David and Evelyn

I have been asked how David and Evelyn are doing. I would like to give you all a quick up date. David is finishing his last dose of injectable medicine and will start the daily pills in Jan. He is very excited to see the end of the injections with the excessive tiredness after each injection.
The picture shows David and his family before the baby Moses. His kids are named Jonathon, born Sept 11 2001, Lilian, Samuel, and now Moses. Each baby is given a white / Christian name and then a Maasai name. Jonathon and Lilian are in school and Samuel is still at home.
David's house is coming along nicely as well. We have most of the tin on the roof and I bought some ridge caps for the ridge of the roof. We are waiting for them to arrive from Narok. During this wait, I have had my guys patching the holes that are at the top of the wall and in the walls from the forms. Today we started cleaning floors and getting ready to plaster the walls. There are some photos of this in the photo gallery.
Keep them in you prayers as they struggle to get there life started again after this latest bout of depression. God has been good and we are thankful to know them and be able to help them.

Pulling the Cab; a busy day

This last week has been incredibly busy. Today alone we pulled the cab off the old frame and removed the engine. This should be enough for any day but I had workers finishing David's tin roof and another two putting lock sets in the doors I rebuilt yesterday for the hospital. When the door came for the hospital, 10 of them were a different length. To get the doors into the their frame we had to take them apart, cut the slates individually, regroove the side posts and put them together again. Today we added the locks and hung them after lunch, after pulling the cab and before we pulled the engine.

Of course no day is compete without its normal items. Liddia, David's step daughter was up visiting until lunch, and the Elder Kadia came by to ask for help as his wife's foot was badly infected. Ruth the Swahili teacher is trying to work with all of us, but has yet to catch me as I am playing hooky. Josh is also having a difficult time concentrating as this job is a boys dream come true. Thankfully God gives us the strength we need for each day.

Second Attempt

On the second attempt I figured I had mastered the physics of this situation. We shortened the over all length by lowering the pivot point on the base. This increased our leverage a lot. We also added a push pole so that we could have some guys on the back side pushing it up as well as on the pole. Because I saw it was a much larger wind turbine, we added more tie downs on the roof to help hold it steady and I was ready for the big day. On the last Fri. of Nov. I found that we had indeed mastered the geometry needed to get the turbine up in the air as it went up without any trouble, but Murphy was still near by. As the wind picked up the pole started to shimmer and shake. As we watched it started to bow almost a foot in middle in either direction. It gives you a whole new appreciation for wind power to watch a two inch heavy gauge pole flex what appeared to be 24 inches and vibrate the whole roof. So attempt two looks even better than one, but the turbine is still shut down. Attempt three is coming up as I ordered a 4 inch pole and hope to get it up over Christmas. Thanks for keeping this in your prayers. The best news to date, is that no one has fallen off my roof yet. LOL

First Attempt

Sometimes it is easy to forget where you are. Here in Africa if you can't do something you just call for some friends and get some help. It is not unusual to see ten to one hundred people working together to stand a large tower up, or to pull several miles of cable. There is strength in numbers.

Unfortunately, there are several laws of physics that always apply. When you put a heavy weight on a long pole, add to that a high roof and poor footings, and the result is that we found that even with all our help, it just wasn't possible to stand this new wind turbine up.

This turbine is an ARI 750 watt wind turbine. That means we should see from 15 to 25 Amps out of it on a regular basis. This is over 3 times what I was seeing on the older, smaller wind turbine. We are looking forward to the added power as we are still having to run a small generator daily to do the work we would like to do. We are hoping that with this turbine and a tilting solar rack to reach the point that our electricity is self sustaining. This was attempt one somewhere in the middle of Nov. 2008.

David and Evelyn

Part two

David and Evelyn live in the center down below us. They started out in a tin house just to the left of this mud hut in the photo. Unfortunately during a wind and rain storm the roof lifted up. The wood support had rotted as had the trusses. As the wind blew the roof folded up just like it had a hinge in the middle. Travis and I were called to come down and help pull it back. After about a half hour of work we reattached the roof to the wall and the rain started again. The roof keeps most of the rain out, but the house is not very livable so they have built this temporary mud house to live in and work out of while they complete their stone house.

Moses was born in this house at the beginning of August. He was at least 4 weeks early and maybe as much as 8 weeks. He is the smallest baby that I ever saw. He was just over two pounds when he was born. He is improving and doing very well. He has beautiful eyes that open really wide when he is interested. He has passed 10 lbs and is gain strength rapidly.

Evelyn is also doing well. She was sick with Typhod and Malaria during her pregnancy and fought with morning sickness continuously. She is also back to normal weight levels and enjoying her baby. She has asked us to pass on her thanks to all of you that prayed for her.

David Lesaloi

David and Evelyn: Part 1
David and Evelyn Lesaloi are friends of ours in the church. (This is the family that we are asking prayer for as he is on medication for schizophrenic disorder.) I have known David for 12 years. When we first came to Sekenani, David had one of the strongest testimonies in the community. He was infamous with his age mates as he refused to sponsor the beer for the warriors and had withdrawn from many of the cultural requirements.

Shayne and Tari as well as Almi and I helped him look for a wife. After searching for a Christian girl at several of our northern mission stations, he tried the Transmara area where he met Evelyn. She was a new Christian of only 6 months, but a sweet girl of 16. She was living with her mother a widow.

She was a good match, David felt, as neither of them had much schooling. Evelyn had three years to Davids one. Evelyn is a little ahead in being able to speak better Swahili and closer to reading.

On a day in Dec. 1999, I travel with David to Transmara to receive his bride. We spent two nights living at the local church as we made arrangement for transportation of his bride and family for the wedding service in Sekenani.

We left at 4 AM to return to Sekenani and be in time for the 1 o'clock wedding. After arriving, we found that an uncle who had traveled with us, would not allow the wedding to go forward without another cow being added to the brides price. This brought Evelyn's price up to 11 cows, a very high price. (About $2,000.00) We also had the Maasia Warriors blockade the school yard as they refused guests entrance due to Davids stand against their drinking and partying. After five hours of talks, a visit by the police, and lots of tears, David married Evelyn at 4:30 pm.

Why We Came

The photo is of Laura Sawyer and Savanna. Savanna is one and is being greeted by Naditari. Naditari is one of only a hand full of local Christian here in Sekenani. She excepted the Lord as her personal Savior back in the late 1980's. Since then her life has been a roller coaster as her husband remarried, then died in the nineties. She has almost died twice with Malaria and Typhoid. She remains a testimony of what God whats to do and can do. Uneducated, she has worked for years to see that every one of her children has had a chance to go to school and has told each one about the Lord. Currently there are two open unbelievers and 4 that attend church regularly. There is reason to question if some of them know the Lord, but this mama keep on praying. I am sure that, she is one of the reasons why God lead us to the Mara to start a church. She remain one of our closest friends. Please keep her in your prayers as well as her family. I know she regularly spends time in prayer for the churches in America that support us and is always interested in praying for the needs of people we know. She might have prayed for you!

Sekenani Village Well

This last month I heard that the ladies where having trouble with the village water pump. We ordered new seals and had them delivered on one of the planes that comes with the tourists. Unfortunately this was not the only problem. The kids had been playing at the well and had broken the pump handle and pushed trash down the hole. This had distroyed both the seals and the foot valve. A quick trip to Nairobi and we had a new foot valve to go with the seals. Tanya and I went down as the rain was building and very quickly pulled the well. :( (Tanya now knows why we use the term of "pulling" a well.) Even before we were through the women of the local village were starting to arrive to get water. Best of all, the rain held off until we got home.

David Lesaloi

Please continue to pray for David Lesaloi. He is the man in our church that is fighting with depression. We helped him get on medication that can help him. The problem is that he doesn't want to take his medicine. We let him go in for his injection by himself on the first of the month, but we didn't see the normal results of the medicine at work. This last Friday his wife called and asked for help as he was slipping into the depression again.  We are now wondering if he paid the doctor to not give him his medication. Please keep us in your prayers for wisdom.

His wife and mother are both in good spirits and Moses, the three month old premee baby is growing quickly. PTL They are both still with us in trying the medicine and are very supportive of the process. Pray for them as well as this is not easy on any of them.