24Jan11

24Jan11

Blessing of the Day (Yesterday’s Edition):
So, as I was trying to figure out some of the wiring in our shipping container, with the intent of getting our water pump working (again), I realized that we had a bare, live wire hanging just below our panel box. This wire was close to (a) the wall of the container, where it could easily short, (b) the entrance to the container, where many people were coming in and out and could’ve been shocked, and (c) the 5 gallon container of gasoline. Glad we realized it was there before it hurt anyone. 🙂

Blessing of the Day (Today’s Edition):
Dr. Jay managed to impale himself on a fence post today (I know, not a blessing), but in the process missed anything important. The metal pierced well into his forearm, between the bones, but missed all tendons, nerves, or arteries that would have made this a very bad thing.
As it was, he was very interesting to treat, as the doctor is usually not the one you wanted injured. lol.
Also, in the blessing mode, it’s healing up well to this point. He put plenty of antibiotic on it, and now he doesn’t even need it wrapped up, although we will for working tomorrow anyhow.

Today’s Rundown:
Today was Tuesday. Every week MIA is down here, there is a Tuesday, but ours came early this week. Tuesday is the day things just don’t go smoothly.
Wayne and Smiley started the day with a 2.5 hour trip to the bank, just to make a simple withdrawl. Bruce, Jim, and I started with fixing a broken down BUV (broken battery wire to the ignition). Then Jim and Jude spent the next 2 hours with Wayne shopping for hardware. Meanwhile, Bruce and I finally got to the jobsite at 10:30. Just in time to pick up Jay in the BUV to take him to the clinic to tell us how to treat his new impalement wound.
Since the BUV had broken down, we didn’t have any ice at the job site (Smith was going to get ice while he was out, until it broke). So, the best we could do to ice the wound was cold water, direct from the well, but the well was not pumping cause of power issues. So, I handed a bag to one of our workers (Green Cap) and simply told him “Glace” (Ice), and he ran down the road to get ice, while I got the inverter turned on and got some cold water from the well in another bag.
Greencap returned with ice (we don’t know where he found it), just as Jay was looking for something colder and the wound had finished getting dressed. Jan played nurse for this one.
Seemed like things might slow down after that, but I guess not.
Bruce and I didn’t know what to do yet. We got the water pump wired directly off of solar power, then decided to check on the orphanage to see what needed done up there.
When we walked up the road, we saw Luger (Smiley’s oldest brother) in the BUV we had just fixed, and it was broken down again, so we went to help. Then we found out that the belt had slipped off the pulley, BECAUSE the engine mounting bolts had fallen out. We managed to piece it together somewhat, and with only 1 of the 4 mounting bolts in place, gimped it the 1/2 mile back to the school and container to get more parts.
Thus ends the most exciting parts of the day.
And it was still before noon. Then around 12:30 James, Wayne, Smiley, and Jude got there, and work started getting done.
Esmy (our plumber) and Bruce fixed a leak in the water main.
James fixed the problem with the engine mounts on the BUV.
Our Diesel Mechanic changed the gaskets and oil on the Lister Diesel Generator.
Jim #2 and Dan got significant work done on their shelving.
Wayne and Esmy finished plumbing our community water mains. This was a 3 mile pipe project that is now connected with 2 pumps (orphanage = solar powered, school = switchable generator, inverter, and solar powered) on 2 different wells, with a 30 foot water tower as a reservoir.
I gathered all our materials to build the scoffolding to the top of the water tower (again, like in the June trip), but am much happier to have my rope and harness this time.

Moral of the story, we persevered through the morning, and had a great rest of the day. Capped off with a nice swim in the ocean on the way home.

Awesome thing of the day:
Thanks to Scott, the workers got their typical muffin for lunch, plus cheese, an egg, bread, and a cold soda. They were thrilled.

Highlight of my day:
Since we were going to swim in the ocean, in the work clothes we had on, and I was driving a BUV myself, I got to appease my inner child. I drove the BUV straight through as many puddles as possible, and generally had the best time imaginable as I was driving in the road from Savenette.

Prayer Requests:
-Dr. Jay’s arm: Healing without infection would be awesome.
-Hatian Staff at MIA: Just some growing pains/personnel issues to deal with