8May11

So, it’s been an eventful few days, and I forgot to post here.
Had some status updates on facebook detailing adventures, but I’m sorry if anyone missed what was going on.

Anyhow, I’ll try to piece things back together since the last post…

So, Thursday, the 5th, right?

Thursday morning, I found out around 8:30 am that I was flying to Port Au Prince with Dr. Ken and Diane from Hands and Feet. I was going up to PAP to do some shopping, and to come back to Jacmel with the Montero cause it’s needed in Jacmel.
It was a sweet ride in a little Cessna. The trip only took about 20 minutes, but the pilot, Franz Gabriel, also runs a flight school and spent the whole time explaining to me then instruments that I was looking at.
I’m seriously considering pilot’s training, cause it seems pretty dang useful down here. Even if I don’t keep up with the continual training to maintain a pilot’s license, it would be great to know how to fly so I can “co-pilot” in case there’s ever an emergency on one of these little plane flights.
Got most of the stuff I needed in PAP, shopping by myself. Made me feel pretty good about being here when I could do the shopping without the aid of a translator.
And that pretty much took care of Thursday. I was completely exhausted by the end of the day, so I figured I would sleep pretty decent. I was pretty sore from the concrete work on Wednesday and the driving Thursday, but didn’t think that would be a problem.

Friday morning I found out I was wrong. I felt terrible. My whole body ached, and I ended up sleeping most of the day. I felt worthless, but did pull myself out of bed later in the afternoon to at least get a little work done. I figured that God brought me here, so He would provide the power to get some more work done for His glory, cause laying in bed certainly wasn’t helping his cause at all.
Unfortunately, I still didn’t get a whole lot accomplished. I got most of a shelter for a battery bank built, but then I ran out of supplies, and then we hit dinner time.
But, after dinner, Merci Dieu, one of our kids, brought a thermometer in and handed to me to put away. Cameron had been checking kids’ temperatures cause we had about 10 kids sick. So, since it was in my hand, I checked my own temperature, and it was 101.5. Guess I had a fever. Actually made me feel better knowing that there was a biological reason I slept all day and it wasn’t just me being lazy.

Yesterday, I woke up feeling much better. So I was pretty excited. Spent most of the day at the hardware stores again, but on the way home I stopped at Madame Bonite’s house.
When I got there I found out that she is in New York til Thursday, but also that their system was not working. It turns out that it hasn’t been working since they upgraded their batteries. I know that because the batteries were not hooked up properly. So, I fixed the battery setup. Unfortunately, the AC battery charger died in the process. I have another one here in country that I will take down sometime, but it isn’t useful right now anyhow because EDH (the power company) cut power to their building anyhow.
So I left their building yesterday with the inverter working and the solar panels charging the batteries properly.

Today, I went back because Daniel (one of the guys living at Madam Bonite’s) called me. The system wasn’t working again. I think it was just cause the batteries had run dead, so I changed a setting on the inverter and it appeared to be working.
Then I worked on tightening the wiring on the battery banks and tying in the second set of 4 batteries. Unforunately, the inverter did not want to turn back on after I hooked up the second battery bank, even though it had plenty of power available from the batteries.
So, what I know right now is this:
-Madam Bonite’s needs more solar panels (probably about $800 for 1000 Watts of panels)
-and probably an inverter. To be fair, we had used her old one, and it has been in service for about 4 years, despite being mounted upside down. The problem of being mounted upside down is that the heat does not exhause properly, so that can shorten the life of a unit. I have a new inverter here for her, but it had to be fixed cause it was damaged by American Airlines.

Tomorrow, I fly up to PAP again, this time on a flight with MAF (Missions Aviation Fellowship). Then I’ll head up to Archaie area with Jeff Swope, Tammy Tims, and some others from Mercy and Sharing orphanage. That will be my biggest solar installation to date, and my job is simply to not screw things up. 🙂

Anyhow, I’m heading to bed…
goodnight. God Bless.