for the last 19 months, myself and my beautiful wife Valerie have been living and working with the Simple Way Christian non-profit organisation in Philadelphia, Americaland and yesterday was our last official office day… we fly out back towards South Africa on the 30th of December… can’t wait!

but what next? well we hope to spend around a month and a half at home and then [providing we find the financial support we will need to buy tickets back and live in the US for the next 18 months] fly to Oakland, California to work with our current Simple Way boss in a different and exciting non-profit organisation called Relational Tithe which also goes under the banner of Common Change.

‘Common Change is a utility designed to help connect you and your resources with people in your life. Compelled to action by my faith, we founded Common Change – an opportunity to imagine (and hopefully realize) a world where we are actively eliminating personal economic isolation. As Gandhi said, we believe that there is enough for all our need but not enough for our greed.  We are isolated mostly, not because the rich and poor don’t care about each other but because we don’t know each other.’

We see this as one form of re-imagining the Acts 2 model of the early church which is described like this:

‘They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.’ [42 – 47]

if you have a couple of minutes to spare you can help us while also finding out a little bit more about this new and exciting venture we are going to be a part of – Common Change is up for a Giving of Life grant [that will match funds of us to $1000] and so you can go to this page and give us a vote or even give a donation towards the matching grant and there is some more information there on what Common Change is all about as well as a one and a half minute video which explains the concept very simply.

so please help us out by voting and if you feel like it’s a really positive thing [which it is] sharing and getting your friends to vote as well – Val and i have been part of Relational Tithe for about 8 months and it has been so inspirational and life-giving to see the kinds of needs and people that we have been able to encourage, help out and really give some measure of life to. This really feels like something that can be community and world-transforming as more people get involved.

thank you for your time, support and interest. you can expect to hear more from us in the coming month or two but this is a way to get involved in a quick and easy manner right now.