Radio Broadcasting from The Bay Islands of Honduras.

Battery Week at HRGS

by Jerry on August 15, 2009

What a week! It seems like it wanted to revolve around batteries. As you know, we have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Ken and Karen Anderson. They got here right on time Tuesday with their luggage – always a nice surprise these days. But I was a little late getting there to pick them up. Since our truck was in the shop, I planned to use Peter and Sandi’s truck and then, when ours was done, to leave the Silseth vehicle in the shop and bring ours home. But Murphy hijacked our plans. When I tried to go to the airport, the Silseth’s starter just went “click, click, click.” I borrowed the battery from the generator to see if I could start it that way. Nope; same thing. By then, I’d seen the plane carrying the Andersons go sailing over my head toward the airport. I stashed everything away and headed for the road to try to hail a taxi. The little white cars that normally choke our streets and roads were mysteriously absent, so while I waited, I called our neighbor, Dr. Solomon. He was happy to take me to the airport and bring us back, so the Andersons only had to wait a few minutes.

When we got back here, I put the battery back on the generator – just in time, because the power went out only a few minutes later. The power has been off a lot lately and we are going through a lot of diesel fuel staying on the air.

Ken and I have been working on all sorts of projects around here. I won’t bore you with a list. We plan to go to Utila Monday for a few days to work on some stuff over there, so please pray that everything here runs well while we are gone. Mildred is not real good at fixing generators or troubleshooting transmitter power supplies. And she has had way too much work to do with the Silseths gone, so Karen has been a great help to her.

Southern gospel has always been highly a very popular musical style here. If you enjoy that genre you have probably heard Kevin Spencer and Friends. We play a lot of their songs on HRGS and our listeners ask for them often. They are doing a concert tour of Roatán, Utila, and La Ceiba this week and next. Kevin, James, and Starla were good enough to stop by our studios Thursday. Since they were running behind schedule we all just visited a few minutes and then James and Starla went ahead to set up for that night’s concert. Kevin and I went to a studio and continued our conversation in front of microphones and then I gave him a ride to the church so he could catch up with the others. Our interview ran just over 14 minutes and it’s at the bottom of this page if you’d like to listen. I’m excited with Kevin’s servant heart. I had to keep redirecting the interview to their ministry because he kept turning it toward ours.

Thursday was supposed to be our day off, but I wound up working about 12 hours instead. Since we did not get a day off last week, I was determined to relax on Friday. You know where this is going, don’t you? While Mildred stayed here to keep us on the air, I took Ken and Karen to the beach Friday morning and we had a great couple of hours there. It was pretty crowded with all the cruise ship passengers and Ken wanted to get some more work done here, so we did our snorkeling and got out. But at least I was able to get some pictures this time and Ken and I explored a part of the reef I had never visited before. The batteries went bad on my underwater camera a few weeks ago so I ordered new ones from the States and they arrived on Monday, just in time for the snorkeling trip.

When we got back from the beach, Ken and I went up to Dixon Hill to get a few things we would be needing for projects around here. About the time we got there, Mildred called me to tell me that the electricity was off once again, and this time the generator would not start. Ken and I hurried back to find an apparently dead battery on the generator. I drove our truck back to the shop to jump the generator but in trying to start the generator it somehow ran down the truck battery. I was wondering then if there was such a thing as a battery virus because we had triple-checked the connections to make sure we didn’t damage anything in jump starting the generator. We eventually got both engines going, and today, on Saturday, I’m looking into a new battery for the generator and found out we have a bad alternator on the truck.

I didn’t know yet that we had a bad alternator when we went to the Kevin Spencer concert last night. It was a terrific evening of worship, but when we tried to go home, the only thing that happened when I turned the key was that the dash lights went out. I had jumper cables and a good Samaritan gave us a boost so we could get home. Now Peter’s truck is in the shop and so is ours. Our friend Mark Elwin loaned us a very nice truck to use until we get our own back, hopefully early next week.

So, that’s our week – the week of the batteries. It was such a busy week, that I made two picture galleries – one of snorkeling and one of Kevin Spencer and Friends. There were many more “Nikon moments” this week, but not enough time to share them all. I hope you enjoy the pictures and the interview below. God bless you and thank you for praying for us.

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