March 08, 2004
Back in the USA
Wow, what a trip!
We got back to the USA on Saturday afternoon and spent a day or so "decompressing" at Sheri's sister's house in The Woodlands. We were thrilled to see the kids again - we learned an important lesson about the limits of our tolerance for being away from them. I think I spent the first 15 minutes just hugging them - I still have an extreme hug deficit that I'll work on over the next week.
The final days of the trip went very well. In particular, we were thrilled to talk more with Francisco Hernandez, a young man who may be the answer to our prayer for someone to be able to manage the TECHPoint there in Jinotega. Francisco is bright, speaks acceptable English, and has a true heart for this project. He in fact suggested a similar high-tech project to a missionary late last year, but he said "I never heard a reply." I told him, "You're getting your reply now, I think, just for a different region and with different people."
Even more exciting is the potential he has for being the on-site coordinator for as many TECHPoints as God sees fit to bless us with the resources to build. He's single, wants to travel, and is totally sold on this method of evangelism. We could see bringing him to any Spanish-speaking country to set up future TECHPoints, and we could just coordinate support, hardware & software from here in the USA.
I'll file some more "debriefing" reports from the trip over the next day or so. I'm also trying to get a place set up to upload a bunch of our pictures. Hope to have that available by tomorrow.
--Paul