Career Change

As you may know, I’ve recently changed careers.  I went from being an elementary teacher for 7 years to full time missionary work.  Back in 2008 I visited a friend who was starting a program at Eastern University in international development.  I was able to attend the opening session there and heard Tony Campolo speak for a full day with a lunch break.  It was fantastic.

I can look back at that as a major turning point in my head and heart.  There were other things that helped push me towards this career, but that was really the spark that started it all.  He relayed the idea of a new spin on an old adage.  He said something similar to, “You’ve heard it said feed a man a fish and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.  But I ask you, what if there isn’t a pond?”  Wow, talk about depressing!  What do you do with something like that?

Several years and wrestling matches with God later, a friend named Ryan Russell told me about his new vision for his ministry.  He had worked with youth ministry on a global scale, helping train youth workers in the developing world for years by helping create a ministry named Youth Hope.  After working for a while in Myanmar he asked youth in the country what they felt their most pressing needs were.  Every one of them said they wanted and needed a job but there weren’t any for their age range.

Being the entrepreneur that Ryan is, he thought of a great idea.  What if he started an entrepreneurship school?  A school that would train youth how to start their own businesses and provide a small capital loan to launch that business.  He told me about this idea and it just clicked.  What if there’s no pond?  Then you teach them to dig their own pond.

I went to Myanmar in 2013 for 3 months to work alongside him and the rest of the team at Opportunities NOW in Yangon with the goal of launching my own entrepreneurship school someday.  I went back in 2014 for 7 months to learn more about the operational side of things.  My friend Matt Wallace was essentially in charge of training me and did an outstanding job.  I also started a side business to get a better feel for entrepreneurship myself.  I figured if I was going to teach youth how to be entrepreneurs I better be one myself!

After traveling back to the states, getting married and settling into our little place in Ft. Myers there is much work still to be done.  Steffani and I have to get fully funded for starters.  To make this vision a reality, we’re going to need some diehard folks on our team.  I’ve started viewing fundraising more like managing investments.  We are inviting people to invest in what we feel God is calling us to do.  The ROI is different of course, but I sincerely believe there is still a great ROI in investing in someone’s ministry; a better ROI than money depending on how one looks at it.