the next two weeks and we covered the Purpose "p". We had a wonderful lunch with many South African specialties provided by the Feathers Lodge. The food and service provided by the Feathers Lodge staff has been great! As the first day's session came to an end, the consultants coordinated plans with their clients for Tuesday. Most consultants will travel to see their client's operations or companies first hand during the day. We will be back at the church on Wednesday for the next training session. The consultants spent an hour at the end of today's session debriefing and sharing about initial impressions about their first day with their new clients, which was followed by a time of prayer.

Back at the Feathers Lodge, we had a nice dinner, which was followed by a testimony by an amazing, South African couple (Dave and Amanda). They explained how through prayer and meditation they had received explicit instructions from God about a process for turning polluted water into clean water. They started experimenting with this process in a few local small bodies of water. After initial success, they were encouraged to take the clean-water process to very large bodies of water in South Africa. What they described sounded like a miracle! They have the process for taking organic material from plants and using it to cleanse very polluted bodies of water. There is a huge demand for their god-given process, which has caught the eye of many government and scientific officials. Dave and Amanda are praying and carefully considering how to proceed forward with this amazing gift, which could easily be exploited in the wrong hands. After their detailed explanation of the journey to provide a solution to clean up the world's water supplies, Dave and Amanda proceeded to captivate us from 7:00p to past 11:00p! They gave so many amazing testimonies about how God had worked so powerfully in their lives. I personally can not remember a time when two people help my attention for 4+ hours like this couple did with their captivating, sermon-like style of conversation. And to top it all off, we learned a new term or phrase that is unique to South Africa. When people in South Africa say "Waka Waka", it's the same as in the USA when we use "Blah blah" in a sentence, like "Then Brett said blah blah..." We laughed so much about this and can't wait to introduce this term into the American slang vocabulary. All and all, it was a great first day of the venture!


What God is saying to us…

Overwhelmed
- God wants us to be overwhelmed with His presence
- We need to be humble
- We need to realize our position in contrast to God Almighty
- We need to remember that he has the answers we don’t and we need to get out of the way to let Him work

Chosen
- God loves you and has chosen you
- We are not slaves but sons and daughters
- We have the inheritance already and we just need to ask for what we need
- Romans 8:30 paraphrased: “God has called you aloud by name, made innocent and then empowered”

Obedience
- Sunday's sermon at church and Dave and Amanda echoed this theme

Day two in Cape Town

From South Africa

I slept like a rock Saturday night and woke up to another warm day (highs in the upper 70s°F/50s°C) here in Cape Town. Especially warm considering it is winter! After a delicious, home-cooked breakfast at our lodge, I drove one of our group cars to a local church called El Shaddai. Yikes! People drive on the left side of the road here, just like Japan! I really had to pay attention to what lane I needed to be in, especially when turning. Ok, back to Church, which was really inspiring. The first part of the service was full of singing for about 40 minutes and followed by a great sermon. The pastor mentioned to the congregation that a bunch of people were visiting from America and asked us to raise our hands. After church, we had a some yummy, thin-crust pizza back at the lodge. We held our first meeting with all the rep consultants to get to know our new work partners and prepare and pray for the next two weeks of client meetings. During the last few minutes of the meeting with all the consultants, one of the Cape Town consultants mentioned that he was sitting in the meeting and thinking about something I had said during the meeting. While he was thinking about that he sensed that God spoke to him about me. He said that he wanted to share with me the words that God spoke to him:

Richard...I felt that the Holy Spirit was saying that while you are here in Cape Town, He will put the building blocks together and He will add to your understanding the revelation to solve and tackle some of the challenges that you have at work. In fact, before you leave this place, He will let you get on the plane with the basics of the answers (I thought I saw 3 problems / challenges). The Lord will do this for you as you invest in the life of your client.

I have to admit, I haven't thought much about work since last Thursday and I am curious to learn how this could be related to some challenges in my work life that have

Later that evening, we had quick dinner at the church where we will hold our consulting meetings for the next two weeks. I was responsible for setting up the tables and seating, along with supplying power to all the tables. After all the set up was complete we had a time of prayer about the venture and for healing. Some members of our team are suffering from physical aliments.

All in all, it was a great second day in South Africa. I also posted our venture group's first blog entry over on the rep website.

Great first day in South Africa

On Saturday morning May 5, I arrived safely at our lodge in South Africa. This was about 32+ hours after I left my apartment in San Francisco on May 3, so needless to say, I felt a bit disoriented. The flight between SFO and Heathrow was about 9 hours, then we had a 7 hour layover in the UK. Then we flew down to Cape Town on our second flight of the trip, which lasted about 12 hours. After checking into my room at the Feathers Lodge in Durbanville (just outside Cape Town) and a quick shower, a group headed over to the local mall. I bought a pay-as-you-go SIM card for my GSM phone and we had (middle eastern) lunch at the mall's food court. Later in the day, we went to a rugby game in a really nice part of town. One of REP's clients treated us to box seats in the middle of the stadium! WOW! I've never even really watched rugby on TV longer than 5-10 minutes before today. It was really fun to be at a game and have such nice seats. We had the pleasure of watching the (Durban) Sharks (currently the top rugby team) play and beat the Cape Town, vodacom Stormers. It was a great first day in South Africa.

Prayers for Cape Town, South Africa trip

On Thursday, April 19, we had our official commissioning for the Cape Town venture. During that time, people were praying for me and my team. Below are some of the things people prayed for me and said about me. It was really an amazing experience to hear all these wonderful and encouraging words and prayers. I want you to know that you are an encouragement to me as well, and I wanted to share this with you.

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Richard...
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= Sense of "Wow" for going to South Africa when your heart longs for impact in Japan
= Special understanding and clarity
= Wisdom and integrity
= True "Man of God," great example
= Grace and patience
= Leader, initiating, obeying, humility
= Overwhelming joy, excitement
= Sailing, filled with wind of Holy Spirit, traversing back and forth
- Ears open to catch maximum wind
- Take off!
- Friendships, relationships,
- Healing from past disappointments and frustrations
= Faithful, "good and faithful servant"
- God is honored because you are more concerned with faithfulness than grandeur and acclaim
= Compassion for lost
= God is calling you out to more leadership
= Surprises and wonder

Before I leave for Cape Town (May 3-23), I want to thank you all so much for your prayers, emails, and generous financial support! We will be posting about our Cape Town trip over on our group's blog.