It's Been A While

Life has been lub-dubbing along here. Not too much going on. Lou will surprise us by being real on top of his game and then the next moment he has nothing but blank stares. This is one of the harder things we have to get used to. It's difficult to know when he is on and when he is not. He had us cracking up last night because we put a head light on him (thank you Auntie Becky and Uncley Ron!) and he was following where ever the light went. He almost ran into a door outside and into the table inside.



Kayla and Carter are doing good in their studies. Tina had taken a day or two off to get caught up in things. Life here is still not easy. We continue to try to find our place here and not get too overwhelmed with things to do that we forget our priorities like our family. This is a struggle here I believe. There is so much to do. The goofy dog helps to keep spirits up.


Customs appears to be taking a break from working. Have I told you lately how much I dislike the methodology of customs? It has been far too long for some things (most things). I am at a point where I don't think that I want to bother having stuff sent here. Forget about Christmas gifts...

I have had three different people ask me for money this week. I haven't given anyone anything yet, because I prefer to give to the church and then point them to the church to get money. The pastor should know the people better than we do and know when it is a legitimate need.

Yesterday I had one of the workers ask me if I would cut his hair. I hesitated a little and then thought that it would be a good idea and a nice thing to do. He finished what he was doing and then came to the house. I cut his hair and he was very happy. I think that he wanted it shaved like mine but I put a #1 spacer on the trimmer to cut it. I didn't want to go without because I didn't know if his head was good and round where it wouldn't cut him. I haven't had anyone else come for a haircut, so he must have kept a secret so far.

I have another radio sitting on my workbench to fix. When I opened it up, it too had bugs all over the inside. This is the third radio like that - 100% bug success rate. I'll spare you the pictures.

Boring car stuff...

I have been doing lots of car stuff lately (go figure). Today I finished up replacing the water pump in the Nissan Pathfinder. Just like my "racecar", the water pump is buried deep on the front of the engine. I had to remove the radiator, shroud, and fan assembly and remove the timing belt. We replaced the timing belt since I was so far into the engine it only made sense. I looked up how to set the timing on the internet and found a great resource (I am so thankful for the internet!).

The canter rear differential is leaking again. I thought I slopped on enough RTV to seal it up, but it is still leaking. I looked closely at the mating surfaces before I put it on and it all looked OK. I'll give it another try. The mechanism on the canter to switch in and out of 4x4 is broke and so we messed with that today and locked it in 4x4 because they have to go to some hard to get places tomorrow. We just put four new tires on it. It also has a bad battery post so we have to fix that too.

I have been working on replacing the lower shock mount on the caged landcruiser, but the World Servant people have been using it and I haven't gotten a chance to put weld it on (my welding skills are improving finally).

The lower shock mount on the big stakebed broke today - that'll be a huge job.

There is more but that is all I can come up with right now.