Recently, Ken Anderson and I made a trip over to Utila that was nearly all work, but those were also the most fun evenings I’ve ever had over there. When we left Monday morning on the ferry, Kevin Spencer and friends, along with their host Edwin Martinez, were also on the Galaxy. We were in different parts of the ship, but we were able to reunite once we got to La Ceiba and transferred over to the Utila Princess to continue our trip.
Our good friend Lance Bodden met us all at the dock in Utila and had lodging and transportation already arranged. He allowed Ken and me to each use one of his ATVs. The Spencer group had free use of three golf carts. Lance and Jenny were just great the whole time we were there – as always.
Even though Ken and I were not part of the concert group, Lance and Jenny treated us like celebrities. We ate two or three of our meals with Kevin, his wife Tabitha, and two of their children who came along, as well as Edwin. What great times of fellowship and mutual encouragement we had! We were there for the first concert Monday night, but only got there for the last part on Tuesday because we had to work so late. More about all that later.
We went over there knowing there was enough work to keep us busy for a month or more. So we set two main goals for the trip. One was to inspect the AM tower, which was one of the biggest reasons Ken came here in the first place. The other was to install the new stator on the electrical generator and get it running after it has been sitting idle for at least a year.
As you will see in the pictures below, Ken found quite a bit of surface rust that needs to be dealt with soon before it goes deeper. Some of the brackets and clamps are so bad they will need to be replaced. All of the guy wires and their brackets will need treatment or replacement too. We will need a team of three or four, preferably four, tower men to address those issues as soon as it can be arranged.
The generator end of the project had mixed results. I replaced the stator, based on the diagnosis of someone else. Then, of course, the generator would not start. First of all, the battery was totally shot. We got a fresh one from Lance and tried again. It cranked, but would not fire. But after I bled the fuel lines it started right up. That brought a couple of hallelujahs, but they were brief. The machine ran at last, but it still did not generate electricity. Not only that, but the alternator was not charging the battery. I will need some special equipment to troubleshoot the generator, so that will have to wait for a future trip. The alternator is more straightforward and we can get by with a battery charger in the meantime. But at least we ran the engine and that was important after its long period of inactivity.
While we were there we spotted an emergency situation. The antenna consists of three wires that go up the sides of the tower and are held straight and kept away from the tower by a system of long insulators. The wires were held taught by metal rods in the ground under the wires and connected to them by insulators and turnbuckles. The metal rods were rusted so badly that one looked like it would break any day. I came up with a scheme to replace them and Ken implemented it beautifully while I worked on the generator.
Finally, as it was getting dark on our second and last day there, we started chipping away the rust on the base of the tower and finished painting it in the dark while the mosquitoes screamed in our ears trying to figure out how to get past our repellent.
We stumbled back to our room in the dark, showered, and went to supper. We got to the church about two-thirds of the way through the concert Tuesday night feeling completely wiped out after two extremely long, hot, and only partly successful days. But by the time Kevin, James, and Starla got done blessing every one, we felt pretty good. One of the best parts of both nights was the way Kevin would get someone from the audience up there to sing with them. The second night, it was a young lady who sings on the local TV station. I don’t think Kevin knew that and he really looked pleased at how she sounded with them. She asked if, after the concert, he would sign her Bible. I was visiting with Keven when she came to him with her Bible. As he was signing it, I noticed that she was crying. It was amazing how gracious and encouraging all three of them were and how wonderfully the audiences responded. We finally got back to the Utila Lighthouse Hotel after ten o’clock Tuesday night, needing to get up the next morning soon after five o’clock to catch the ferry. That night, we also learned that Lance and Jenny had insisted on paying for Ken’s and my room as well as the Spencers’ rooms. Wow!
We spent several hours in La Ceiba on the way home. I needed to get a new computer router for the radio station as well as several personal items. As we walked the streets of La Ceiba we noticed that the wind was really picking up. On the way back to Roatán, the Galaxy re-earned her nickname – “The Vomit Comet.” I was getting pretty queasy as we pulled into the dock in Dixon Cove here on Roatán but managed to keep my lunch where it belonged. Poor Ken, on the other hand, had a barfathon on the ride back. I’ve been on worse trips back from the coast, but this one was at least in the top five.
The pictures below are not quite chronological. I divided them into chapters that start with our travel to Utila on Monday morning, skip to the Monday night concert, move back to the tower work, generator work, tower painting, then move on to the Tuesday concert, and a few shots from the trip back. I hope that my next entry will have the story and some pictures of the felling of our old FM tower. It served us well for quite a few years.
We especially hope you will pray for us these days. The Silseths are away on furlough, and Mildred and I are bringing various projects to a conclusion, preparing for the arrival of new staff, and just dealing with the myriad of “stuff” Roatán throws our way. As a result, we are not getting much rest. Most weeks are six days long and each day runs between 10 and 12 hours. Last week we tried to take a day off. I managed to take the Andersons snorkeling last Friday, but as soon as we got back from our two-hour excursion the wheels came off here and Ken and I wound up working for the rest of the day that we had wanted to spend resting. We need to always remember that God will not give us more than we can bear. Pray that we would always “walk worthy of the calling with which we were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Eph. 4:1-3)
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