No posting yesterday because not a lot happened. Corey and I did go to the Bible study where 7 men and a couple of women listened to a study about living a pure life in their village language. Our missionary friend from Brazil, William, had given us each a Kriol Bible (not just the New Testament) and we were able to understand where the Scripture reference was coming from and I was then able to look it up in my Bible to understand what the passage was talking about.
After the study, William took us and a very nice young man a mile up the road to a bridge over a salt-water river/inlet for a couple hours of fishing. Fishermen had their dugout log boats nearby and their wives were laying out the fish in roadside stalls. Turns out that, while each of the four of us caught one or two fish, I snagged the biggest.
It's pretty ugly, looking something like a catfish. It did give me a good fight though. I gave it to the young man to enjoy for dinner.
We left about 7:30 am today for our first full day in Bissau, working at the center there. We hauled a bunch of hardware and tools with us and worked from around 9 am until 6 pm with only about 20 minutes for a lunch of trail mix, water and snack bars. Corey spent all his time evaluating the electrical system, uncovering reasons why the batteries that should power the center for half the day were not doing so. For example, he found the generator that would run the first half of the day was only running at 40 Hz, not the 50 Hz it should and needs to. As a result, the device that would accept this power and charge the batteries was rejecting the generated electricity. Thus, the batteries were only being charged by the solar panels which are so covered with dust that a full charge could not be reached.
Speaking of dust in Bissau (which I also did last week), we found that every item, every surface, every breath of air seems to have been installed at the beginning of time with dust already included. We decided to give this phenomenon a spiritual term, since we're missionaries. We're calling this either pre-dustination or dustification.
Overall I had a very successful day, although I had a few temporary setbacks that I hope are temporary. The #1 goal was to overcome a problem installing a network device on the center network that would provide security (called a firewall), block users from accessing inappropriate content (even accidentally) and to collect data from our power system and upload it daily to technical team back at JAARS for evaluation. For the last year we'd heard that several attempts had been made by local people to do this so. What the solution might be was pretty much a mystery. After last week's quick visit to the internet provider here in Bissau, I thought we had a resonably good chance (I do believe in predestination) of succeeding.
By the end of the day we were able to accomplish this goal though there were one or two times when accessing the internet seemed to hiccup. I will stop by the vendor's office Wednesday to ask a couple of questions and hopefully tune the system for faster internet access than I experienced today. I also hope Wednesday to provide access to a laser printer for the office users and finish securing a new wireless system in the office. (The office is on a main street with lots of small shops and probably a hundred people within 50 yards at any time. We have to prevent unauthorized use of our system so that internet speed remains good for our workers.)
We had dinner at a local restaurant where I ordered a 4-cheese pizza. Being in Guinea-Bissau, the menu was in Portuguese and I think I knew in advance which four cheeses. Still, at least two of them were very pungent and a bit overpowering.
By the time we began the trip home, it was 7:45 pm and dark. Once we left the capital, we began long stretches of open road with small bushes and lots of tall, dry grasses growing right up to the edge of the two-car-wide road. (Notice I didn't say "two lanes". Except in the city, there are no lanes.) We were moving along at 90 km/hr (~55 mph), coming across nationals (who are black, often in dark clothing), walking along the side or riding bikes. Add a few bends in the road and you never know how quickly you need to react. We had two small townsvillage centers to pass through where night life was still active (people, kids, animals of all kinds) and you simply need to move slowly and honk about every 20 seconds to let people know you don't think they are moving out of the way quickly enough.
Well, we made it home about 9 pm. With the progress made today plus some preparations before the next trip to Bissau, I think I'll be staying in Lendem, catching up on documentation and doing some other research.
God has blessed us much these past 10 days. He is a faithful God and, having been reading James for devotions, hope I can rest in His faithfulness in the trials that we can expect.
Thanks for following this journey and following it up with prayer.
After the study, William took us and a very nice young man a mile up the road to a bridge over a salt-water river/inlet for a couple hours of fishing. Fishermen had their dugout log boats nearby and their wives were laying out the fish in roadside stalls. Turns out that, while each of the four of us caught one or two fish, I snagged the biggest.It's pretty ugly, looking something like a catfish. It did give me a good fight though. I gave it to the young man to enjoy for dinner.
We left about 7:30 am today for our first full day in Bissau, working at the center there. We hauled a bunch of hardware and tools with us and worked from around 9 am until 6 pm with only about 20 minutes for a lunch of trail mix, water and snack bars. Corey spent all his time evaluating the electrical system, uncovering reasons why the batteries that should power the center for half the day were not doing so. For example, he found the generator that would run the first half of the day was only running at 40 Hz, not the 50 Hz it should and needs to. As a result, the device that would accept this power and charge the batteries was rejecting the generated electricity. Thus, the batteries were only being charged by the solar panels which are so covered with dust that a full charge could not be reached.
Speaking of dust in Bissau (which I also did last week), we found that every item, every surface, every breath of air seems to have been installed at the beginning of time with dust already included. We decided to give this phenomenon a spiritual term, since we're missionaries. We're calling this either pre-dustination or dustification.
Overall I had a very successful day, although I had a few temporary setbacks that I hope are temporary. The #1 goal was to overcome a problem installing a network device on the center network that would provide security (called a firewall), block users from accessing inappropriate content (even accidentally) and to collect data from our power system and upload it daily to technical team back at JAARS for evaluation. For the last year we'd heard that several attempts had been made by local people to do this so. What the solution might be was pretty much a mystery. After last week's quick visit to the internet provider here in Bissau, I thought we had a resonably good chance (I do believe in predestination) of succeeding.
By the end of the day we were able to accomplish this goal though there were one or two times when accessing the internet seemed to hiccup. I will stop by the vendor's office Wednesday to ask a couple of questions and hopefully tune the system for faster internet access than I experienced today. I also hope Wednesday to provide access to a laser printer for the office users and finish securing a new wireless system in the office. (The office is on a main street with lots of small shops and probably a hundred people within 50 yards at any time. We have to prevent unauthorized use of our system so that internet speed remains good for our workers.)
We had dinner at a local restaurant where I ordered a 4-cheese pizza. Being in Guinea-Bissau, the menu was in Portuguese and I think I knew in advance which four cheeses. Still, at least two of them were very pungent and a bit overpowering.
By the time we began the trip home, it was 7:45 pm and dark. Once we left the capital, we began long stretches of open road with small bushes and lots of tall, dry grasses growing right up to the edge of the two-car-wide road. (Notice I didn't say "two lanes". Except in the city, there are no lanes.) We were moving along at 90 km/hr (~55 mph), coming across nationals (who are black, often in dark clothing), walking along the side or riding bikes. Add a few bends in the road and you never know how quickly you need to react. We had two small townsvillage centers to pass through where night life was still active (people, kids, animals of all kinds) and you simply need to move slowly and honk about every 20 seconds to let people know you don't think they are moving out of the way quickly enough.
Well, we made it home about 9 pm. With the progress made today plus some preparations before the next trip to Bissau, I think I'll be staying in Lendem, catching up on documentation and doing some other research.
God has blessed us much these past 10 days. He is a faithful God and, having been reading James for devotions, hope I can rest in His faithfulness in the trials that we can expect.
Thanks for following this journey and following it up with prayer.
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