The Dream

I enjoy coffee shops.  I enjoy the atmosphere.  I'm not talking the big chain shops; I like the small, private owned, personality-packed, cafes.  Though I worked as a barista in a Borders cafe for a year, I didn't start to enjoy drinking coffee until I was in Tanzania.  However, because I like the atmosphere so much, I've dreamed of owning my own coffee shop.  I imagined how I would decorate it, what I would sell, what music I would play, if I would have books and boardgames and puzzles.  But I always thought that dream was just out of reach.

When I was in Kenya, we were talking about what we were going to do after the Race.  Everyone had these big ambitious goals, and I had nothing.  The idea of opening a cafe came back to me, so I prayed about it for a bit, and decided that God could give me a name and confirmation, and until then, I wouldn't think into it.

Two months later, as I was drinking my Africafe (cheap, instant coffee) in Tanzania, I got the idea for a name.  And not only that, I also got my confirmation.  The preacher that day, who was visiting from South AFrica, was preaching and said, in the typical, yelling, African preacher way, "START A BUSINESS!"  He said this not once, but three times.  And so I told God that I would do everything in my power to do just that, but that He would have to either help me or stop me.