Pre-wedding pictures

I received pictures from my mother and my sister, both of whom attended the wedding. Here are a few pictures of the final minutes before the ceremony:

Everything was in place.

Family members were ready and waiting.

Some last minute repairs to the cake were required.

There was last minute primping, of course.

Cooking for the reception dinner was progressing nicely.

Guests began to arrive.

Gradually we all entered the room where the ceremony would take place.

Of course, the guest book was signed.

Pictures from the ceremony will be coming along soon!

Now I am a Mother-in-Law

Yesterday was Iris and Russell's wedding. It was wonderful! I only have a few pictures on my camera, but here's a glimpse of the day. Hopefully I'll be able to get a few more pictures from friends!

Here they are getting Iris' train settled as the ceremony begins. There were more attendants than show in the picture, plus all the children (flower girls, ring bearers, and the ones carrying the lasso, fruit basket, and Bible).

This was the main area for the reception, where the food was served, the cake was displayed, and the bride and groom had their table.

Immediately after the ceremony, friends reorganized this room (where the wedding ceremony was held) for additional seating at the reception dinner. We estimate there were about 300 guests!

What life looks like, since the lightning strikes

Now that we've had two inverters fried by ground surges of electricity (related to lightning strikes about 600' from our house), we're limping along on a minimal amount of available power. We now have only a tiny inverter working, and it can't process very much battery power into usable household electricity. Here's what we've done, to keep things running.

We removed several of the solar panels from the roof, so that less power would be flowing into the system - we hope that not sending this excess power to our batteries will help them survive until December, when the new batteries are due to arrive.

The tiny inverter cannot run the refrigerator at all. We have chosen to continue to use the fridge, rather than using a cooler. We regularly put bags of ice in the fridge and freezer, and then we run power to the fridge twice each day, using our gas generator. While we cool down the fridge we also run any other appliances which use large amounts of energy, like the washing machine, the grain mill, and the shop vac. Of course, this system doesn't keep the food in the fridge as cold as when the fridge is plugged in full time, so we've made a few changes. We cook our hot meal of the day at lunch time, and we try not to make enough to have any leftovers. Leftover foods go bad really quickly in our current situation. We've used up all the food that had been stored in the freezer compartment before the lightning strikes, and now we purchase small amounts more often, using the freezer as if it were a very cold refrigerator, storing all meats, cheeses and dairy products up there. The freezer doesn't get cold enough to freeze anything, so we don't have ice, and we don't store anything long-term in the freezer.

We actually have the computer on most of the time now, as the inverter is willing to run either the computer or the TV/VCR, and we need to keep one or the other running to use up power out of the batteries during the daytime, so the batteries aren't charging up too much.

In the evening, when we're running the generator for the fridge, the sun is down, and so no power is coming into the batteries from the solar panels. During this run of the generator we also charge up the batteries, so we have enough power to run lights, and computer or TV/VCR until bedtime.

This has all been quite easy to do, and wouldn't be much of a problem except that we'd rather not have to run to town so often for ice and perishable foods, and it's expensive to run the generator so much.

In just a few days, our wedding guests will start to arrive, and they'll be bringing us a new inverter. Then, we'll be back to limping along with a sufficient inverter but not enough batteries.

Who knows what will be next?

Stone Walkway, part two

This makes me feel really happy. Thanks, family!

Today's Family Project: Stone Walkway

We've been working to create a tiny yard in front of our house/bodega. This is both for looks, and to keep down on the dirt that comes into the building. Most of the top of our property is dirt and rocks, because we had to use heavy equipment to push the ground around, to create a flat area for construction. Today, all of those rocks are coming in handy, as we put together a stone walkway.

Earlier this year, we hauled in topsoil and spread it in front of our two buildings. These areas were fenced off with some temporary wire fencing, and grass seed was spread. We were fortunate in our timing - we had a spell of dry weather, and we were able to control the watering by using a sprinkler. If we'd had natural rain, it would have washed away the seeds, as it rarely rains here that it doesn't pour. Even after the seeds had sprouted, we were in a continual fight to keep the soil and young grass from washing away during rainstorms. But eventually, we won this battle!

Here's a picture of the front of the bodega, when it still had the fencing around the grass on one side. You can also see that we had a very functional, but not very attractive, cinderblock walkway up to the front door.



With the wedding coming up, and guests visiting, I was hoping (nagging?) for the installation of a better looking front walkway.

Today is the day! Here are some shots of the current action at my house:







Stay tuned for more photos as the work progresses!

Wedding Invitations!

Here are the wedding invitations. These were completely homemade, except for the printing, which was done by a friend of Russell and Iris.




The invitations were also delivered by hand to all the local guests.

Lightning Strikes - What I've Learned

Right from the start, I want to make sure to explain that this post is about what Trish has learned. Science was never my subject, so much of what I've learned about lightning strikes is pretty elementary. I don't want you to think this is what Allen has learned. Allen is learning, too, but he started off knowing much more than I did!

First of all, I learned about lightning rods. Our system is grounded, but it didn't help us in either of our recent lightning strikes. Here's why:

A lightning rod draws lightning to itself, to keep the lightning from hitting something else that would be damaged by the strike. There is a limit, though, to the usefulness of the rod. It will, apparently, only draw lightning which was going to hit very close to the rod in the first place. So, if the lightning was headed for your roof, and you have a rod on your roof, the lightning will hit the rod and your roof should be spared damage. If the lightning was headed for a tree in your yard, the rod may not pull the lightning away from the tree, because the tree and the rod weren't close enough together.

When lightning hits a correctly installed lightning rod, the electricity hopefully travels down the rod to a metal cable, which runs from the rod to the ground. Then the electricity is disbursed through the ground, normally without causing harm to anything.

We haven't had a hit to our buildings, or even all that close to our buildings, so clearly a lightning rod isn't the solution to our current problem.

Most of that I already knew, to some extent, but here's what I'm learning that's new to me. After lightning hit a tree some 600' away from our buildings (two different times!), the electricity went down the tree to the ground, and then traveled through the ground to our buried electrical cables (which run between our two buildings and are encased in a "protective" plastic conduit). The electrical surge traveled along the cables and then into our equipment - traveling up to our equipment along the grounding lines which we had installed to take electrical surges away from the equipment in the event that we should experience a direct strike on the house!

Do you get this? The steps we took to protect our equipment actually facilitated the movement of these electrical surges into our equipment! Ouch!

Apparently if we were "on the grid" we might not have such a problem with this. When lightning hits the interconnected grid of electric lines servicing multiple buildings, the surge can spread out and cause less concentrated damage over a wider area. In our case, since we are the whole "grid" we are likely to take the entire force of the electrical surge, and therefore we can expect to experience a large amount of damage.

So, there's our problem. And we're not the only ones with this problem. Allen has been doing quite a bit of research on this (as we upgrade to better and more expensive equipment in the near future, we need to do all we can to protect our investment) and he has discovered that there is no generally accepted solution for the problem of ground surges damaging off-grid solar energy systems. Some people, in areas where they experience frequent lightning strikes and where the problem of electricity surging along the ground is common, take the risk of having no lightning rod or grounding of any sort on their electrical equipment. Their rational is that the probability of damage from a ground surge is higher than the probability of a direct strike to their equipment.

We're not yet sure what we'll be doing about this. But now you know about as much as I do about the situation.

So, about yesterday . . .

Those who guessed that the tree in the photo was struck by lightning were, of course, correct. Here's what happened:

If you recall, about a month ago lightning struck a tree on our property, and the electrical surge traveled to our house and destroyed the inverter connected to our solar energy system. After that happened, Russell went to the city, and bought a replacement inverter, but the new inverter was smaller than the one that blew up. Russell had a friend who loaned us another (even smaller) inverter, and with the two we could handle running the fridge, the computer, and some lights, and watch a bit of TV in the evenings.

Yesterday afternoon we had another storm, and another nearby lightning strike. This time, as you can see in the photo, the strike blew up an entire tree! (The tall tree you can see behind the exploded tree in the photo is the one which got hit a month ago.) At the moment of the strike, the new inverter blew, with sparks and smoke and great excitement. Allen wasn't home when it happened, so Gus and I had to handle things, quickly disconnecting the destroyed inverter from the batteries. We're always learning new things around here!

Because we had been running two inverters, and only one was damaged, we can still run either the computer or the TV, and we can run lights. But the remaining inverter is too small to power the refrigerator, so we're using up the contents of the fridge and freezer as quickly as we can - tonight for dinner we had hotdogs, leftover hamburgers, leftover mac and cheese, leftover chili, steamed broccoli, and fried bologna. Currently we run the generator a couple of hours each day, so that we can use the washing machine. Now we are also running the refrigerator during that time. The food in the freezer is still mostly frozen, but soon we'll have to empty the entire fridge and move anything that's still good into a cooler.

In two weeks our wedding guests will arrive, and my parents will have a new inverter in their luggage. So, it's just a short period of time that we expect to do without the refrigerator. Of course, having all of this excitement right before the wedding is just - well, just probably more excitement than we needed right now, but we'll make it! ;-D


Oh, and by the way - Allen believes he has figured out why our equipment is so very vulnerable to lightning strikes (even strikes that aren't directly on the buildings, or all that close to the buildings) and he's working on a plan to more fully protect the new equipment. Please pray with us that we'll be able to keep the equipment safe in the future!

Do you want to hear about my day?

I don't have time to write it all up just now. You'll have to wait until tomorrow, assuming I have internet and can type up the story. Meanwhile, here's a photo to arouse your interest.



The good news is that the car is NOT under the tree.

Can I Be Blunt?

I've wondered whether this request was appropriate, but I've decided to go ahead with it. If you think I'm being too forward, well, please forgive me, okay?

You know that Russell and Iris are getting married next month, and you know that we are shipping down a container in late November or early December. You also probably know that most missionaries, when they move to the mission field and set up housekeeping, have a separate budget for these large, all-at-once expenses. Russell and Iris don't have a set-up budget, or any extra funds, as they are putting together their new home.

It occurs to me that, if our friends knew they could help Russell and Iris get set up in their new home, they would probably like to do something to help. So I thought, at the risk of being perceived as pushy, I'd go ahead and mention this.

Basically, at this point in time, Russell and Iris have a bed (made by Iris' father), some wire shelving, a small dining room table, and one chair. I guess you could say they need some stuff. ;-D

In case you are interested in helping with this, I've updated the "Requested Donations" page linked at the top of the blog, with items which would be a blessing to Russell and Iris. If you have something you'd like to donate for them, which isn't on the list, feel free to email us and ask about it.

Oh, and if you'd like to donate to them financially, you can use the "To Donate" button at the top of this page, and follow the links and instructions there, but substitute the words "Russell Sowers" for the words "Allen Sowers." That'll get it to them!

Thanks so much, friends!

New Things in 2010

The year isn't even over yet, and already I'm looking back, and thinking of all the new things which 2010 contained for my family and myself. Here's a quick compilation:

We moved onto our property. This actually happened at the very end of 2009, but I'm a sloppy recordkeeper, so I'm going to count it.

We set up our solar power system, and began using it. Then our batteries started dying, and we've used it less and less and less. We're hoping what we've got will hang on until new equipment is purchased later this year.

We now heat our water (mostly) with solar, too. (We have a gas hot water heater for cloudy days.)

We started vermiposting! That's where you use worms to create compost for you. We have two buckets full of worms outside our kitchen, enjoying our food scraps.

I started dying my hair. I look my age now. ;-D

The girls and I learned how to can food. So far, we've only canned green beans, but those came out great. After the excitement of the wedding next month, we hope to have time to do much more of this.

I made homemade English Muffins! They were really good!

We started running cattle on our property. We've actually owned our bull for a few years, but he was a gift. Now, we've purchased a heifer, and are looking about for others to purchase, so that we can raise our own beef.

I started driving a manual transmission vehicle. I know it's pathetic that I haven't already learned this, but I never needed it in the US, and our first 5 years in Honduras we didn't use a vehicle at all (as we lived on an island which didn't have roads - we traveled in boats). After four years in the city of Gracias, and now most of a year living outside of the city, it's just becoming necessary for me to drive here, and our vehicle is manual. So, I'm doing it. Gradually.

In the next few weeks, I'll become a mother-in-law for the first time.

Oh, and the icing on the cake: this year, for the first time in our lives, Allen and I are being audited by the IRS. Sigh. I could have done without this one.

Here it comes!

I love watching the storms come in over the mountains.

David in a Hammock

David's Eye-Opening Trip to the Dump

When we lived in the city of Gracias, we had trash pickup at our doorstep three times each week. We made it a point to take our usable but unwanted items and place them unbagged on the corner, whether or not it was trash day. These items would quickly be picked up and carried away. We were careful not to put out the bagged trash until we actually heard the trash truck coming. The trucks helpfully sound a siren as they pass through town, so everyone gets an early warning. If we put the trash out early, people would rip open and go through the trash bags, looking for usable items, and then we'd have a big mess to clean up.

Now that we live outside of the city, we have to handle our trash ourselves. We burn quite a bit of trash, but some just has to be carried to the dump. Generally we wait until we have enough for a large trailer load, and then either Allen or Russell drive the trash out of here.

The dump is on the other side of the city of Gracias from where we live. Recently, Russell was taking a load of trash to the dump, and he also wanted to take several members of the family into the city. Since he didn't want to drive around inside the city with the trailer full of trash, we all went to the dump first.

The dump is down a long dirt road from town. As we approached the dump, children started to run out of the nearby houses and yards, to meet us. Once we'd pulled in and stopped, they immediately began pulling the bags out of the trailer, and searching for "treasures." I imagine they expected our trash to be especially good, since we gringos are known for having more stuff, and for throwing away usable items, like empty tin cans (often used as baking pans here) and large plastic bottles like those in which cooking oil is sold (used for transporting and storing water).

David watched silently for a bit, as the children emptied the trailer and dug into the bags of our garbage. As they grabbed up items which had value to them, David began to grasp the situation. He turned to me and asked, "They're so poor, they want our garbage?"

We see a lot of poverty as we minister here, but I guess it impacts you more when you see people excited to get their hands on your very own garbage.

Want to see some bugs?

I thought you might. Here you go:

Starting off with a bug that doesn't make people squirm. These butterflies are everywhere right now.

Not any one specific bug here: this is a huge termite nest I found on our property, down near the river.

We saw many of these extremely fluffy caterpillars on our recent camping trip.

Here's the same fluffy caterpillar, seen from the underside.

The same caterpillar again - when Boo picked it up with the end of a small stick, it curled up in a ball.

Just some random bug in the grass.

We found this in an old, rotten piece of wood in our campsite firepit. It was about 2" long.

I hope you've enjoyed this entomological interlude.

Russell and Iris' House

Here are a couple of pictures of the house in Gracias which Russell and Iris are renting. It's a nice place for a couple starting out. You can see in the picture above that there is a small, enclosed carport. It is so small that I don't think Russell will be parking there - I believe it will be used as a storage space.

The front room will be the living room and dining area. You can see the kitchen at the back of this area in the picture below - and David playing "fast food restaurant" in there. The kitchen is very Honduran, with not a single closed cupboard. I've had a kitchen like this in the past, and it can be a challenge to set up and keep clean. Hopefully Iris is better at this than I am!


Rental houses in Honduras don't come with a refrigerator or stove. These are items Russell and Iris will have to acquire, along with furniture. It's a good thing being young and in love make those inconveniences seem smaller. ;-D

The house has three bedrooms. Russell's intention is to use one of these as an office. Another bedroom will be used for storage, as Russell's house will be the hub for our food distribution and Bible sales ministries. This arrangement will be much more convenient for the pastors who come to pick up the food and books.

There's lots of excitement in the air around here these days!

Our upcoming wedding

Things are coming together. This week, Russell and Iris found a house in town to rent. I haven't seen the house yet, but I hope to do so soon, and get some pictures to share here.

Yesterday, while playing soccer, Russell took a head hit to his jaw, and split open the skin just under his chin. When you look at him face on, you can't see it, fortunately, but it's a nasty cut - took five stitches to close it. We're hoping it will be mostly healed up in time for the wedding - we're just a month out now.

Limping along with some new equipment

We've got a new "normal" at our house now. Russell wasn't able to purchase the exact inverter we'd hoped for (one we'd looked at in a store, and considered buying to have on hand in case of an event just like this - but we'd decided not to buy it, of course), but he was able to purchase a smaller unit. He also was able to borrow another (even smaller) inverter from a mechanic friend of his.

With this smaller equipment we can't run as many appliances at one time as we could do previously. This means that we can't use up all the excess power which pours in during the sunniest hours of the day. So, to protect our equipment from having to deal with so much incoming power, today Russell removed four of the solar panels from the roof.

So, this is what our day looks like now: we run the refrigerator and the computer during the day, but nothing else. These are running on solar power.

In the evening, we use the generator to charge up the batteries and run the TV/VCR, computer and the washing machine. When two or three loads of wash are done, we're done running power for the night.

This is a workable situation, since without this equipment we'd really have a hard time running the fridge at all - so, it's much better than the alternative. Of course, we're still having to wonder if additional batteries are going to die . . . that would mean that we'd have to find another, lower level of "normal."

Sigh - we're still limping along, but a bit slower now

We're trying to keep our dying solar energy system running until we can get some new and improved components in our container late this year. We've been gradually losing batteries, and recently we had an apparent electrical surge from a nearby lightning strike, which caused the fan on our inverter to quit.

This morning, perhaps related to the same apparent surge, the inverter itself suddenly blew up (we had replaced the fan, so overheating shouldn't have been the problem). It didn't blow up all over the place, but something inside the unit blew, with a big "bang" and a shower of sparks. Sigh.

What does this mean? I don't mind your asking, as I don't really understand too much of the technology we're using here, but Allen explains it to the rest of us. Here's the scoop:

Currently, with no inverter, we can't use power from the batteries we still have. That means that if the power keeps coming in from the solar panels, the batteries would overcharge and possibly be damaged. So, the first order of the day today was for people to climb onto the roof and cover the solar panels with blankets.

We can (hopefully) purchase a new inverter in the city of San Pedro Sula. As soon as we made the decision to try to do this, Russell hopped into the Land Cruiser and headed out. The inverter we think we can purchase is smaller than our current one, and it won't work in conjunction with the new components we'll be installing in December - so it's an unexpected and unplanned purchase, but it still seems to be the way to go. Having the temporary inverter will allow us to continue using refrigeration . . . really, I think, that's worth something, and the inverter should only cost about $100.

After he'd driven about an hour from home, Russell remembered something we'd all forgotten with all the other excitement this morning - that a bridge on the road between here and San Pedro Sula washed out recently. We don't know if traffic is getting through now or not. We're hoping and praying that he can drive through to the city - otherwise it seems like he will park, walk across, and catch a bus to the city on the other side.

If we can't get the temporary inverter, we'll be running power only from our generator. This works fine for laundry and computer use, but the refrigerator needs long hours of continuous use, not short spurts.

Using a generator for that purpose gets expensive. With an inverter, we can run the solar panels (or the generator, when there's no sun) to charge the batteries, and then use the stored power, but without an inverter, we only have power when the generator is actually running.

The good news is that the components which are dying are parts which we were already planning to replace. They were originally cheaper than some other options - and perhaps we got what we paid for. The parts which were more expensive are still running, and will work with our new components.

The bad news is we have a wedding coming up, and guests, and lots of reasons why this is a bad time for us to try living with such limited power. But, we'll figure it out.

Making Wedding Invitations

From talking to a few of my friends in the US, I've learned that making your own wedding invitations, or putting them together from a "kit" is sort of trendy right now. I'm glad I found that out, because I hadn't heard of it, and I was thinking perhaps this was a uniquely Honduran thing.

No, we're not being uniquely Honduran here - we're trendy! ;-D




The pictures above show the work on the envelopes for the invitations. I had to do some research to figure out the name of this kind of paper craft, in English. It's called Parchment Craft, or Pergamano.

All the hard work was done on the envelopes. The invitations themselves are being printed (by a printer) on special paper. You'll have to wait a bit longer, for photos of the finished product.

The Wacky Stories I Tell . . . here comes another one

So, here's what happened today.

We have afternoon thunderstorms most every day this time of year. As today's storm approached, we had a really close lightning strike. Really close. Like we wondered if it might have hit one of our buildings. (We later discovered that a huge pine tree, about 600' from our closest building, was hit.)

We were checking around for damage, and especially checking out our solar equipment, when dh noticed a "hot plastic" smell in the vicinity of our batteries, controllers, and inverter. Not good at all. However, the system was still running, and everything plugged into the system seemed to be running fine.

With additional investigation, eventually the menfolk narrowed the smell down to the inverter, and realized that the interior fan was no longer running.

So, they took apart the inverter (tricky business, because they had to remove the equipment from the charged up batteries), and found that they couldn't repair the fan.

I need to mention that yesterday Russell was working on sorting through our stored man-junk. You know the kind of stuff, if you have a hands-on husband. Russell had found a small, cheap fan, which was designed to be attached to a piece of large construction equipment, to keep the driver cool. We had installed it, but it had fallen off the machine and never been re-installed. It was sitting in the pile of stuff to be thrown out or given away.

They grabbed it up out of the pile, figured out a way to mount it next to the inverter so that it blows air through the inverter, and we're powered up and running again.

Really, is anyone even going to believe me anymore?

Oh, and in case anyone is interested, the system is grounded.

Gifts for Gracias Christmas Project - a reminder!

I wanted to take a moment to remind everyone that the container with the Christmas gifts and donated household items is due to leave Maryland sometime in November. All the information you need to create gifts or gather donations can be found on the pages linked at the top of this blog.

We absolutely must ship the container on time this year, as we will be pretty much desperate for our new batteries (for our solar energy system) by the time the container arrives. It is horribly wasteful to pay to ship a container that isn't entirely full . . . so please, do what you can to help us fill it up!

Thanks so much!

The Gradual Decline of the Solar System

(Okay, it's really only the batteries which are in decline, but I couldn't resist the epic sound of that title!)

For those who haven't read the earlier post about this, the batteries in our solar power system are dying. From an original sixteen batteries, we are now down to twelve. This has been a major surprise to us, since our research indicated that we could expect 2-3 years of usage from these batteries, and we are losing them in less than one year.

We won't be able to get our replacement battery system (of a different type) until our container from Maryland arrives here in (hopefully) December, so we've had to just get used to a time of limited power usage.

What does this mean in our daily lives?

1. We don't have enough stored power to start running electrical items until the sun is up, and the mist is cleared off the mountain in the morning. The timing on this can be between 6am and 8am depending on the weather. With the first real amount of power coming in, we turn on the refrigerator. When we've reached a second higher level of input, we turn on the computer.

Just so you know, Allen and I are normally up much earlier than 6am. With such limited power, we go to bed pretty early these days, so the first glimmer of sun (around 4am) has us feeling like it's time to get up.

2. When the power is coming in at a high level we hurry and do everything that requires large amounts of electrical power. This is mostly running the dishwasher and the washing machine. Usually we have enough power to do at least some of this work between 9am and 2pm. Some days we don't have enough power to run either machine. Fortunately, we have lots of clothing, and I haven't yet forgotten how to wash dishes by hand.

3. At around 3 in the afternoon we start to conserve power. We turn off everything except the refrigerator, unless we still have lots of sunshine. But we watch the sun and the power input levels carefully, as the power level will drop quickly at some point around 3pm - this has to do with the angle of the solar panels and the afternoon location of the sun.

4. Around 4 or 5pm we turn off the refrigerator, and we run nothing using power until after supper. Supper is usually served between 5 and 6pm.

5. Soon after supper some members of the family generally watch a movie or a few episodes of a TV show on DVD, using the power which was conserved from earlier, and we also run the fridge again for as long as we can. If it has been an especially overcast afternoon, or if we misjudged our power usage in the afternoon, we have to run the generator for a short time in the evening, to have enough power for the evening usage. By around 8 or 8:30pm, we're usually heading for bed. Sometimes on the weekends we stay up later - even until 9:30 or 10pm, but that involves splurging on additional generator use!

And that about sums up our low-energy days.

The Rest of the Story

I posted yesterday about the armadillo in my kitchen. I chose not to mention that our workers were planning to take the animal home and cook it. I'm told armadillo meat makes a delicious soup.

Anyway, before the workers left for the day with the armadillo, we had some other guests arrive. These were a group of people from one of the biggest churches in the city of Gracias. We just received funding for a school construction project for a school run by their church, and we were having a preliminary meeting regarding the disbursement of funds. Along with the adults came about six young boys (I never really figured out the relationships between the men, women, and boys), and as soon as everyone jumped out of the truck they were all attracted to the armadillo.

It surprised me, as I approached the group, to see one of the women holding the armadillo . . . but I was even more surprised when she bought it from our worker and popped it right into her large purse! I asked her if she was going to cook it, but she told me she is going to keep it as a pet.

So now you know . . . the rest of the story!

Ohhh, and here's a link to a fun webpage full of information about armadillos. I was happy that it was able to ease my mind regarding the leprosy question.

Today, in Trish's Kitchen . . .

The young men who are working on our fence repairs came up to the house to be paid this evening, and they were carrying this:



You just never know what the day will bring, do you?

There go some more motorcycles!

Here are a few recent pictures of pastors receiving their new motorcycles to use in their ministries.






In the next few days, I'm planning to post some information about some of these pastors, so you can know more about what they do and how the motorcycles help them in their ministries.

Let's Tally the Animals

Five dogs - 2 adult males, 1 adult female, 2 female puppies

Thirteen cats - 3 adult females, 1 adult male, 1 youngish kitten and 8 nursing babies (from 2 litters - one litter was born this morning)

Three chickens

Two bunnies

Two cows - 1 bull and 1 female calf

One annoying parrot

One small horse

I think that's all, for now, unless you want to count the worms who do our composting. I personally don't want to count them.

Double Trouble!

I guess we went a little puppy crazy. Allen did bring home a 3 month old female Rottweiler-mix puppy on Friday. She's a darling, and quite feisty. We think she'll probably end up with the name Pepper, possibly Sergeant Pepper. The puppy is recuperating from a skin problem (you can see it in the picture above, on her nose), so we got a deal on her price.

Russell went back to the city a few days later, and Allen asked him to check in on a rescue dog that had been available at the dog sellers the day he bought Pepper. Allen wanted to bring that dog home, in addition to the puppy, but there wasn't room in his vehicle. When Russell got there, the rescue dog was already taken, but there was this adorable little labrador puppy. Russell was tempted, but he explained to the seller that we didn't want a white dog, we wanted a black dog. So the seller dropped the price . . . significantly . . . and now we have two puppies in the house!

The lab is only 2 months old, so she's still sleeping much of the time. Her name might be Sugar, or Puddin', or something else. We're having a bit of trouble with the puppy names.

We're also having trouble getting puppy pictures. When the two of them are in the same place, there's quite a bit of action!





All those trips to the city were ministry trips, by the way. We've just purchased and distributed another ten motorcycles for pastors to use in their evangelistic and pastoral work in the mountains! Thanks again to the good folks at the Christian Motorcyclist's Association, who raise the funds for these motorcycle purchases!

Have you missed me - or are you just wondering when you'll get to see the new puppy?

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. We've experienced the loss of yet another battery from our solar energy system. That takes us down to 12, from an original total of 16. This means that our use of energy is being limited, which has kept me off the computer quite a bit.

-this reminds me, by the way, to request that you keep praying for our power system. We are hoping to limp along until we can ship a new and better battery in the container in November. We're definitely limping now!

I've also run out of batteries for my camera. Tomorrow is to be a shopping day in Gracias, so I should have those AA batteries by tomorrow night, and then I can post some puppy pictures.

I think you'll be surprised . . .