Calendars have always been tricky things. Since the earth doesn't take a neat 365 days to orbit the sun, but rather a messy 365.24219 days, we've always had problems with calendars. Either we didn't take the extra 0.24219 days into account, and eventually the months drifted from their seasons, or we tried to take it into account and introduced confusion. "An extra day? Once every four years?"

Actually, Leap Day is an extra day, February 29, that we add once every four years, except century years not evenly divisible by 400. So 2000 had a Leap Day, but 2100 won't. Get it? Don't worry, it's ok to be confused.

Confusion or not, I for one am glad that Leap Day exists. I'm glad because it keeps our calendar in line, sure, but I'm much more pleased because it's my birthday. Without Leap Day, I very likely wouldn't have been born. Or I guess I might have been, but on March 1, and that's nearly the same thing.

The point is, back a long time ago, someone made an extreme amount of effort to figure out a system that would allow me to have a birthday once every four years. And I thank them for it. I'm sure it wasn't easy for them, and I'm sure they had no idea how many people they would effect. Nevertheless, they stayed the course, stuck to their guns, and forced the 29th day of February onto the calendars. The bestest day of the year, let me tell you.

Right now, I'm in Nicaragua. I'm travelling with my wife Sheri and our baby, and we're making plans to put Internet access and technical training in place at a mission in the town of Jinotega. We want to bridge the digital divide for these beautiful people, and in the process bring them the gospel message. It doesn't look like an easy task, and we're not really sure how many people we'll ultimately reach. But we firmly believe the TECHPoints project is a God-given one that He will use to bless the lives of many. So we'll stay the course and stick to our guns (figuratively, of course).

Confusion or not, I for one am glad that Leap Day exists.
We invite you to follow along on this trip with us, in a manner of speaking, by visiting our Weblog. You can read daily postings, and eventually even see some of our photos.

Please keep us in your prayers as we travel. Pray for us to have God's vision for this project. Pray for us to travel safely. Pray for us to be instruments for God's work here in Nicaragua.