Heading home

Gene and I are through security, customs and immigration and are in our gate waiting for our plane to arrive from La Paz. Our time here was good and we had a good meeting yesterday afternoon with Victor Palma and David Salazar from Eplabol Mission along with an engineer who has volunteered some time and experience to help Monte Blanco. We will finalize our report this week and give it to Eplabol as soon as possible. ITEC may or may not be involved in the installation of wiring to the compound, based on decisions by the mission headquarters. After our meeting last evening we went to a fine Bolivian restaurant. We got up early this morning as the pass-through immigration is a cumbersome process. Our flights today will take us to Miami, then on to Philadelphia and Harrisburg. We are anticipating a day without delays and being reunited with our wives before midnight. Thank you for your interest and prayers. This is the final post. Gary

Some frustration, some urgency

Yesterday started out well with Gene and I going around with Tim and David to look at some of the electrical panels we had not looked at before. At the same time it was thought necessary that the old poles in the way of the CRE incoming electrical service to the facility need to be removed before they can hook up their 28,000 volt lines. There were two poles directly under the CRE lines or just next to them that would have prevented them from hooking up the service, should they show up with the new transformer. Ronald, one of the maintenance men from Monte Blanco, climbed the first pole and disconnected the wires from it so that we could take it down. Gene and I assisted with this in pulling the rope when Ronald cut through the pole. That one went well enough, so we went back to our survey work. Then we received a call that the next pole Ronald was working on fell over with him on it. This stopped our work instantly and we went to see what we could do. In the meantime CRE did arrive to install their transformer and were on site when this incident happened. Ronald was not hurt badly, mostly bruised for which we were thankful. The pole was angled over and stressing the conductors onto the next pole greatly. So CRE agreed to assist in getting this pole out of the way, since it had to be removed before they could energize anyway. In the process the next pole then did fall over and fortunately the wires attached to it held it off the ground enough to prevent pulling any more poles over. The problem is that these poles are eucalyptus poles and they are rotted off just below the ground. We fear this is true for any more eucalyptus poles on hte entire complex and there are many. CRE agreed to re-plant both of these poles and to wait until another day to install their transformer and energize. We would have a number of wires to re-hook back up after the poles were set in place and secure so we went back to our survey work until later in the day. By now we had lost well over 4 hours of our last day at Monte Blanco, and we would lose more later in helping reconnect the critical lines, which we did. So, you can see how rapidly plans can change.

Yesterday afternoon a group of campers arrived at Monte Blanco. The group consists of about 70 young people ages 12-18 along with their counselors. Last evening we attended the first chapel service for the campers and we were very impressed with the quality of the audiovisual productions snd the skits. It got late and we left before the speaker for the evening spoke. In speaking with David Salazar, the Camp Director, we were very impressed to find that this camp in Bolivia has seen over 38,000 attendees since opening in 2005, and approximately 11,000 of these campers made commitments for Christ. This is a very impressive number and this camp is ranked in the top three Christian camps in all of South America. It is a good ministry! It is now Friday and we left very early this morning to drive to Santa Cruz to meet this afternoon with the mission leadership and an engineer to go over the details of what we have done these last few days and to determine if ITEC will be involved in the upgrading of the electrical system at Monte Blanco that is so urgently needed.

Electrical Survey

Today we put on a few miles walking around the campus here to try and determine what might b a good plan of attack to clean up the electrical system. We discovered that the refrigeration compressors at the kitchen are not going to work on the 380-volt 3-phase power, so we are trying to come up with a plan to make them work, possibly using an inverter to make up the 220-volt 60-Hz power. We spent considerable time thinking how to do away with some of the eucalyptus poles entirely, since they are of limited life due to termite damage below ground. We visited the farm and discovered that we will need to run 3-phase power the entire distance to the farm to power one of the irrigation pumps there at the river. Now we are moving to the stage of writing down all of our notes onto drawings. We will be meeting with an engineer on Friday to present the main points of our proposal. So, we have tomorrow, Thursday, to finalize our plans here, as we will have to leave very early on Friday to make the 4-1.2 hour trip back to Santa Cruz in time for that meeting. We will be leaving here Saturday morning to head home. Time flies!

"Hymie" (Jimmy Cruz) is a pretty talented guy on staff here at Monte Blanco. The staff is very friendly and they have also fed us very well.

The name Monte Blanco means "White mountains". Any idea where it got its name?

Monte Blanco Day 1

After the delay in Jamaica and a night spent in Miami, and the flight through Panama to Santa Cruz, Bolivia, I spent a few hours of sleep at the guest house. Then Tim R., Gene F., and Omar (Bolivian driver), and I drove the 4 hours to the Monte Blanco Children and Youth Camp at Monte Blanco. The camp is in the Andes Mountains at an elevation of above 5000'. It is considerably cooler here than it was in Jamaica. About the highest elevation we traveled through to get here was above 7500'. The camp has about 34 buildings that are of mixed voltages and our mission is to assist in designing infrastructure to connect the entire facility to the national grid at 220-volts 50Hz. Gen, Tim, Vico, and I walked around the facility yesterday to assess the situation and are formulating a plan. Today we will be looking at the remaining buildings and the farm and will begin to put our findings into an AutoCAD format for the purpose of estimating the materials needed for the job. The national power company CRE has already run power into the campus and will be installing new transformers on their pole to power the campus. Vico said they are coming today, but "today" is a relative term. ITEC will possibly be sending a team of electricians and linemen here later thios year or early 2013 to do the work needed.

Tim and Pico while we were on our tour.

Back on the road again

Yesterday I had not even heard of COPA Airlines, but today I am going to flyon it. This is a big airline for Central and South America. I am sitting in the Aeropuerto Internacional Tocumen in Panama City, Panama, right now and can see almost nothing but Copa airplanes and lots of them. I can also see the skyline of Panama City's skyscrapers off in the distance. There are mountains in the distance and it is raining right now. I just had a 6" sub from Subway and the indigestion is kicking up a bit... Anyway, I should be arriving in Santa Cruz toninght after midnight and have been assured I will be picked up after clearing Customs and Immigration. Tomorrow this blog should have some new information from new locations.

Stuck in the middle

Well, the Lord had other plans for today. The Montego Bay Airport was closed for some reason for several hours and flights got backed up and diverted. One of these was my flight to Miami. Someone said there was a pothole on the runway that needed to be fixed, another said there was an oil slick on the runway. I may never know. So my 4 hour layover in Miami was erased by a 3-1/2 hour delay. I was able to contact Tim R. by email and he texted me back to give a phone number and to say that if I missed the flight his brother Nathan would be in Santa Cruz, Bolivia on Tuesday and he could take me to Monte Blonco. Have you ever felt helpless? I got off the plane and the outgoing plsne was at the next gate. I waved at Gene F. and Tim R., but had to go from there to Immigration and Customs and once I got my bag through Customs the plane had taken off already. I was directed to the Rebooking counter only to find that tomorrow night's flight is already oversold by seven, so it is not an option. But Derrell helped me out at the counter and rebooked me into Panama City on American Airlines and then on to Santa Cruz on Copa Airlines. It is now 1:45AM and I am in the Doubletree Hotel. As it turns out my flight will leave 10 hours earlier than if I were on tomorrow's same flight. If everything goes well I will have a 3 hour layover in Panama and then will arrive at Santa Cruz at 12:47AM on Tuesday. In the morning I will contact the guys in Bolivia and see if Nathan can come to the airport in the middle of the night instead of after 7AM as he will for the guys tomorrow (today actually). Stay tuned. I seem to attract airline delays...

Leaving Jamaica

It is now Sunday morning and Michael and I will soon be heading for the airport and our return to the US. Mike flies home and I go to Miami whereI will meet uop with Gene and Tim for the flight overnight to Bolivia. This is truly a beautiful place and God has blessed YWAM with a nice facility. If they are succesful in raising funds to install the solar project they will effectively be able to eliminate an electric bill that averages between $5000 and $6000 per month. God owns the cattle on a thousand hills and He can certainly motivate some to give toward this project for the furtherance of the Gospel message in this nation of Jamaica. Yesterday I finally took time to visit the pool to cool off. It was wonderful. We finalized our thoughts and will head home with a mission to come up with pricing and a good proposal with many options for YWAM to consider. I meade a good attempt to draw up a summary of everything we did here and what we expect to propose to them, as for the next week I will need to focus on a different project. My plane lands in Miami around 7 PM this evening. Jamaica is on the Eastern time zone but they do not observe daylight savings time, so time here is essentially Central time.