Those of you who are expecting repayments in February might want to login to Kiva, as some of these credits have shown up already. (Kiva won't send out the email for a little while... I suspect they wait until everything has come in for the month.)
My strategy--up until our end of year frenzy--was to make a loan each time a payment came in, as Kiva will use any credits sitting on your account first. That way, every month I would be putting in a smaller and smaller amount until I had something that was self-sustaining.
I will have nearly $5 this month, so already, I'm 20% of the way there. Next month should be even better.
You know... we aren't that far away from beating the Google team....