Category Archives: Travel

Back Again

IBM has given me an award (Sales Eminence Award) which includes funds that can be used for travel.  The amount is enough to buy round trip plane tickets to Santo Domingo and have some money left over.  Connie and I plan to use this for a return trip in August.  We’re still wondering if we include a day or two of side travel someplace.  We’ll see about that, but we are thanking God for this special blessing to be able to return yet this year.

I am looking forward to the water purification plant being in operation then and being able to see it.

Thank you God!

Air Travel – love and hate

I hare air travel.  Well, I hate the rigamarole involved in air travel.  First of all, I do not like being on someone else’s schedule.  Next I do not like the facade that is our TSA security.  Its not about security… it’s about the appearance of security.

Today especially was a pain.  I had to travel with two laptop computers, and the one’s I;ve been issued are fairly large and heavy.  So with two of them in my backpack plus all of the other junk I carry (cables, GPS, flash drives, etc.) the backpack is pretty heavy.  When I got to the airport I noticed one corner of the second laptop is starting to punch a hole through the seam of the backpack.  So now I’m concerned that it might blow out before I get home.  My last backpack had a zipper blow out and I had to worry about loosing the laptop until I could get home and buy a new backpack.

Now, the one thing that was a blessing today was that I charged up my iPod with podcasts from Saddleback Church (Rick Warren) and Woodland Hills Church (Greg Boyd) and listened to them in the airport and on the plane.  Both men are really good speakers.  Rick Warren is just starting 40 Days In The Word, and Greg Boyd is an excellent Bible teacher and really provides new insight into scripture.  So I was really blessed listening to these prophets and the time went by very quickly.

Thanks be to God for the wonderful technology we have that allows us to hear the word proclaimed in an expert fashion almost any time we want.

Preparation

Connie & I leave for the village of Juan Tomas, Dominican Republic late in February, 2012.

Connie will be working on the student sponsorship program and I will be doing some work on the computer system.

I have been sending e-mails and making phone calls trying to learn as much as I can about what they have installed, how it is configured, and what the problems are.  I’ve learned that there is very, very little documentation available so maybe a large part of what I’ll be doing is simply documenting what’s there.

I also have in mind that I might be able to help them put in place, or at least start thinking about putting in place people and processes to manage their computer systems.  Not that they need computer experts, but simply someone to sort of be in charge and have some processes for managing things.

There may also be some work for me to do around the water project that is underway there.  I’m still waiting to hear on that.  Also, my dear brother Roger Clay will be there and I think he is being assigned the task of remodeling a bathroom or two.  I’m sure I’ll get to work with Roger on that as well.

Prayer request:  That God would help me to be a servant in whatever He calls me to do there.