A Day's Work

We have had a little bit of a personal family struggle the last couple days. It seemed to start with Carter not trying when doing his school work. The days usually end up with Carter sitting and doing schoolwork from about 8AM until 5:30PM. It is something that should only take 2-3 hours TOPS, but he rarely tries. When he tries, he can get it done easily. I take a lot of blame for the way he acts - I am too hard to please and have to work on that (among many other things).

This struggle, unfortunately and by our own fault, causes Tina and I to get a little cranky. It is our sin that we let his attitude and actions cause this reaction in us. Tina has also been struggling a little her personal direction and walk here. There is a lot to balance and it is not easy, but this is where the Lord has called us and He will give us the strength, tools and encouragement.

This morning at 5:30 AM there was a quiet knock at the door. I was just waking up anyway so I heard the knock and got up. Normally I would have been up for about an hour, but we got to bed late last night (Carter slept with Christopher upstairs and we had Abby sleeping with Kayla down here). It was a visiting missionary from another area in Haiti. Last night we pumped up a tire that had a slow leak (it took a week for it to get flat) and I told him to let me know if he had problems with it in the morning. He was going to drive home with it and fix it when he got home. Well, the tire was flat this morning and he was looking for help. We found the leak, put a plug in it, and he left this morning.

Yesterday, our friend Kris came and we showed her and other visiting families around the mission a little and brought her to our place. She brought the printer and goodies (Tina had her get me Jack Link's Beef Jerky (Teriyaki) and gloves and I had her get Tina some nice slippers). We went to pay her for the printer and she said that she and her husband decided that they would buy it for us. What a great blessing! We didn't expect this at all! Thank you so much Kris and family!

Boring car stuff...

The generator (#2) says it's running hot again. I am wondering if it isn't the gauge. The huge manual for the generator says that you should change oil first and then the only other thing to check is the gauge. After changing oil, it seemed to help but only for a couple days. Today #2 is running so I think I will check on it more frequently to see if the needle varies a lot - then I think the problem will be the gauge. If it is steady in one place or another...I am not sure. I might look into hooking up a secondary gauge to verify the first or switch the senders and/or gauges between the two generators.

The generator roof was leaking pretty good with all the rain from the hurricane. I got some seal coat and sealed the whole roof up yesterday, so the next time you look at Google earth at the Mission (after they take another picture), the most white looking roof is the generator room.

I have been doing a number of various things on the vehicles. The old caged Toyota has a few bolts on the front suspension that seem to keep loosening up. I put loctite on the biggest problem (I only have medium strength) and I tightened it as much as I could with it being on the ground and not over the pit. The Canter is over the pit right now waiting for a couple retainer pins for the parking brake. The parking brake is integrated with the rear drive shaft and is a drum brake. I also had to replace all the battery terminals on the Canter (I think I may have mentioned this already). I replaced the rear brakes yesterday in the Mitsubishi Nativa (they don't sell this in the US - it's an SUV).

If I type any more car stuff, it will get REALLY boring so I'll stop.