Megan Cox

I have been involved with the rēp community since our team’s venture to Cape Town, SA in November of 2006.  Rep has been one of the most significantly transformational experiences, trainings, community/family, professional groups, I have ever and probably will ever be a part of.

When I started the rēp training, I had been a Financial Advisor/CFP® with Morgan Stanley in San Francisco since 2001. I enjoyed helping people, but was desperately seeking to integrate my work, calling, spiritual gifts, and community.  I had recently became a member of Ron Blue’s national organization, Kingdom Advisors®, which was a good start, but I didn’t know how…or even where to begin!  God had prepared my heart, so when I first heard about rēp (aka Equip at that time) one night at a Silicon Valley Fellowship dinner, I knew right away to jump in, as it was an answered prayer and divine timing. I signed up that night and jumped in “head” first (literally)…and the spiritual growth came later. :)

The one area God has transformed my life, and the lives of many of my clients has been through the Money Coaching aspect of my role. I believe this is where the spiritual gifts God has placed in me, as well as my passions and skills line up the most.  I describe Money Coaching as helping people become aware of their sometimes subconscious patterns, beliefs and emotions that might be influencing their lives both positively and negatively and affecting their financial well-being. This is where I see the most freedom, energy, clarity, creativity, passion and generosity start flowing through people.

Now fast forward a handful of years, and God has now strategically placed me in a partnership with a fellow believer, who proudly calls himself an Irish, “born again, charismatic Catholic,” named Mike Duffy.  Together, at the brokerage firm, in Menlo Park, CA we run a Kingdom-minded business, serving the entire range of our clients financial needs from a Biblical perspective. We strive to deeply listen to our clients needs and concerns,  then provide each one with unique guidance. 

In short, we are having a blast, watching the Lord bring the right clients to our door step and we experience such reward giving them sound advice that is life-giving and transformational to them and their family.  We feel privileged to be talking to people on a daily basis about the impact we can all have with our finances, towards fulfilling the Great Commandment, growing our faith, transforming our relationships, and loving our neighbors.

I consider my training with rēp and time with Brett & Lyn Johnson over the years from many different events, retreats, conversations, as the main contributor and encouragement that God has used to open my eyes to being able to live out my work as a ministry, one day at a time. I believe God reaches all of us through different ways, and I feel blessed to see how God touches the hearts of many through our relationship with money, as it impacts almost every decision, relationship, life event we ever experience… What’s on your heart, regarding your finances? ;)

-  Megan Cox

 For more on what Megan is currently doing, click here.

Infratech Africa

Infratech Africa is evolving as a Kingdom business with purpose to do business to transform communities.  Infratech Africa could be described as an umbrella-company that, through its owners/directors, houses a number of businesses, which work together to fulfill this vision. The businesses therefore, included under the Infratech Africa banner includes Road- infrastructure, Housing-infrastructure and development  and Literacy and Education- infrastructure.

We started as a group of like-minded and hearted  people (all from the rēp family and actually met through rēp ventures and activities in South Africa) that experienced Jesus commandment to go and disciple the nations.  We asked ourselves, “How will it be when heaven invades earth and particularly places where we have extreme poverty and injustice?”

The one business line that has seemingly made the most societal impact to date is our Literacy and education arm.  This is done through the business called the Tina Cowley Reading center Strand/Somerset West.  Here we have just started a second reading center in the community of Sir Lowry’s Pass Village to address their current literacy rate of 14% (for Grade 6’s).  We have enrolled 420 foundation phase learners (Grade 1 to  Grade 3) of the local primary school after we had proven the impact and success (average improvements of 100-300% were measured for three different  student groups) of the program during a pilot phase with 66 learners over the previous 18 months.  We wish to eradicate illiteracy over the next three to four years.   In doing so, establish a model with Father God’s grace in our area.  This can then be used to counter illiteracy and a weak education systems and ultimately poverty.  We also built a discipleship program into our methodology and wish to disciple the children and through them the parents of the community.

Father God has provided us with favor in the community, but also blessed our pilot program.  We operate the program with private funding. To date Father God provided funds for 175 of the kids on the program.  The cost is only USD $10 per child per month and this is only 20% of the normal fee for such a program.  We continually seek more sponsors to allow more children into this ministry.

We also progressed with our first property development project in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape.  This is also the birth place of Nelson Mandela.  God led us to this area as the Eastern Gate Way of the Cape  Region in South Africa.  Sir Lowry’s Pass is also the Eastern Gate of Cape Town.  It seems as if the eastern geographical points are the Places we will start our various projects.  The property development is being launched this weekend after about 12 months of very hard work with the Mthatha local development team.  Here we are partnering with the Xhosa speaking people while in Sir Lowry’s Pass we partner predominantly with the Khoi (1^st nation) people of South Africa.

We are also still working to redo our first road-project in the Sir Lowry’s Pass area (place)  and this we can only describe as a two-year learning phase.  We experienced Father God’s leading in specifically partnering and product, process as well as profit with this area of the business and believe the breakthrough is near.

We have been close to Bret and Lyn (US rēp)  as well as the rēp community in South Africa from the start of the business in 2009.  We can only say that as this business was formed to honor Father God and build Kingdom  our focus has not been to make profit as the first and ultimate purpose.  We are in Father God’s Hands and believe that is the place to be- allowing him to lead us as our CEO.  Our dream remains to build a true Kingdom business, which operates to impact society for the Kingdom.

Please visit the following two websites to view our work to date as “body of Christ” and do pray for us and, God willing, support the literacy-program that we have.   

http://www.nqadu.co.za/

Please also support our facebook page.

Regards and blessings

Campher Serfontein, Francois Steyn, Henrie Jonck, Gerhard Venter and Errol Smith

Uloop

Corey Cleek was one of the founders of Silicon Valley Fellowship and one of the original ten consultants who participated in our Repurposing Business training and traveled to South Africa with REP in early 2003. After returning from Cape Town he made determinations to prioritize relationships, and explore kingdom business opportunities. He is a co-founder of Uloop, working with other REP alumni, Ryan MacCarthy and Michael Ho (both Venture 4).

Corey came to the Repurposing Business Training class on February 8, 2012. He shared about some highs since leaving the REP community and moving back to Tennessee - from publishing his book, Devotional Ventures in 2007, to marrying his wife Sally in 2008, and the birth of their first son, Drew in 2011. He also shared about the devastating news of Sally’s battle with breast and brain cancer over the past two years, but Jesus has the victory and she’s now cancer free and on her way to a full recovery!

    “Rep has provided me with a view of business that has helped me see work and business from a Biblical perspective.  I also appreciate and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity through our trip to South Africa to spend time with various businesses to better understand and practice the application of the principles we learned.  I’ve loved being a part of the Rep community, and I’m very thankful to Brett and Lyn for their leadership and mentorship over the years.”

 - Corey Cleek

History of Uloop

Uloop is a network of online marketplaces for college students, featuring classified advertisements (with textbooks, jobs, carpools, housing, for sale, travel, and events categories).

The Nashville, TN based company first launched at University of California, Santa Barbara in January 2007. As of November 2009, the resource is live on over 1500 colleges and universities across the United States, and employs 80 part-time college students, who hold either a campus marketing position or a local sales position. 

Uloop currently reaches around 3.5 million college students, or 10% of the total college students in the United States. Their website generates around 50,000 views per month and they have over 500,000 active listings.