Hello All,
This week has just flown by! Not sure what we do with all of our time, but it seems to not be our own.
Jim went up to South Kinangop last Tues to look at the Kitchen project where we are helping for the orphanage. That project is winding down with the funding! We were able to get them a fairly complete bill of quantities (complete cost) a few weeks ago, and they have decided not to complete the project for now. They will get it so that it is covered from the weather (up to the roof) and not finish it out until the money becomes available. This is so typical of all the projects we are doing. They seem to get started without having a full picture. In the states, we would have a full concept of what would go into the building and how much it will cost before it is started. But, for this project at least, there were other factors that contributed to them starting before they were completely ready. Another thing that we have found strange is that the builders are not the people that put together the Bill of Quantities (list of all the things that are needed). They hire this out. For this Kitchen project, the Bill of Quantities was going to cost $5000! We ended up doing it in conjunction with the builder and the help of Excell. Even the builder that is working on another small house we are involved in did not have a full understanding of all the widgets that go into the building! We are almost finished with that project and he has missed many things from the original estimate he gave us.
I am fully involved with Soccer again! The elementary school is running an after school program with soccer right now. We have 3 hours a week to play 10 games and do a 1 hour practice with the older group (5th-6th graders). Just about all of the kids from 1st to 6th grade play (it is about 90 kids). It is fun but a very tight schedule. I am up there 3 days a week to get it going and referee. I will try to remember to take some pictures next week.
We are just about ready to build our first building from the bricks we have been making. I updated the projects page today, so if you are interested, you can go there to see more about all of the projects. We are building a small (7m x 4m) building around the new transformer and breaker. We were actualy supposed to get started last week, but there have been more delays. This is now holding up getting the new generator on line. We are still on the old generator until we can get this building up and then switch over to the new one. I pray that next week I will have pictures of our first actual building with the home made bricks!
We got word this past week that our CT scanner is all packed and ready to go. It is on a truck and awaiting shipment. It will start it's journey across the ocean in Dec. and we will install in January. We just need to have the building ready by then! I went into Nairobi this past week to do some research on flooring for that building. It is so frustrating here how dificult it is to shop for things like that. They don't have flooring centers nor Home Depot! It took me a half a day to go into town to see one product and talk to one sales man. This is why I need to start early to gather information about these kinds of things!
Jim and I had to go back to physics class this past week! It is a good thing that the internet is available! We were designing a compression strength testing machine for the new bricks. This involved some moment calculations that in the begining did not seem reasonable, until Jim remembered that weight and mass are not the same! We were off by a factor of almost 10 because we forgot to multiply the mass by the factor of gravity (9.8m/sec2) in order to get the weight! Use it or loose it! But, we now have a pretty good design and will try to have it built this week.
Sorry that I don't have any pictures this week. I will try and get some for next week. Thanks so much for thinking of us. Please pray for the people here and the projects, that we will keep moving them forward for God's glory!
In His Hands,
Jullie T.
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