09/25/08

I spent most of my day working on the main engine today. We were anticipating getting a few needed parts today since a couple, who are long term missionaries here, were coming in around noon. The couple, Thom and Cara, including their newborn son, Chase, did not arrive when all of the other missionaries came in earlier this year because of their newborn. During these first few weeks we had a short term retired couple here, Grant and Cathy, who helped fill in until they could arrive. It was relieving to know Thom and Cara were arriving with the much needed parts for the engine especially since I didn’t think they were going to be here until late Thursday and we wouldn’t be able to finish until Friday afternoon.

Visitors and missionaries who fly in are a critical part of Sonlight’s operation as we rely on them heavily to bring in various things in times of need. In this case we needed a few parts flown in which cannot be brought in any other way since there is no feasible or reliable means of shipping (i.e. USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc.). If we needed something desperately and could not get it through a group, the only other choice would be to fly to the US, get what was needed, then fly back which would be incredibly expensive. We found out that American Airlines does not do “counter to counter” shipping anymore; at least not to Haiti. We were planning on getting the parts we needed so before Thom and Cara arrived, we spent the morning and afternoon doing as much prep work as we could. Some of the work took much longer than we anticipated so once we finished putting the head of the engine together we called it a day. We could have finished everything by about 9PM, but the decision was made to finish everything up in the morning because we didn’t want to rush anything and make a major mistake.