Hydroelectric Turbine and Highlifter Pump Pictures

We are still connected this morning and decided to download pictures before we disconnected and packed up the computers.

Here are some pictures of the hydroelectric turbine and highlifter pump in action. In the first pictures, Dane is checking the pressure gauge on the inlet pump.

The turbine is inside the white part below the blue motor which generates 380 volt, 3-phase electricity. The highlifter pump is the long skinny thing with the white hose attached to it on the right.

This picture shows water entering the 1000 liter tank here at the house. It used to take 2-3 days for us to use all the water in the tank for our daily use and the highlifter fills it completely in about 15 hours. With the continuous water being pumped up now, the tank is almost always full.

Final Update

We have been running on hydroelectric power since last Thursday or Friday. Yipee!! It works great. We can run both computers, the lights, the internet tower and all the internet equipment on it and the equipment here at the house all at the same time and still the batteries are charging. We can only run the clothes agitator intermittently, but more batteries would take care of that. It has been a lot more quiet around here without having to start the motor to charge the batteries. We are very thankful that the Lord allowed Dane to see this project through, and up and running well, before we left! Dane also was able to get the highlifter pump installed and so water is pumping continuously to the house from the creek 300 meters below us. It is so awesome having electricity and water all powered by the running water on the property. No more gasoline expenses for having those things at the house. I do have some pictures of the turbine and pump working, but they will have to wait until a later time.



Time here is getting short and we still have so much to do to get ready to leave. We will be shutting everything down either tonight or tomorrow morning. That means no more phone or email for a while.



Lord willing, I will post again when time allows after we arrive in the states on October 22nd. Hopefully then I can include the turbine and pump pictures.



Please pray for us as we travel to Paraguay, Bolivia, Florida, and then onward to Kentucky.



Have a blessed day,



Jessica

Saying Goodbye to the Animals

Hector Dos Santos, the man who made the yoke for our oxen, agreed to keep all the cows and goats for Ralph until he can find a caretaker for the farm, so yesterday, we said goodbye to them.

In the morning, Dos Santos came on his horse and took the oxen. Elijah, David, and Abigail accompanied him the two miles to his farm.



Goodbye Broncito and Hierrito.


In the afternoon, Dos Santos and his sons, David and Maxi, Elijah, David, and Abigail returned with Dos Santos's oxen and a cart in which to carry the goats.

They loaded up the goats and tied the remaining cows and little bull behind it. All the children and Dane accompanied the caravan up to the main road to help and to say goodbye.

Goodbye brown kid, white kid, Pintada, Paloma, Teri, and Tito.

Sabbath Day

On the Sabbath, we took some pictures around the farm.



This is a passion flower vine that the children found.

View from the upper field.

After lunch, we made what will probably be our final trip down to the river. We went on the road that Dane had been making during the drought and that he had hoped to get a bulldozer down. Abigail took some pictures along the way.

The path had grown up some, so Dane and Ralph led the way with their machetes.

At the river. Much to the children's dismay, the water was too cold to swim, but they did get wet up to their waists.

Ralph, cooling his aching knee.

Enjoying the water and the views.

The dogs came down with us too.

Farm Projects

Dane, Ralph, and Javier have been working to get some projects wrapped up before we leave late next week.



They got all the columns set in concrete for the barn.

The children thought the columns made nice climbing apparatuses. If you look closely, you can see that they are each perched on one.

Orlando Klein, the builder, and his crew came out yesterday to put up the beams. They will return on Friday to put the roof on.

And here is the "heart" of the hydroelectric plant, the turbine, that Dane hopes to have installed this week.

Today it is rainy, but the rain has let up some this afternoon so the guys are down at the spring trying to get the highlifter pump for pumping water up to the house installed.

Lord willing, these projects will be completed before we leave. Check back for an update later this week or next.

Jessica

It is hard to believe that our time in Argentina will soon be coming to an end and that we will be leaving our home here in less than 3 weeks. What a wonderful and blessed time it has been.

Our plans are coming along, we have been preparing, and we look forward to the upcoming move. Thankfully, John has his U.S. and Argentine passports and is ready to travel.

The weather continues to be cool and rainy with an occasional warm day sprinkled about. The storms have downed our internet for a week on two different occasions which only partly explains the delayed post.

In the last post I said I would post some pictures of the upstairs that Dane had completed before our house guests came from Paraguay. Here is the view from the entry door looking to the boys' room and attic stairs.

This is also looking from the entry area to the doors of the girls room and master bedroom (which was also going to be Dane's office).

Here you can see inside the girls' room.


This and That......

The children are taking a break from their schoolwork right now to help with the moving preparations. Some of their chores include helping with the baby. In the picture below, they made John a stroller from his carseat and the moving dolly.

Some bees have made themselves at home in some boxes Dane has stored in the attic. Yes, those are bees on the boxes and in the air, in the house! The boxes happen to be above the master bedroom so sometimes we can hear them; although, they have not been a nuisance at all up to this point. Dane plans to move the bees to a more appropriate location this week.

The Kiri trees have been in bloom which fills the air around here with a nice perfume and makes the ground underneath them appear to be snow covered from the fallen blooms. It has been fun watching the hummingbirds and bees that are attracted to the blossoms.

Meme (Dane's Mom) made and sent each of the girls a new dress to wear. She also sent some nice denim shirts for the boys that I didn't get a picture of. The children are saving their new outfits for their trip back to the States. Thank you Meme, they're beautiful!

Ralph and Judy Reed (the couple who are buying our farm) were here for a week and were much help around here. They have worked in Mexico as missionaries translating the New Testament into Aztec for the past 20 years. Mr. Reed has just started the publication process for his translation. Judy, a great example of someone who prays without ceasing, has been his assistant along the way.

The Reeds kindly brought with them from the U.S. many needed items for the children like shoes, socks, shoelaces, baby clothes and peanut butter :-)!

After a wonderful week of hard work and sweet fellowship, the Reeds left on the Sabbath to visit Iguazu falls. The children were all teary eyed after they said goodbye. Ralph will return here for another 3 weeks on Tuesday and Judy is headed back to Texas.

Ralph and Dane worked on several projects last week and Judy tirelessly helped around the house and ministered to the children and I.

Dane got our temporary (or maybe permanant) shower completed. He ended up cutting a hole in the wall from the kitchen to the shower area. It turned out very nicely and now taking showers is easier and more private than it has ever been here.

Dane and Ralph used the tractor to level the ground behind the house so that water wouldn't run under the back door during heavy rains. We have already had an opportunity to test it and it works great. No more free floor cleanings at inopportune times :-).

The guys are getting the new barn ready to erect by working on the footings (digging the holes), and perhaps the building guy can start the erection process before we leave.

The biggest project that Dane, Ralph, and Elijah, David, Joseph, and Javier are working on is installing the hydroelectric equipment and electric lines up to the house. The next several pictures show some of that process. Lord willing, the hydroelectric will be up and running before we leave.








Here is one of my little helpers, Miss Elisabeth, helping to make tortillas in the kitchen.

Also, we have been getting and enjoying a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables lately. John has been enjoying them too but in a different way.


And as usual we keep finding interesting critters around here. This is a big earthworm that Joseph found. Anyone want to go fishing?
These two large moths (they are about 8 inches wide as they sit) were attracted to the light in the kitchen.

Abby took a picture of this very interesting butterfly with clear wings. She got it to sit on a fallen Kiri flower for this picture.

The Reeds stayed the night in town before their early bus to Iguazu and so we took some group pictures in their hotel room. We enjoyed their visit tremendously.

Judy Reed taught the girls and Elijah to do some crocheting. These are some of the pot holders, coasters, hot pads, etc. that they have enjoyed making.

Well, I would like to think that I will have another post up before we leave, but if not, I hope to update as soon as possible when we reach the states. Thank you for your patience with me and for all your prayers as we embark on our new adventure. Until next time....

Have a blessed evening,

Jessica

The Past Month's Adventures

A lot of time has passed since my last post, so this post may be long. I have lots of pictures and exciting things to share.

First of all, Elisabeth, John, and I did make it to Buenos Aires to apply for John's passports last month. It was a fast trip, but very fruitful. We left on a bus on a Sunday evening, arrived in BA the next morning, applied for both a U.S. passport and an Argentine passport, and then returned on a bus that night to arrive back in Misiones on Tuesday morning. Whew!!!! We were tired, but were blessed with John's Argentina passport two and half weeks after we applied for it! Dane just returned this past week from completing the application process for John's U.S. passport, and Lord willing, that should arrive within two weeks. Our littlest guy is almost ready to travel!

We discovered on this trip to Buenos Aires a most amazing thing in this country that I hadn't realized before because I rarely get out. We have known for a long time that the culture here is family oriented and children are looked upon with fondness by most, but I did not know that there was a rule - "Mujeres con bebes tienen prioridad", or in English "Women with babies have priority." Can you imagine what this means? It happened first in McDonald's. Elisabeth and the baby and I were standing in line to use the women's restroom when a McDonald's employee came and got me and informed me of the rule, "Mujeres con bebes tienen prioridad," she said. Imagine my surprise when she ushered me into the bathroom in front of all the other waiting women to use the restroom first! Once in the restroom, there was another line of other waiting women with children, but when they saw me they ushered me in front of them seeing that my baby was the youngest! Ha! What kind of place is this, I thought. It happened again at the Argentina Federal Police where we went to apply for John's passport. We got in line behind about 50 people only to be quickly ushered into the building to a special line for women with babies. What a wonderful concept. I imagine something like this would be so quickly abused somewhere else, but here, I suppose it is a respected cultural thing. Looking back to my trip to Buenos Aires with Abby and Joseph when we applied for his U.S. passport, I now understand why they let us ride the subway for free - they wouldn't allow me to buy a ticket and quickly ushered me through the handicapped entrance to the train because I was toting a baby.

A few days after we returned from Buenos Aires, we had some visitors from Paraguay. Our visitors were strangers to us, but had learned of us through a friend in Texas. They quickly became friends too, and we were so blessed by their visit. They graciously brought their own blankets, delicious homegrown and made foods for all eighteen of us, and their Bibles and hymnals in order to worship and study the Word of God together. They were very forgiving and didn't seem a bit uncomfortable in our modest accomodations. We had two wonderful days of fellowship, food, Bible study, singing, and stories with our guests before they returned to their homes in Paraguay. We basked in the glow of their visit for days after they left. It was such a blessed time for us. They have invited us to come and visit them and we plan to do so in October.

From the top left to right is: Jonathan and Adrianna, Daniel, Matthew, and Irene.
Lower left to right is: Rebecca and Ethel, Esther, and Carol (from Plainview, Texas).

Our neighbors, Horacio and Lucy, over at the Chacra Mariposa, made us a CD of pictures that they had taken when we were there visiting one day and gave it to us as a gift recently. Here are a few pictures from that day. This was just a couple weeks before John was born.

I mentioned in my last post that Dane had finished the floor in the second story. He also got some walls up there too, so that when our guests came we had divided bedroom areas. I still haven't gotten any good pictures of the upstairs yet, but below is one in our new bedroom just after he had finished the floor. We had a bee box wall and curtains for a few nights before Dane was able to begin the real walls.

Here is a picture of Joseph helping me to scramble some eggs. You can see all the additional space that we now have downstairs behind him since we moved the children's beds upstairs. The tape on Joseph's nose was to keep him from picking a scab that was there.

Dane has been working on the outside of the house too. He continues to get it closed in more all the time. He really got motivated to get it closed in quickly recently when vampire bats started attacking our cows at night. Thankfully, that activity has seemed to subside.

Dane has been doing a lot of work on the roads into our farm. Trying to improve the old one and make a new one. The work has been hard and it has been really hard on his tract vehicle and implements. He has had to weld the implement arms and several of the implements. The roads are slowly getting better and better.

Dane has also been working with the bees a lot and has brought home another colony recently. That brings the total to fourteen working colonies. He had a problem with one a little over a week ago and it may have to be exterminated. The colony has grown huge, it is one of the first three that he bought, and it is very aggressive. All the bees here are Africanized and can be very dangerous if a colony becomes overly aggressive. While changing the boxes on this colony the bees began to sting him through his protective gear. Dane set down the box pieces and his smoker and ran down the road to escape them, but they persued. Elisabeth, David, and Joseph were back at the top of the hill in a little shack, not too far from the hives, and Dane began to worry about the bees finding them as the sky was becoming black with angry bees. He went to the window and asked the children if they had been stung and at that moment a bee stung Joseph. The children had to make a run for the truck which by this time was crawling with bees too. Each of them were stung between fifteen to twenty times. Once they were far enough away from the scene, Dane was able to pull over and get the bees that were in the truck out. And since he was about 40 minutes from town, he then drove to the hospital in Obera as a precaution in case one of the children had an adverse reaction. Joseph and David were administered shots to counteract the stings even though they were only showing signs of minor swelling. Elisabeth wasn't swelling at that time, so she was sent here home with Benedryl. We continued to remove stingers from her head that night. The stings never slowed down Dane and the boys, but Elisabeth woke up very swollen and sore the next day and acted quite miserable. By the next day though, she was back to herself. Dane hoped that the temperatures would drop enough so that the bee colony would die due to exposure that night, but they didn't. He returned the next morning and reset their box and he is now thinking of an extermination plan.

Well enough about bees. Here are some pictures of some other interesting insects that we have found around the farm recently.

This one is a newly hatched or emerged (what is the word I'm looking for?) moth. Its wings were still curled and it could not fly.

This is a huge wolf spider that has made its home in our kitchen.

This is a little armored beetle that is marked similarly to a ladybug.

Here is a pretty moth that Abby found on the chicken tractor.

This is a newly hatched walking stick. It was really tiny and hard to get a good picture of.

We just recently had five new chicks hatch too. The children love to watch the chicks run around with their mother.

Here is Elijah testing out Sarah's bicycle with a "spare". An old wheel from a baby stroller. It didn't work well, but it sure was funny to watch him try and ride over the bumps.

Homeschooling is wonderful. These pictures show that even the baby gets involved in school time.

Lastly, we bought our plane tickets and after a trip to visit our new friends in Paraguay in late October, we will be flying to Miami. It will be a sad day when we leave here, but we look forward to our next step in the journey the the Lord is leading us on.

Well, I hope I haven't left too much out about our past month. We hope that all is well with you and yours.

Have a blessed evening,

Jessica