We are back in “lockdown” here in Humaita. Not sure what that means as all stores are open and although there is an 8pm curfew, Luke and his friends figured out you could still get a pizza delivered after 9pm! We have had a flurry of boat activity since the beginning of the year. Antonio and his wife Dyane are volunteers and work in an area 1.5 hours downriver. I wanted to visit their communities a couple weeks ago so I was planning to stay overnight. When I asked how many communities they were working because I wanted to visit them they they replied, “seven!”. Oops. Not going to visit all those in one Sunday! PTL for their hearts to reach their neighbors. They have a 40hp Mercury. Antonio has been having some serious health issues and last month ended up in the hospital. After many tests, they discovered most of his issues were probably because of a tooth that he had had pulled but the dentist hadn’t gotten it all out! wow. He was here for about a week and during that time his wife wanted to go back home. They have a little store in their village and she needed to take supplies to re-stock or their source of income would dry up. I asked, “Who’s going to take you back? Who’s going to drive the boat?”. She said, “Me”. And she did. However, they had issues with the motor on their last trip here and so after many hours of diagnostics we discovered it was the mechanical fuel pump. And guess what? They don’t have one here and it will be 7 days for another to arrived.
In calama, the workers have been complaining about their boat leaking. It was so bad that Fransisco was scared to leave it at night because if the pump quit, the boat would probably sink in a few hours. So they arrived Thursday and we took the motor off so it could be taken to be re-welded where it had cracked.
If you want to be a missionary with Salt and Light, you’ll do more than just preach and evangelize!
Frank spends 10-15 hours per week in his speedboat. Someone offered to purchase the 150hp motor (has 500+ hours) and so we took the opportunity to upgrade to a 200hp. We are hoping to take 30 minutes off the 6 hour boat ride to Manicore.
A pleasant surprise when we tested the new 200hp. When checking fuel consumption, we did a test traveling at the speed we normally traveled in the 150hp– the new motor actually uses less fuel per hour! Of course, wind and waves permitting I imagine Frank will be going faster.