Every business should spend time and money to make their community a better place to live.  Over the a period of time the business will reap benefits.  By Gary Shotton #000435

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Community

By Gary Shotton

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Hello my name is Gary Shotton, and today I’m going to talk about “Community” and building a strong community and you’re part of being that process of building a good community. I have a good friend that’s up in the country and town of Eldoret Kenya, and they are putting in a rock quarry. And you know, I was so impressed, first of all I’ve sent several groups from other countries to go visit them at least three, two different groups, and help with the expenses for them to go see this, because, as I was talking with my friend Paul miner. We’re driving out to this rock quarry, it was just hadn’t they hadn’t mined any rock at all, but they had bought 12 or 15 acres, and they wanted to make crushed rock, and they determined that in order to buy, what they’re going to do, they’re going to employ 40 or 50 employees, or have heavy equipment, and they determined that there were going to be good, community builders are going to help the community so they surveyed the need for a road and you know that the authorities could have built the road, but they built the road, it was a road, about a mile long to get to the main road, so they made this road, because it helped them but also helped the community. They also determined upfront that they would sure survey the elderly people in that area, and they would do something special to help those elderly people in their needs. They also determined that they would build playgrounds and they would build something for the small children. So this is an organization that is just awesome. They are coming in to do business, but they’re building the community, they’re building up the community on their own expense, and God sees that he wants you to be a part of your community and help bring about good things. You see, there’s a whole lot more than just having business. And if you don’t have certain elements in your community, you almost have to have them. I just got off the phone with my friend that’s serving the people in a town called Benny Congo, and just this last week, terrorists came in, killing shooting the church people the pastor’s had to run into the to the bush, into the end of the countryside and the people are afraid. Well this is not a community that you can do much business in, you know, the looters would come in and steal and then put the fire what they couldn’t haul away, and he told me that. They even found out that I asked about the authorities, what about the army, what about the policeman. He said, Well, it’s been proven it happened over again that sometimes after one of these lootings and some of this difficulty that some of the people in authority, some of the people in the army, they find definitely some of the looting some of the products were stolen or in their, in the military buildings, so they participated, they were not only afraid to stand up and do their job, but they were, they, they actually became benefited because they participated with us. This is not a community that  you can do good business so we are trying to on the big picture encouraging that the community to be built strong and be friendly to business, what are the things you need. Well, you need education, you know, if your children can’t go to school. If you can’t get the people to basically have the basics of education, reading, writing and arithmetic are mathematics and you can’t read a book you can’t understand how is that community got to prosper you need hospitals and you need a police department you need safety you need a water and utilities, how many African countries. I’ve been in several where the electricity is not consistent, or it’s always going off, or there’s not enough electricity in one case I was in a town that you only had to rescue electricity every other day so Monday, Wednesday and Friday was your days that week they have electricity and the other stores can have it on the other three days out of the day, six days a week, and so on, you had to buy a generator and put kerosene or diesel fuel in the generator, just to stay your shop open, see what we got to work towards is communities that are solid, and you’re being a solid business person needs to be a part of that, we’re not advising you but it’s just obvious that there’s certain people that are called to governments, there are certain people does serve in the government’s, there are certain people that are called to be ministers of peace that’s the police department that will be honest and healthy, there’s certain people are gifted to be teachers. And so, here becomes as all comes together. I know this is in developing nations. This is pretty common, but in the end develop debate nations that have not developed this has to become part of your goal, and that there’s not strife and friction between suppliers that bills are paid in a fair and equitable way, that not everybody. You don’t owe everybody and not everybody owes you. Another example in Poland was that, the businesses put on their staff, everyone paid for a lawyer, full time lawyer in order to get paid because they had to after invoice immediately start initiating legal action because they knew they wouldn’t get paid unless they did that to the person that they supply the goods to all these things are upside down. According to good standard community business practices because you want to have a practice that will be able to produce a product or service, and get paid, and generate jobs for other people. I know this is kind of an ideal for some people, and for others. This is just second hand this is like, why are we talking about this, but we’ve got to look at what we can do business, Christian business people to add value to the community, myself I don’t like to pay taxes, any more than anybody else. And we have a lesson suggest on that subject of taxes but I’m willing to pay my fair share. And I’m willing to participate in being a good citizen in my community and volunteering in a limited way or in a way that can help other people. And so we have to think this way. And what’s going to happen is that that the light of Jesus Christ is going to shine brighter when you have that kind of community, and when it becomes really business friendly, then other people want to come there to do business come there to live come there to put their children in the schools, and now you’re starting something that’s completely honoring to God in a way that good people are involved with life that has parks and recreation. We have a most amazing park in my city, if I told you what was spent to build that park you could just not imagine. But it’s drawing, other companies and businesses to our community so that we can have a better and stronger economy. So I hope this makes sense to you, I hope that you can understand this as part of the big picture. Thanks for being a part of inspiring better Business.