Back to the grind

I made it back to Phuket on Tuesday night after a beautiful 10 days back in the US. Thank you to all of you who I got to see. Thank you for your encouragement and love. It will surely be the spirit of those many conversations that keeps me going strong these next six months.
Now that I'm back, transition time is upon me. I'm in the process of moving this weekend, the Vestal's (the ServLife Director's family) are heading back to the US in 3 weeks, and the rest of the ServLife team has either already moved, or will soon be moving, to Nepal. That leaves yours truly here in Thailand flying solo for the next few months. With the ServLife Hope Fund well established, I cannot pick up and follow my team up there for the next chapter of our commitment here. Through the many conversations I've been having with Joel Vestal over the last few days, it's looking like over the next several months we will spin the Hope Fund off to a committee of local Thai people. The idea would be that they would be able to manage it for the long term without having any of the baggage of being a foreigner. The committee will ideally have 5 or so people on it who will find potential recipients, walk them through the application process, work through business planning with them, determine if the candidate is fit for receiving a loan, and then help buy materials for them. They'd also be responsible for collecting the repayments & managing the bank account for the fund.
I'm excited about the opportunity to be an integral part in spinning the program off to the community. I'm also excited that when I eventually leave there will be a sense of closure to my time here, and the program will be sustainable over the long term; helping dozens, or hundreds of families rebuild their lives, and hopefully making it better than it was prior to the Tsunami. Then, when I feel confident that the loan is in good hands, hopefully by Nov/Dec, Joel wants me to move to Nepal to help start another Hope Fund there that will be managed by other ServLife Int'l staff. So, as you can see, there is big transition lurking real close.