Elijah, a man on a mission

The idea was simple:

1) Start with international relationships
2) Import coffee from their villages
3) Roast
4) Market
5) Sell

Problem
1) The coffee trees burned in Nigeria (our first country of origin)
2) No feesable way to import coffee from Hondorus (we missed the harvest)
3) Where next; Haiti, Guatamala, El Salvador, Mexico, Indonisia, Camoroon, Kenya?
4) Kenya, YES
5) Meet Elijah, sorry, Dr. Elijah Korich

After a chance meeting at Rice's Market a week ago, Elijah shared his need for a roaster, to roast his beans he directly imported from growers in his local villages of Kenya.

He was someone we were not looking for, however, in the middle of a field in Bucks County at a flee market in 90 degree weather we discussed the possibility of a partnership from grower to consumer.



And on Friday June 22nd, we roasted 55lb's of Kenyan AA right from the source.

In the middle of the session as Elijah shared the story of learning to write under the tree in his village with his finger in the dirt, where he now plans to build the first school. For the past five years Elijah has been building wells, and now he has found some friends who want to help.

He called us, "an answer to pray..." He said that "God is going to use us mighly..."

During his story about coming to faith as a sheperd who met his first Dr. when he came to America at the age of thirty, I started to tear up. I was filled with emotion as he shared about his family and his children who attend elite schools in the states.

Here before us sits a man at a modest hight of 5.4 ft, and maybe 135lbs, telling three guys about his mission to Kenya and how we are an answer.

You figure it out...

if you want to read more about Elijah, check out
http://www.ksmministries.com/

And if you want to drink his coffee visit
www.onevillagecoffee.com

My dad is in Egypt

Here is a pic of my father with a girl from Stephen's Children, the ministry he represents in North America. This picture is important because of the way my father has shaped my future, by changing my world view. When I struggle with faith issues I often think of children like this and how they may never ask questions about faith that I do, because they spend most of their time hungry and in need of the simple things of life. I believe both sides of the human struggle whether food or fulfillment on a deeper level are interconnected. Those of us with food tend to compensate for the emptiness in our soul with physical things, those with out tend to grab onto faith in a way that is inspirering.

Please pray for my father as he ministers in Cairo Egypt.

a pray, a thought, a letter

I shake when I read these words:

A comment from an email to my father from Bala:

“Our plans were for you to have a different seminar from Scott. Each of you will have a separate seminar with a minimum of 250 IN EACH SEMIINAR. You are expected to provide some counseling of people and interact with our plans.
I WANTED TO BE SURE that Scott wanted to Share on SOMETHIIING ON OPENHAND INITIATIVES and One Village Coffee.”

“I have contacted over 6 coffee farmers and many Christians who are looking forward to your coming.”

(Bala Usman, Director of NIFES, Nigerian International Fellowship of Evangelical Students)

It will be three years in November since we were last at NIFES, the trip which will forever be known as a paradigm shift in my philosophy on purpose. On the plane ride home I looked over to my father who ten years earlier had gone to Nigeria on the trip that broke my family, because of the illness my Dad has, and the estrangement we all experience the months after his “Crash”, this is the name my family coined for the time he had a psychotic break for a month of his life which started on his trip to Nigeria.

I can honestly say, seeing my father return to the village where he lost his mind to the welcoming songs and banners of God’s people broke my heart and put it back together. I am not the same man I was before the crash, I was just a boy trying to be a man.

Now two and a half years after the crash I sit at my desk in the basement of my parents how on what feels like the brink of something supernatural. There is a convergence taking place and it involves, NIFES, Bala, Emenikee, My family, One Village Coffee, Haiti (Dan Ziegler), Kenya (Dr. Elijah Korich), and me. I am overwhelmed with possibilities…

There is an amazing man named Elijah Korich who we met at a farmers market several days ago, he is importing coffee beans from Kenya and selling them as coffee to raise support for his ministry which has provided three wells in the past five years to his people. He is now working with Kenyan runners to raise support as well as building a school in Kenya. This man learned to read and right with his finger under the tree in his village. At this time he came to faith in Jesus. He then came to America at the age of 30 when he met the first Dr. ever in his life. HE would later become a Dr., not of medicine.

On Friday I roasted fifty pounds of his beans and contributed to the cause of his existence. As we move further in this relationship our dream is to import a container of coffee from the villages in his country, (Kenya), and roast them, sell them and support his ministry, his life.

Also, on Friday I met with my Nigerian friends before they left for their country. Emenike and Chedi are the catalyst for the change in my life. The course of my history was altered during my trip to Nigeria almost three years ago. I now work in a basement roasting and selling coffee with a cause.

Today I received an email from Bala…

How can I go?

Can I go?

Should I go?

I sit on the brink of what I call the tipping point. The part of your life when something breaks and you are set free. I am being set free.

My desire is to piggyback the trip to Nigeria, with the trip to Egypt and possibly Kenya. Why?

Because Octover/November is when all of those trips are supposed to happen, and I cannot afford all of them, but it is relatively cheep to fly within Africa.

To go on this trip would forgo my opportunity to go back to school at this time and possibly spend out our savings.

Do I go?

Please pray with me for guidance, direction, courage, and strength

to learn more about what our Kenyan coffee is supporting through Elijah Korich click on the link http://www.ksmministries.com/ in the title.

my wife is leaving

For three weeks on June 29th to Cape Town South Africa and I am looking for ideas to send her off.

Here is what I am working with right now:

*A spiritual formation journal with an entry for her to read every day, and respond with me in her journal

*Uploading her favorite music to itunes in her new laptop.

*Buying little gifts for her to open on her way over.

Ok, so what do you think?

If you know anything about me, you know that the simple small things are very hard for me to do, such as getting the rust fixed on my car, or the tires rotated.

I would rather focus on larger tasks at hand, such as putting up an electric dog fence, finishing the dinning room floor, and painting the walls, ordering pictures for the dinning room, putting in an island with a dish washer in the kitchen, building a patio, grooming the lawn etc. (yet nothing seems to get done)

The thing is I want to get one of these tasks done and I want to do it for Andrea.

Any thoughts...

who's the boss

Working for your family
Working with your friends,
How easy it is to make emends,
For the branches you break
And the risks that you take.

When will this cycle end...

I do not know,

Will I ever know?
Will you ever show,
Your face around me again?

Created order is what I believe in,
Chaotic disorder is what I live in,

How could I do this to a friend?

Invvite them along for the ride of their life,
Little did I know I could be loosing my wife,

Here we go, the next show,
Everything ends with a kiss.
Rewind this, cut that, pure bliss.

Perception is what we are worth
In the end we begin
Looking hard, I look deep within...

Where do you find meaning?

Maybe Faith is more than my world view

We all grow up with it:

The way we see ourselves and the way we see others, along with our perspective on the world we live in.

As a Christian I grew up with the perspective of what was "right" and what was "wrong".

Knowing more about the world I live in, I realize now, what I like and dislike often influence my perspective on "right and wrong".

The Christian context I grew up in is defined by "right and wrong" along with the legalistic pursuit of an insurance in the faith "I" believe.

The perch I sit from today looks much different than yesterday and I long for the freedom to have faith in more than my world view.

I want faith in God, not just the Christian presupposition that makes up the God of my world view, instead I want faith in the Kingdom Christ talks about in the Gospels. A God that would incarnate the Kingdom and the "news" that the Kingdom is for those who do not belong. The Gospel will always have a door open to the people with out a home, food, or a reason to believe.

I want to believe... There is more than just me, but I do not think the Kingdom looks like what it once looked like in the world view of my youth.

I have been scared to share my thoughts for so long, because of fear of rejection from the community I long to be apart of...

Why do you believe on not believe and what do you believe in?

the tension of starting a business

It has been said that only seven percent of the work force is entrapenueral and I believe it.

The word entrapenuer:

# Innovator. One who recognizes opportunities and organizes resources to take advantage of the opportunity.

# Someone who is willing to assume the responsibility, risk and rewards of starting and operating a business.

# A French term for a person who undertakes and develops a new enterprise at some risk (or failure or loss).

Most of my life I have been looking for a word a phrase or position to place myself in, and until I started sharing my ideas with business people, I never found my place in this world.

Yes I believe there is a place...

My place is small, scary, dark and sometimes lonely. I live most days in a frantic pursuit of "greatness", not with out hope.

My hope does not lie in a great job, perfect opportunity or fame and fortion. I do not have the capacity to believe I can do it... What ever it is...

Here is what I can and will do. I will wake up with the belief that there is a God who is best represented through Christ Jesus, and I will do my best to become more like the type of Kingdom, Christ gave to the world.

The wrong perspective

Start with what hurts...

Why does it hurt?
Why does the anxiety rise in my stomach when I know what your thinking?

Even though I know a perception is just a point of view and not an objective truth, that persons opinion effects, well, me...

Here is possibly an interesting note:

"There are very few people I want to be like, and I do not know why. Even growing up I found it hard to have a hero. I usually picked the generic Micheal Jordan or the summer blockbuster super hero for starters, but please do not mistake my lack of desire to be someone else as a sense of confidence in my inner being, because it is not the case... No, my lack of alter ego is due to the fact that I am wrestling with several very real and present egos competing for attention all in one body."

The internal struggle of frustration has led me down paths of self awareness I would not soon travel again. However the need to understand, grow and change is a force with in me I can not contain.

This is how I understand the gift of Christ.

When I come to terms with my perspective of who I see myself as, and what I think others see me as, in light of what Christianity says I am, I get excited about the story of what Christ saw in his followers.

What a gift! Look no further than Mark, in the beginning picking the overlooked and outside the cloth. He picked the ones who failed. I can relate with that...

Then at the end of John when some of them go back to where he found them and return to the only craft they have known, he is waiting for them with a meal and a story.

I can relate with that...

When I start with the story of Jesus as the best representation of God's love, I end with freedom...

thank you Jesus

five years of marriage

This past weekend Andrea and I celebrated our five years of marriage with food, fun, friends, family, shopping, love making, and an inn and spa.

In our reflections upon the past five, we came to some realizations:

Marriage is a choice we get to make every day
I want to be on this ride of life with the girl I wake up next to
improving on what we have been given is attractive to the other person
We have to celebrate our Anniversaries at Inn and Spas, they are HOT
I need to share my perspective on faith with Andrea, more, she is ready for my truth
We really like the person we married
We have changed a lot in five and we will change in five more

This past year we lived with the mantra "enjoy"
This year we will "have some fun"

hopefully I will get better with my mac and update with picks through out the year on myspace and this blog.

click on he title and view my pics on myspace now.