Where is God working and how can we join Him? Jon Porter, Founder of Masaka Creamery, shares how God redirected his steps to focus on the gifts, talents and business acumen He gave Jon, and the God-sized result.
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Moments Of Impact With Jon Porter
Encountering God In A Parking Garage In LA
My name’s John Porter. I’m the Founder and Owner of Masaka Creamery and God is at work in my business. I thought that when we chose to hire proactively from the deaf community, we would be making a colossal sacrifice and more likely to fail as a business. In fact, it’s done completely the opposite. I was pursuing a Business degree at USC, but while I was there, I visited the country of Haiti and that visit totally rocked my world. I decided that instead of pursuing a career in business, I was going to become a missionary, defend the weak and the powerless, and that was going to be my life’s mission.
God wants to partner with us in whatever assignment he has given us. Share on XThat lasted for a little while, but I had what I like to call an encounter with God in a parking garage in downtown Los Angeles, and he redirected me back onto the business track, which was startling for me because it seemed less sacrificial, less spiritual. At that point in time, I was really afraid of living an insignificant life.
Reviving A Defunct Dairy Processing Company
I started doing business in Rwanda in 2011, and in 2015, I stumbled across an opportunity to acquire the assets of a defunct dairy processing company. We revived it and launched what is now Masaka Creamery. In a place like Rwanda, it’s hard to get a job. You can imagine that if there are fully able-bodied people out there competing for one position, the chances of somebody with a hearing loss getting selected for that position are slim to none.
It really took us just saying, “We are going to proactively pursue this community and we are going to fill our business with deaf Rwandans.” What we saw was when we hit a certain critical mass, they just started to flourish. Everywhere we put those employees, that department started to flourish. There is no sacred secular divide, and what I hate is when people hear my story and they say, “I need to go to the developing world and do business.” I don’t think that that is the point that God is making through my life. I think the point is that he wants to partner with us in whatever assignment he’s given us.
