Bethel Hospital

Dear blog friends,

I´m ashamed to even write after so long. For what it is worth, I have tried many times. Maybe today is the magic try. I have to drive into the city and find an Internet cafe where there is a "system" up and running. It is usually a 3 or 4 hour process and that kind of time is hard to come by these days.

It is winter-time in the Andes and it has been a strange Winter. We have had heavy snows (5O Cm once) and then whole weeks where it has been cold (teens and twentys at night and up to forty in the day) but no wind. Not only is no wind unusual, July was my first month on only the turbine. With a turbine, no wind means no electric!! We have a four-battery storage system (200 amps) and that runs out quickly. As soon as we can find the sulfuric acid (hard to come by because it is an ingredient in the process of making cocaine) to fill them, we will add four more that will bring the amperage up to 1000 or more so we should be able to go longer without wind. It is a wonderful system as long as it keeps whirling! All the construction workers have learned to keep their eyes on the turbine up on the hill. If it is whirling, they can plug the cement-mixer, the ceramic cutters, the drills, etc. into that system. If the blades are still, out comes the generator. Pray for us to use this wonderful gift correctly! Judy