Pipes, Prayers, Progress

The last two days have seen much faster progress; thank you so much for your prayers and encouragements! Please keep them coming! Each day, we have between 3 and 6 employees plus the five of us, and things are getting done at a better rate. When I say "the five of us" I am referring to four students and I. Frequent readers will already know Ryan and Elizabeth who have been here 4 and 2 weeks, respectively. But now we also have Jonathan and A.J., who arrived on Sunday to relieve Lisa and David who returned to Texas.

The power house is now fully constructed and we began "moving in" today. We built shelves for the eight, honkin', deep-cycle batteries that weigh about a zillion pounds each, even in Spanish. We bought a diesel generator as a backup to help maintain our batteries if/when the hydrogenerator is offline, and we store that in the power house too. Next we hung our plasma screen TV on the wall, and put in a hot tub and a recliner. Here is a picture of me looking overly serious with our new little power house, or casita de poder.

Down at the river, we finally finished drilling all the holes in the granite boulders. Granite, for those of you who may be unaware, is hard. Hard as a rock. It makes concrete look like a cotton ball. I think it must have taken us 10 hours to drill 12 holes. Once the holes were drilled and then we used a strong, two-part epoxy to glue rebar into the boulders. Then we formed a rebar cage and poured concrete around it. This is how we are making the concrete pillars to support our canal. We expect the water to weigh about 1000 pounds when it is full, so they need to be pretty strong.

The first picture above shows Chico (Fransico), Jesiel (who is 13), and Walter (!) as they tie the rebar for the first column. The second picture is a picture of Ryan - who I like to call Rhino now - forming more rebar for our second and third columns. Later we're going to build a full-size Stonehenge replica or maybe a runway.

This is Ryan and Jonathan bringing a piece of PVC pipe to use as a form for the columns. We won't use this tiny size pipe for moving water; for that we will use 12 inch diameter PVC which is so big it makes me happy just to gaze upon. But I'm sure you are the same way.

"Whoever gazes upon large pipes with lust in his heart has already committed civil engineering."

Lacking a Creative Title

Yesterday I found myself frustrated and worried that we will not complete the project before we leave in two weeks. I expressed this to The M, and then the team. I decided to spend some extened time in prayer about it, and used Psalm 44 as a guide to my prayers.


Would you please join me in praying for more rapid progress for our project? Would you please ask for God's blessing on our work, for his protection against the forces that would oppose us, for and for his wisdom in our decision making? We intend to do an intense, six-day surge this Monday through Saturday.

A.J. and Jonathan arrived yesterday and are happy to be here. The M cooked us a huge breakfast of pancakes, cantelope, and refried beans, and after eating it we are heading out the door at 6:40 a.m..

Crazy Airport Experiences by David F. and Lisa

A Plane Never Felt so Good (Part 1 and 2)

What a great adventure we had on our mission trip to La Ceiba, Honduras; however, our experiences in Honduras were only part of the excitement. We certainly had some memorable travel moments.

Part 1
Everything started smoothly in Houston at George Bush Intercontinental Airport. We made it through baggage check with Continental Airlines and security with great ease. Our plane left the terminal and we were on our way. After a relatively short 2+ hour flight to San Pedro Sula, Honduras, we exited the plane, made it through customs, and claimed our bags. After checking our bags with Taca Airlines and getting our boarding passes to La Ceiba, we grabbed a bite to eat, paid the tax, headed through security upstairs and began what was supposed to be a 3-4 hour layover. There we met a medical team whose final destination was also La Ceiba. Their flight had been cancelled the day before and had to stay in a hotel in San Pedro Sula; in total they were stuck for 22 hours. We could just hope that this would not happen to us. The longer it was without seeing the plane, the wearier we became.

Eventually they called our names over the loud speaker and told us that we would not be able to be on our original plane. The group from the day before essentially took our spots, but Taca told us we could get on a later flight. As time passed on we got to know the San Pedro Sula Airport all too well. A couple of planes would take off from time to time and there we sat. They eventually brought us something to eat for supper and told us we would be on the 8:15 flight (Evidently Taca time is a little off). After a total of a 10 hour delay, we eventually got in the “school bus with wings welded on” and departed at about 9:30. The quote at the time was “a plane never felt so good.” What a day of travel we had already had and boy, was it good to see Professor Thomas and Ryan in La Ceiba, even if we didn’t have our luggage.

A funny story to go along with this start of our trip involved the group that took our spots on our original plane. They had for some reason kept the key and TV remote from their bad hotel experience and gave it to us when they left “in case we ended up needing it.” Not wanting the stuff, we left it in the waiting area when we boarded the La Ceiba bound plane. But later, after boarding the plane and taking our seats, I notice that someone is throwing something through the cockpit window. Then the single flight attendant walked up and down the small plane with, sure enough, the key and remote, asking if anyone had left it. Obviously, no one else claimed it and we definitely were not going to say anything as we looked at each other. Since no one claimed it, they simply opened the emergency exit and threw them out on the runway; I hope no one needed those. Anyways, just a little humor.

Part 2
After a very interesting voyage to La Ceiba to begin our trip, we prayed for two weeks for our return journey to be a little smoother; let’s just say sometimes God answers prayers in interesting ways. Hoping everything would go smoothly Professor Thomas dropped us off at the airport early. We made it through check in and security again with ease. Getting there early we waited next to the gate before hearing the dreaded call of our names. “Due to over booking, we are not going to let you on this plane; we will put you on an Atlantic Airlines flight to San Pedro Sula and you will still make your connection.” After a little bit of frustrating conversation and concern, we waited for the next plane. Sweating a little bit now, we finally got on a plane leaving La Ceiba at 10:45, and hour and a half after the time on our ticket. Landing in San Pedro Sula a little after 11:15, we finally made it into the airport and began to express our urgency and concern for making our 11:55 Continental flight to Houston. Just wanting to make our plane we decided to forget about our luggage (which was not on the same plane we were) and began to run. We finally made it to the Continental desk where they told us that our flight was closed and that there was no way we could get on it. Persistent and determined we asked who we needed to talk to. Eventually we talked to a Taca representative since it was their fault we were late. By only God’s grace our luggage had come on our original flight and the Taca person was able to talk the Continental representative into letting us try to get on the plane. In record time we cut through the line and got our boarding passes and checked our bags. We then ran to the other end of the airport where we were able to talk to a guard who got us in front of most of the line to pay the traveler’s tax and then we continued to desperately talk our way to the front. We quickly paid the tax, got out receipt stamped and flew up the stairs to security. We tore our computers out of our bags and ripped off our shoes. We grabbed our belongings and ran to gate 3. We had made it to the line boarding for the plane to Houston. Backpack, laptop, passport, shoes, belt, boarding pass and change from the tax in hand we waited in the tarmac. Eventually we boarded sweating up a storm and took our seats. Once again, “a plane never felt so good.” For all practicality, we should still be in San Pedro Sula, but with God’s help we were lifting off the ground headed home!

What an exciting adventure to end a terrific trip.

David's Birthday

My oldest son's name is not really D, it's David. I just call him D on the blog on account of stalkers, but I have decided to call him by his real name now.

Last Tuesday he turned 12! Although we had a party for him back in June (before we left for Honduras) we wanted to make his calendar birthday a nice one. So we let him ride out to Pueblo Nuevo in the SUV with us, and let him sit in the front seat to take in the view and the crazy road as we crossed rivers and climbed hills. Here is a photo taken along that road at a scenic point. Fortunately, it had been dry for a few days so we didn't have any problems with the mud.

While we were in the village reinstalling the hydrogenerator, David, Jason, and Elizabeth went to talk to the family of the sick little girl, Noemi, who we are trying to help. She was staying with someone else while her parents worked in the coffee fields on the other side of a nearby mountain. Someone called someone else and passed along the message that we were looking for her parents, and they ran back to the village, taking only an hour to do what normally takes two, and would take me three.

We brought her family back to La Ceiba to see doctors, but that meant David, Ryan, and the other David had to hike back via the suspension bridge, get a ride from a local farmer, and then catch the bus at the main road. So David had quite the adventure for his 12th birthday! When he got home, The M had decorated the house and our friend Bridgette had baked him a cake! For dinner, I cooked David's favorite chicken dish, and tried to cook plantains to go with it. Some of the plantains were burned, some were mushy, but some were OK. I need more practice.

I am so pround of the man David is becoming! He has such great character, a generous and sensitive heart, and is a blessing to many people, including myself. I am happy he is with me for this time in Honduras, and I'm glad he was able to have an adventure on his birthday.

Slow Progress Punctuated With a Snake

We are doing some major construction now. We plan to mount pillars into boulders to support our canal, because when it floods the water is 3-4 feet deeper than it is now, and we don't want it to wash away. To mount the pillars, we are drilling 1/2 inch diameter holes, 4 inches deep, into granite boulders. As you might imagine, this is hard.

We have a generator to power our hammer drill, and we pour river water in the hole as we drill to cool the bit and flush the debris. We can drill about 1/4 inch in 3 minutes, and then we need to let the drill and the driller rest for few. Even so, I think we burned up our hammer drill yesterday. We bought another one last night, the biggest we could find.

Our 12 inch pipes were delivered. They are big and cool (and white) like me.

This is the beginnings of the powerhouse. It is a little cinder block house near the river that will house our batteries, inverters, and so on.

This is a snake that showed up at our work site. The Boy Scout mantra to identify coral snakes ran through my head: red and yellow, kill a fellow, red and black, friend of Jack. This one looked to me like the red and yellow stripes were adjacent, and my name isn't Jack anyway, so I killed it with a machete. Can you see it in the middle of these roots?

Never a dull moment.