Life here in Bolivia is a lesson in patience. We make our plans and they never seem to go as we planed. Our characters are being polished, and we hope to come out more usable by God.
As part of the lesson in patience, we are still in Santa Cruz working hard to finish the work on the planes here so we can move to Guayaramerin. Even though we would rather be gone already, much good progress has been made on the planes. Much needed maintenance and repair. Here are pictures showing what has been happening in the hangar. |
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| Â Â Â The Mooney is getting a face lift painting! It was looking really sad and faded from sitting in the sun for so long, and from flying through rain. A new coat of paint is making it look real sharp. Johannes and Gabriel have been faithful workers on the planes. Johannes is from Austria and Gabriel from Argentina. |
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| The Mooney is also getting her landing gear sanded down and painted. |
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| The landing gear has many hard to reach parts and in spite of the guys best efforts sanding by hand, there were little corners that still had paint and rust. Steven wanted to sand blast them, and asked about where that could be done. He was told no one in Santa Cruz did that anymore and so, even though he didn’t really believe that no one sand blasted things here, he decided that he would build his own sandblaster. It was a learning experience, and in the end it worked! |
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| Top Left: Version 1.0 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Top Right: Version 2.0 |
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| Steven’s  version 1.0 was a 0.5 L bottle and just too small. The sand emptied out real fast. Version 2.0 was a 2 L bottle. It was much better, but too much sand came out with the air and a lot of the sand ended up hitting its own sand instead of coming in contact with the metal. It worked, just slow. |
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| Top Left: Version 3.1 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Top Right: Version 4.0 |
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| Version 3.1 was a bucket with straps to hold down the lid. (version 3.0 was without the straps and the lid of the bucket went flying. There were some guys who thought that was really funny) Version 4.0 worked great, although another air compressor had to be added  to have a fairly continual flow of air. Now they are finishing sandblasting the last of the Mooney’s landing gear and will then have the gear painted with a paint that is baked on. This paint job will hopefully last a long time. |
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| The other plane that has been receiving a lot of attention is the normally aspirated 182. Here the guys had to loosen the wing strut to be able to get the fuel lines hooked up to the repaired fuel bladder in the wing tanks. |
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| Left: My work in progress               Right: The old interior pieces layed out |
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| Â Â Â Even I have been pressed into service! The 182’s interior was really not nice. The carpet on the floor was a nondescript color and even though it had been washed, it was questionable if the blood and vomit really came out. The wall panels also had carpet, and it was disintegrating. I think the carpet was original from the 1960’s. There were parts of the interior that were still the original 60’s green/blue. The rest had been repainted to a grey. So out came the paint, my sewing machine, and some new fabric, and we replaced all the interior that was not easily cleanable with something that was. Vomit and blood are no longer hard to clean up! The seats were left as they were. They are still in good, usable condition. |
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| Bottom Left: The panel as it was         Bottom Right: The panel all painted up |
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   The top picture is of the new flooring and interior. All the interior plastic pieces were painted one shade of grey, and the instrument panel was sanded down and painted black again (thanks Johannes!). I sewed up the new head liner, and all together it looks real sharp (and did I already say easily cleanable?) You can also see some of the many cargo tie down rings that were added to make cargo safer and more secure to transport.
The instrument panel was loosing its paint in big flakes, making the instruments hard to see easily. It still had some of the original colors, and didn’t look so great anymore. Now it too looks sharp and its instruments easily read. |
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| More views of the new interior. |
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Midwife Course: God answered my question about whether or not I should study the course on becoming a midwife. God provided the tuition and a part of the text book cost in time for me to meet the $800 discount promotion. The course is the long distance midwife course. It gives the book knowledge, which I can study at my own pace. After this, with two years of clinical experience after this I can write the NARM exam in the US. The school is called Mercy in Action (mercyinaction.com)
  (A special thanks to Clint and Mindy, the Weaver family, and the Flinkers!) |
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   Baby: The bump is growing! Sara, Steven, and Timothy are having sympathy symptoms. Their watermelon or papaya bumps were eaten fairly quickly. Mine is still there!
To the right is a sneak peak at Timothy’s little brother. |
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    There have been a few empty flights going up to Guayara, and we sent what we could. Here Steven is flying some of our living room furniture.
Our dog Beulah enjoyed checking out the comforts of the stretcher with Timothy. |
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Thank you to all of you back home for all your prayers and support. You are a big part of the reason anything can be done here.
God Bless You! |
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