I wanted to give a quick update of our weekend with missionary David Farquharson from PAP, who came out to help install our solar electrical system. We spent three very busy and somewhat exhausting days up at the site (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) with David and about 25 workers and had a very productive time. We had iron frames already made for the solar panels and decided that the best position for them (to avoid theft and vandalism) was on the roof of the second floor residence. So, one of the first orders of business was to get the racks up to the roof and then weld them all together. Each rack will hold two solar panels and there are 12 racks that had to get up there. The racks are heavy, but the Haitian workers carried and turned them around to get them into the right position as though they were light as a feather!

The iron workers put iron feet on the frames and started to drill through them to bolt them to the concrete roof. Unfortunately, the 5-6 steel drill bits that we had were quickly worn out, so the job wasn’t able to be completed. Just getting the frames welded together and up on the roof was an accomplishment, though.

The iron workers also had built an iron rack on which we want to put the 32 batteries that we’re installing. David helped decide on the final design of the rack and the ideal position in our storage depot.

As many of you may know, the solar panels and batteries work with an inverter that converts the 12 volt power from the batteries to 110 volt household current. We have two large inverters that are connected together and had to be mounted in the electrical room of the storage depot. They will later be connected to the batteries and to the main electrical panels where the wires from the solar panels come in. All of the connections and wiring systems were worked on by David and Junior Thelisma, our Haitian electrician.

In order to connect all the wiring from the solar panels, David needed a special soldering gun that wasn’t available here in Jeremie. So, he’s planning to come back again next weekend to complete the wiring, place all the panels in position and connect up the batteries. Stay tuned for further updates! Thanks for all of your prayers on our behalf. We have been very blessed with David’s expertise (he’s installed many of these solar systems in Haiti and elsewhere) and his presence with us.

OTHER PROGRESS

We’ve continued to make progress on the residence quarters, where the kitchen counters were recently poured out of concrete. Holes were made for the sink and we’ll put ceramic tile on the counter tops.

This week brought the arrival of Mehil Jean Charles and his team of 4 who are here to install the ceramic tile in the residence area and in the entire pharmacy/lab/xray building. Boss Mehil helped install the tile at our house and also at the clinic, so we are well acquainted with one another. We appreciate his crew’s expertise and are very happy to have them with us again. They’ll be staying up at the site in our old clinic building! Thanks for good friends and hard workers!