Field Trip to the Zoo

Jono's class had a field trip to the zoo last week. Jonos and gibbons and meerkats, oh my.

Proverbs 30:28

"A lizard can be caught with the hand, yet it is found in kings' palaces."


We have had a few lizards in the house lately. The cats have been catching them and bringing them into the house as trophies or gifts or some other feline instinct with the unintentional result of freaking me out.

New Gig for Engineers with a Mission

Engineers with a Mission is expanding to become a 501(c)3 organization. That means we are applying for a status with the IRS to be able to receive tax-deductible donations to support our work. What work is that? To provide engineering support to community development projects and Christian missions efforts around the world. And we may have a new gig...

The president of our organization, Leah Richter, a former student of mine, has connections with a missions organization called To Every Tribe. They do a lot of work in a very special place: Papua New Guinea. They need some help with a solar panel design and deployment at a remote building on an island off the coast of PNG called Chambri Island. You can't even find it on Google Earth, so it must be tiny. The approximate location is shown by the question mark.

As if PNG is not remote enough, this location is on the tiny Chambri Island out there somewhere... The large land mass at the bottom left is the north-east corner of Australia.

This is the building under construction. Looks like it's being built in the traditional PNG style on stilts and with open air ventilation on each end. I know this 'cause I watch the Discovery Channel.

This time I can't go. Insert sad face emoticon here. Since I can't go, I am recruiting other engineers and/or upper level students who might want to go spend 2-4 weeks there this summer. Want to go?

Ryan arrives in Honduras

Ryan is going to be in Honduras for two weeks prior to my arrival with students. I spoke with him today and things are going well. He was able to clear up a question we had about the new minimum wage laws there. Apparently, Honduran law requires employers (which we endeavour to be) to pay their employees for 14 months per year. The expectation is that during July and December folks get a double payment. Sound strange? I agree. I wish I could explain more to you, but I'm in the dark too.

Perhaps some of you reader(s) that are familiar with Honduran law (uh... Erin?) could enlighten us about the reasons for this oddity?

Ryan also got to visit some companies that sell electric motors and generators (lucky!) and get pricing. It's about what we thought: a 15 hp induction motor is about $1000, and a 5 kW diesel generator is about $900 - and they're having a sale! Woo hoo!

Base-ball been bery bery good to me

Jono's team, the Electric Eels, has played a few more games in the last week or so. They won two and lost one, which is pretty good. The boys are having a lot of fun, which is great.

Here Jono runs to a base despite the all-out efforts of the crackpot defense.

They are playing "Coach Pitch" baseball, which means the head coach for each team does the pitching. It's one step up from Tee-ball. They get 12 strikes before they are out. Most hits are singles, but sometimes there are doubles. Jono has hit one double and struck out once. Mostly he gets singles like everybody else. In the picture above he is playing third base. The good looking guy in the classy cut-offs is yours truly, being the third base coach, catcher of foul balls, and Jono's cheerleader. Notice Jono has his cap on backwards on account of it being sunny behind us.

Teammates in the dugout, Jono awaits his first pitch. I love the fields where we play. They are thick and overgrown behind the fences, and they conjure up mystery and imagination.

Ready stance. A man of action.