The pic above is a few of us Business as Mission students enjoying our first dinner together. I am quite impressed and astounded at the variety of backgrounds of the students attending this course from pastors who support their church by selling fish in Cameroon to retired commercial real estate brokers looking for their next move. Kyung-min the guy on left is trying to convince me to go to b-school with him in the Fall at Michigan. He just finished 4 years in the automotive industry. I apologize for not sending an update sooner. While sitting in the airport in Bangkok, I learned that I was not accepted to Stanford business school, so now I have been scurrying to get apps out for other b-schools that have a strong social enterprise community. That's quite frustrating since it has taken away time to spend connecting with people as much as I want. Pray for grace on that. Also I want to say Thank You to my financial and prayer supporters for helping me get here. So far I've...

I'm departing Wednesday morning for Chiang Mai, Thailand. And with all the funny timezone issues I'll be arriving Friday morning even though the trip takes less than 24 hours. To recap on why Thailand: Christians are discovering that business can be used to promote justice, peace and love. It is possible to pursue profitable enterprise and share the love of God with others at the same time. The concept has been around for centuries, but in recent years it has a label: Business as Mission . Some of the veteran practitioners of Business as Mission are gathering together in Chiang Mai, Thailand to mentor those who also have a heart for using business to serve God. After considerable prayer and reflection, it has become obvious that I should attend this 6 week program for several reasons: To Use Village. Village could be used to promote some of the entrepreneurs and their companies that I'll be meeting in Chiang Mai. More Useful Darian. God can use me more effectively as I ...

New development! Now that I’m done licking my wounds from 2007, it’s time to move forward on the dream. YWAM is offering a course on Business as Mission , essentially how to run companies in a cross-cultural setting, and I’ve been accepted to attend. We’ll be attending lectures taught by entrepreneurs who have been running companies successfully overseas. Part of the 6 week course is in fact a field trip to already successful enterprises. Considering how much talk there is about sharing Christ through business, it will be refreshing to meet entrepreneurs who are actually doing it. I’m headed to Thailand on Jan 24 for the 6 week course. I am hoping and praying that this adventure will lead to deep insight into the world of international business and ministry and possibly some meaningful employment between now and when business school starts in the fall. The application is all done, thank you Josh and Chris for the recs, now the biggest hurdle is the course fee of $350...

2007 was painful . Managing a remote team all in separate locations was painful . Running out of money to spend on Village was painful . Watching my condo sit empty for months and burn through my savings was painful . Falling in love with a girl dating another guy was really painful . On the other hand getting to know the social entrepreneurs at the Reuters Digital Vision Program at Stanford was wonderful. Connecting more with my roommates, and friends who have been helping me with Village has all been great. But, except for some new and stronger relationships with friends, 2007 was pretty painful . Through all this pain, though, I learned a great deal about management and relationships. Regarding management you can summarize the lesson as don't let ambition and impatience compel you to skip steps. But more importantly, I learned a key thing about relationships: stay focused on what is right, and what is going well. As Tom Rath explains, it fills other pe...

While trying out this new financial management service at Mint.com I noticed a fraudulent charge: TLG*GREATFN12673045SEP 800-290-8603 CT $9.99 Apparently they have been stealing $9.99 from my credit card for the past year, and I didn't notice until a month ago. I googled them and sure enough there all over the web for being a scam. Mint.com helps you organize your bank and credit card transactions so you can see where you're money is going. Hopefully in the near future they will have an alerts feature for fraudulent charges like TLG*GREATFN. And so that begs the question: where do we start the class action lawsuit?

For the last week of August, I spent 5 days tending to foster kids at camp organized by Lake Avenue Church and Royal Family Kids Camp . Our entire mission that week was to be the positive, encouraging memories for children enduring childhoods of questionably dark times filled with unknown forms of abuse. I couldn't tell just by interacting with them what they were dealing with in the other 51 weeks of their year, but I do know that when these campers come back next year, they will remember specific conversations they had with us counselors. My primary job was looking after one particular child, “D-man”. Connecting with D-man was new for me. I'm not a parent. I have no pets, not even plants to care for. Being consumed with thinking about another living being for a week straight was completely new to me. D-man is ADD and required the extra herding that comes with not hearing people when they are calling your name. He's quite the "ladies man" a...

In the gospel of John, Jesus is quoted " I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." That's a huge promise, doing things greater than the miracles of Jesus. While he was walking around 2000 years ago, he fed 5000 with a few fish and not even a basket of bread, turned water into wine, did all kinds of healing miracles on the blind, the sick, the paralyzed. Today we are doing things even greater through science and thoughtful design. We have technology now that does more than just feed 5000 with a few fish. We can share knowledge and appropriate technology that creates 10's of thousands of new jobs enabling 100's of thousands to feed themselves and their family for a lifetime. One example is Kickstart MoneyMaker Pump. It costs $100 and can help a farmer go from $300 income a year to $3000 a year, creating 10's of thousands of jobs in the proce...