The digital home of Dennis A. Smith
IT Entrepreneur
It’s Sunday in Samoa, so God gets a good look-in today. The SWAP Foundation is founded upon the biblical value system. Christianity is not required of our partners or team members but respecting the values contained within the Judeo-Christian value system is a prerequisite for working with us. This tenth principle is the one to Honour the Lord. [Read more...]
Don’t you just love a winner? Be honest now, we all do! Getting behind a top performer is motivating and invigorating. Even leaders love engaging with and learning from other leaders. This understanding is our ninth principle
in a series. [Read more...]
Can you believe it? A post without preaching! Just a few photos from the rainy season. No big deal over here. Just a bit of water . . . everywhere! [Read more...]
A question now . . . who is worth more? An unemployed rural Samoan who works for a day on his plantation and feeds his family (maybe only just) OR someone like my lawyer who works for a day and feeds his family with the best food money can buy PLUS makes so much extra money that he can easily buy a new TV every day of his life? (272x more money per hour than an employed Samoan worker to be precise)? Your answer please? [Read more...]
The seventh principle we use over here is a concept that sounds easy but is a real challenge – we require a cross-cultural partnership. So what’s the catch? Well, it’s just darned hard to do! [Read more...]
I want you to read this – LIES, GREED & SHAME:
The vicar said
“It was easier for the farm to write out one cheque & for the church to distribute money to the workers … some of whom were on visitor’s visas … can’t recall the firm’s name”.
It’s probably called Mr Apple, Vicar.
You do it every year & this year you got caught.
Do you remember what bible says about lies and greed, Vicar?
Makes me sick!
I say, “Right let’s settle on ONE piece of land please, SIGN it & get going!”
I’ve got things happening all around me & offers of land & leases & businesses.
I just want a new home with a landlord (that has a brain) & that is secure (well at least as secure as I can get here where you are not allowed to ever OWN land!).
A ten acre block at Tafaigata is looking the best at the moment. The others are all “in progress” – Samoa!
The Good Book says that “It is more blessed to give than to receive”. This biblical principle is the sixth in a series explaining the values that we are using in our work in Samoa. [Read more...]
The fifth principle will have alternative thinkers, greenies and liberals delighted. Just like the rules when visiting a natural tourist destination we require that our investors to “Take nothing home”. It’s a little different from the normal Western profit-based investor mindset, but it’ll all make sense when I explain. [Read more...]
A continued pattern lacking of integrity and professionalism from mainstream journalism in this case TV3. Granted, it COULD be a co-incidence. Sad though as concept plagiarism from mainstream-to-bloggers happens too often to be chance.
I wonder where they got the story from? —
whaleoil.gotcha.co.nz
3News ran a story tonight about dairies selling P-pipes. They even visited the Albany Superette and interviewed Mr Park. Not a single mention of the source of the story. I think that is just rude. I might send them a bill
I’m pinching myself. Extraordinary!
I’ve just been given a volcano, yes, given. Comes complete with 400 acres of beautiful bush & views to die for & a caretaker/landowner that wants me to develop it into an eco-tourism thingy.
“Anything you like!” he says.
So we will. Pinch self again. Rent-free, tax-free living in a South Pacific Island Paradise.
Pinch, pinch, pinch.
More details as they develop & the deal firms up.
Q: Where’s the combined international law enforcement’s race to uncover the source of WikiLeak’s “damning documents”. Not so bothered about where the docs came from, I’m interested in WHY the sources haven’t been tracked down & people arrested & charged with treason or whatever. Maybe Julian Assange is part of a deliberate covert op specifically designed to prepare us for Internet controls? No?! [Rhetorical question]
Founder Says WikiLeaks to Release More Documents
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has pledged to step up the release of secret documents. He made the declaration outside a London court Tuesday, where his lawyers were fighting to prevent his extradition.
The fourth principle we apply in Samoa is that we only want to work with the best. This runs counter to the typical cultural response to getting things done here, where near enough is close enough and we’ll all do the cheapest we can. [Read more...]
The third underlying principle that we’ve been working with in Samoa is to start with what we do have, then move outwards, to that which we don’t have but that we want. It’s based on a biblical principle found in Exodus 7:9, and also in many other places, where Moses and Aaron did in faith what God had told them to do; take what Aaron had in his hand, then use it in faith and let the Lord do the magic. [Read more...]
In this Sermon from Samoa I share another principle that we have been applying to the SWAP Foundation‘s work. Coming from a Christian perspective, I challenge the Western mindset that giving primarily entails giving money and that more money means more success. God is all about relationships and faith – not programs and success. [Read more...]
In the first of a series of posts focusing on the principles that we are using to weave our magic here, I share how I see biblical principles blended creatively with the traditional Samoan way of doing things and with Western capitalism to achieve good things, perhaps even miracles. [Read more...]
I think the doors are opening for us in Samoa again. There has to be such a thing as providence, kharma, a God or similar – there just has to be. [Read more...]
In this Sermon from Samoa I share my experiences with “Smoke, smudge & smear experts” and show how the beauty of truth gets lost so often. Magicians use smoke to hide things. To smudge is to distort, making worse, something that was created good. Smear experts play the man and not the ball. [Read more...]
The lure of money is subtle, and multifaceted. In another Sermon from Samoa, I share my concerns about how focussing on monetary matters trips even the best of us up in God’s economy. I’ll start though with one of my favourites – politics and money, yes you guessed it . . . in Samoa! [Read more...]
Here I provide proof of Samoan Christmas fireworks:
a .22 bullet found on the road.
I push the boundaries of racial tolerance again (but am off the hook because I quote a Samoan dissing Samoans as liars) and then explain the discussion I had with the big Phat man on Christmas Eve
Oscar Wilde gives some good advice to people like me who tell it like it is. “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” I wish he’d given me this advice a little earlier because they brought the guns out in Satapuala on Christmas Eve and it had me worried! Here are some Christmas Musings from Samoa for your merriment. [Read more...]
