Estamos de vuelta en Nicaragua!

Isabel and I are back in Nicaragua! Having arrived here about two weeks ago, this blog is a bit overdue, but after about 24 hours of travel we are once again South of the border. We left Burlington the day after our Valentine's Day event; got on a bus from Burlington to Boston at 2 a.m. and then hopped on a plane from Boston to Miami, which led us to our final flight into Nicaragua. When all was said in done we got in at 2am on the 15th. It feels nice to be in a warm climate again! I hear its snowing in VT?!

Upon arrival we got right down to business, having been gone for almost three months there are quite a few things to follow up with. Isabel's first objective was to go out and meet with the participating communities to let them know when our upcoming check-in meetings would be. On March 1st we had our first formal community meetings in the Island Community and with our two loan groups in Avelardo Enrique, both of which are located near Granada. Everyone was excited to see us again and were full of questions about our travels in the States. We were very pleased to have three recipients repay their loans in entirety this month, which is very encouraging to know that the process we have developed and you are supporting is working!

About a week following our arrival Paul and Janel Gamm came down to visit. We love visitors! Paul is currently a Director on PHPG's Board. We were able to show them around one of our communities, Avelardo Enrique and the activities surrounding those particular loans.

Now that we are settled back in for the next couple of months - meetings are lining up to collect new loan requests, conduct interviews around these new requests and inform several communities when they are going to receive their loans. Because of the success we had in fund-raising over the holidays we will be able to award about 30 new loans next week alone!

That's all the news for now, signing off from Nicaragua.

-Alex