ALL AROUND THE WORLD

When I first started working at The Enterprise Center, I remember writing down a list of goals. One of them was that I'd stay there at least two years, and soak up as much knowledge as possible about urban economic development, so that I could take that experience wherever in the world God had me go next. Here was a perfect example of my idealism and planning coming together: goals for learning for two years, with the hope that God would send me overseas to use those skills and be available for His work.

This July will be eight years at The Enterprise Center for me. I've fallen in love with Philadelphia, bought a house, and created a youth program within the organization that I intend to run for awhile. But here's the irony: since I've taken over our consulting department, I've gotten a chance to cultivate opportunities to be sent to faraway communities and apply my experience to helping organizations to start and run programs similar to ours.

Just this month, for example, I've been working on potential clients in Brunei, Canada, Hungary, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Singapore. There is great interest all around the world in setting up business incubation programs which can help communities build a base of emerging entrepreneurs. And I am getting opportunities to help out.

I look back on the idealistic goals I set after graduation sometimes and think, "How naive I was back then!" And yet, God back then was listening to at least one of those goals/prayers, and is now beginning to answer.