today i happened to stumble upon this blog post titled, 'Simple is the way' announcing that we had been invited to move to Americaland to work with The Simple Way non-profit and live in Philly. it's not a particularly great blog post - more of an announcement for friends and family and just sharing the excitement at the time, but what was interesting, and what was again skimming through, was reading the comments [56 of them, [...]
Wot another great theme, the great ones being ones open to a range of interpretation... so many pictures, so little space, but had a variety of shots that jumped out at me to use in this post, each bringing their own personal flavour to this Patterned Buffet: Clockwise from the top left we have: # the patterm formed by row upon row of white fluffy cloud hovering over the water and nature scene [...]
last nite i was invited by some new friends we've made here to join the Oakland City Watch team in a walk they do around the neighborhood [we live on 61st Ave and we walked around the streets closer to 90th so not crazy far away] that has three messages for the people of the community: # We care! # We want to see an end to violence, especially gun violence! # How can we [...]
i feel like the previous few Easters have kind of passed me by with not too much impact - being the easily recognised dreadlock wearing Easter Bunny at the Simple Way is all i can remember and i'm not sure where i was the year before but in the middle of preparation to leave for the Simple Way and so life was a fair bit chaotic... the last Easter that comes to mind was when [...]
so yesterday morning i come downstairs and i log into Facebook and am busy catching up on the nights mail when suddenly a word in another mail in my inbox catches my attention... it's a mail from my wife, the beautiful Val [tbv] with some bank details regarding flight money and my comment below it says, 'bitch, i want all the money' [cue me confused] so i start trying to work out what word i [...]
i really like this picture of me and the reason i chose it for this particular challenge is the idea of casting a wider shadow. the past 18 months i spent as part of a non-profit organisation called the Simple Way which in some cases meant a broadening of shadow as i was given the potential to influence [to some extent] an organisation that is world-known and has an extended sphere of influence and audience... [...]
Wow! 19 months flew by, just like... well 570 days, really. June last year, after about four months of weekly Skype calls with our present and to be future bossman Darin Petersen, the beautiful Val [tbV] and i arrived in Kensington, Philadelphia, Americaland to live and work at the Simple Way non-profit as part of the first batch of an internship program [which was later upgraded to a residency program when they saw our skills, [...]
so probably close to 15 years ago i wrote a challenging email to a couple of friends of mine about some aspect of following Jesus... a week later i did the same... at some point i told someone about it and they asked to be added and so i added them... pretty soon i started spam-inviting people from the typical cheesy group Christian emails that used to hit my inbox and some of them decided [...]
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 [...]
so as tbV and i are nearing the end of our time here at the Simple Way in Philadelphia, Americaland, we have had to focus a lot on looking forwards at the exciting times and opportunities that lie ahead, but i also want to be mindful of taking some time to look back - there is a lot to be grateful for... there is a saying that 'God owns the cattle on a thousand hills' [...]