When 
I was a kid my dad bought me an aeronautical lab kit. It must have been very expensive, because back then those items were rare in Bolivia, my home country, and they had to be imported from far lands. But my dad liked to express his love by getting these exotic toys to play with me. Although I understood little of the manual, since it was not written in my native language, we spent hour after hour making physics experiments, building airplanes and assembling rockets that we tried in multiple testing bases.
After many years of experimentation and a lot of fun, my potential career as an Aerospace Engineer vanished when our most ambitious project failed miserably. The rocket was supposed to start slowly, gaining speed and altitude gradually. As part of the last stage, when the force of gravity had reduced the rocket’s speed to almost zero, a small detonation had to gently expel its tip, while an unwrapping parachute would finally open, sustaining the rest of the body in a gracious and elegant descent. Well, things do not always go the way we expect. The rocket only ascended up to 6 feet and then a not-so-tiny-explosion roared tearing apart the fragility of our creation as we witnessed with perplexed eyes the debris falling around us as in slow motion.
Time passed and I concentrated my efforts in Computer Science rather
than Engineering. Being realistic, the opportunities as an Aerospace Engineer in a third world country were practically nonexistent. I can’t imagine the Bolivian government sending into orbit the satellite EVO III (name of the current president). However, my wonder for outer space and manmade artifacts sent beyond the limits of the atmospheric envelope that surrounds our planet kept dormant.
Decades later, through an almost random sequence of events from a human perspective, the Lord sent me to the U.S. to receive theological training so that I may know Him better and admire more his glory, holiness and majesty. Following, He decided that I should go back to school, providing a free ride to get my Master’s degree in Computer Science. After much suffering and some aborted attempts to quit, God provided the strength to finish.
I continued on the Ph.D. track, but a divine intervention changed the course of our lives again. God gave us our first child as a gift. This led me to look for a full time job, right after I was granted my work permit for the first time. The Lord plans times and events in a breathtaking fashion. But before ending my academic endeavors, He had prepared one more surprise… He conceded to me the dream that I had had as a child, a fantasy that was forgotten and silenced by the passing of the years and the impossibility of its fulfillment. Once again, my God exercised his dominion over the kingdom of mortals and persuaded them to let me work at NASA!
I am enjoying every single moment of my time there as a summer intern, while my heart humbly overflows with gratitude for another unexpected gift of undeserved grace. In the meantime, I am still looking for a full time job to support my family. But we trust that God will provide one at the right time for He has proved himself infallibly faithful over and over again.
I was a kid my dad bought me an aeronautical lab kit. It must have been very expensive, because back then those items were rare in Bolivia, my home country, and they had to be imported from far lands. But my dad liked to express his love by getting these exotic toys to play with me. Although I understood little of the manual, since it was not written in my native language, we spent hour after hour making physics experiments, building airplanes and assembling rockets that we tried in multiple testing bases.After many years of experimentation and a lot of fun, my potential career as an Aerospace Engineer vanished when our most ambitious project failed miserably. The rocket was supposed to start slowly, gaining speed and altitude gradually. As part of the last stage, when the force of gravity had reduced the rocket’s speed to almost zero, a small detonation had to gently expel its tip, while an unwrapping parachute would finally open, sustaining the rest of the body in a gracious and elegant descent. Well, things do not always go the way we expect. The rocket only ascended up to 6 feet and then a not-so-tiny-explosion roared tearing apart the fragility of our creation as we witnessed with perplexed eyes the debris falling around us as in slow motion.Time passed and I concentrated my efforts in Computer Science rather
than Engineering. Being realistic, the opportunities as an Aerospace Engineer in a third world country were practically nonexistent. I can’t imagine the Bolivian government sending into orbit the satellite EVO III (name of the current president). However, my wonder for outer space and manmade artifacts sent beyond the limits of the atmospheric envelope that surrounds our planet kept dormant.Decades later, through an almost random sequence of events from a human perspective, the Lord sent me to the U.S. to receive theological training so that I may know Him better and admire more his glory, holiness and majesty. Following, He decided that I should go back to school, providing a free ride to get my Master’s degree in Computer Science. After much suffering and some aborted attempts to quit, God provided the strength to finish.
I continued on the Ph.D. track, but a divine intervention changed the course of our lives again. God gave us our first child as a gift. This led me to look for a full time job, right after I was granted my work permit for the first time. The Lord plans times and events in a breathtaking fashion. But before ending my academic endeavors, He had prepared one more surprise… He conceded to me the dream that I had had as a child, a fantasy that was forgotten and silenced by the passing of the years and the impossibility of its fulfillment. Once again, my God exercised his dominion over the kingdom of mortals and persuaded them to let me work at NASA!
I am enjoying every single moment of my time there as a summer intern, while my heart humbly overflows with gratitude for another unexpected gift of undeserved grace. In the meantime, I am still looking for a full time job to support my family. But we trust that God will provide one at the right time for He has proved himself infallibly faithful over and over again.
