Day 18

We had a productive day today. We visited with Jose Luis again today. He is the guy with a used cell phone repair and sales shop. It was nice to see that he had put into practice a couple of our suggestions. He had cleaned up his store so it looked more professional, rearranged his display case so it was more presentable, and he has put into practice an inventory control system. I have a good feeling about him and his business. I think he will do well. We are going to meet with him one last time to help him create a little system to create a mini income statement he can review each month to see how he is progressing.

We had a fantastic lunch at some restaurant on the outskirts of the city. They had this big parrot in a cage and they let us put it on our arms. It would do a little dance that was kind of fun. The picture here is of Jose Maravilla. He is the man in charge of the Chinandega office. He is a good man. Before he took charge the Cause for Hope office here, he ran a very successful auto lubricant and accessory shop. His wife didn't want to sell it and so they have kept it open and hired a couple of kids to help her keep it open. Unfortunatly it has been steadily going down hill. I think they had a good idea it was loosing money but they really didn't know how much. Paul and I spent a couple hours with her this afternoon and we were able to figure out how much were really losing. The losses are significant enough that it really doesn't make sense to keep it open and try to turn things around. It wasn't any fun to be the bearers of bad news, but our purpose here is to help people improve their incomes. If a business is costing someone a lot of money, we can essentially help them improve their income if we show them why it is a bad idea to keep going down that path. They didn't seem thrilled with the news as one can imagine, but they were also grateful that we could help them see the picture how it really is.