If A Tree Falls In The Forest

Well its been years since I've attempted to blog, but it's time to begin again. The past few years have just whistled by like the wind on a cold December day in the middle of Winterpeg. We've had ups and downs, heartaches and reasons to celebrate. But here, today, we are starting over. Its like spring time, but in the fall. I hope you'll enjoy the coming posts. I sure hope this doesn't become a rant. Its way to easy to just point the finger when things are hard - and trust me, things have been hard for the past four years. They have also been amazing. Take my wife and kids for example. Right now, my beautiful wife and I have 3 amazing kids, all under four years old. All boys, and all full of vim and vinegar. I'd post a pic here, but we fear the wierdo's on the net, so I probably won't be posting any family pics anytime soon. But trust me, we are one good lookin' group ;-) In the past two years we have lost three people who were really important in our lives. We lost Irena's father, then my mother, within two months of each other. Then on Feb 1, 2013 we lost our shop manager and very good friend, Mwesige David to liver cancer. Loss can be devastating. But the one thing it does is create room for growth. Or it kills you - I guess you get to choose. A favorite line from the Shawshank Redemption - '...get busy living, or get busy dying.' There's just no sense in wasting time. The past four years have been a trial like I never want to see again. DuncanAfrica is the smallest charity ever. We don't have large corporate donors, or believe in using guilt to lure monthly donors to support our work. So when the recession first hit 4-5 years ago, we actually weren't too worried because we had a waiting list for our guitars. As the recession dragged on though, the orders slowed right down to a crawl and the cash really stopped flowing. How did we survive? God was listening, when I would find the time to talk with him. He supplied for our needs like manna in the desert. And still, I still struggle to find faith that tomorrow He will provide - even though I know He has done so for the past number of years while we struggled so much. I know that many, many people will be able to say amen to that - I think He allows us to go through these times to draw us closer to His heart. If I was really smart, I would just learn the lesson once and for all and stay close - but I'm prone to wandering. Fast forward to this week and I am really thankful for time spent with some fine folks who really know marketing, story telling and social media. In one of our sessions I was confronted with the question of what my role in DuncanAfrica is. In terms of story telling (and we are terrible at telling our story), I had always seen myself as one of the hero's in our story - but I was wrong, dead wrong. My role is the Gandalf character! The one who calls the actual hero's out to the adventure!! Imagine my relief when realizing that I'm NOT a hero. Wow. And even better, now I am free to champion those who are the real hero's, those who sacrifice more than you will ever know, just to learn to build some amazing acoustic guitars. My hat's off to all those who have entered into our story at the Suubi Trade School in Uganda. These guys are really impressive, and they have overcome a lot of obstacles to be where they are today. And I'm happy to tell you that the waiting list for these guitars is getting longer every week. What an amazing problem to have. On that note, here is a pic of our new shop manager, Simon Adyaka, with logs of Mugavu wood, freshly cut. These three tree's will produce between 200 - 300 guitars. This creates thousands of hours of paid work for local people, and maybe 100 years of enjoyment for all the musicians and music lovers who will enjoy the finished guitars.

I love what I do. jd