Saturday, July 18th

It's Saturday and, contrary to our original plans, the team was back at the school early to work. Originally, this was to be a day off for sight-seeing and playing. But several jobs remained to be completed and everyone was determined to get them done.

For several reasons, our curtain-sewing department, in particular, and was feeling the pressure and were anxious about the success of their mission.

The sheer material was difficult to work with. The sewing machine on loan had some definite functional limitations. The number of windows that needed to be completed, 27, was substantial.

After 3 days of designing, measuring, and cutting, only 3 curtains had been completed. The girls were concerned, to say the least.

And then, Saturday morning, something happened. Something clicked and everything started to fall into place. By early afternoon ALL of the curtains had been sewn and hung!

And there was great rejoicing!

Meanwhile, Ron and Steve finished the tables and they look FANTASTIC, exceeding everyone's expectations:


The office remodel was coming together, too. The walls are finished and the guys were getting the doors hung. The biggest part of this was the sliding door on what was to be Mercy's office. It was designed by Scott and mostly built by him, Billy, and Andres, with occasional help from Ron and Steve, too.






Meanwhile, Barry and Carl had run into some trouble. Most of the computer wiring had been pulled, the router was installed, and the wireless was hooked up. Everything tested out and all of the components seemed to be communicating properly. There was just one problem - the internet didn't work! After several hours of troubleshooting and second-guessing, Carl had eliminated all of the obvious possibilities inside the building (our wiring was good!) and we had to conclude that there must be something wrong with the DSL/telephone line coming into the building, or some issue at the ISP provider's office.

So we had to call in an expert.


This is Camilo. He works for Microsoft here in Bogota, teaching advanced classes in various aspects of networking, online security, system design, and several other advanced areas of information technology. He is a for-real, super-smart, certified computer expert with extensive credentials to prove it. He was also an extraordinarily gracious and patient man and we couldn't have asked for any better help.

Unfotunately, after running his own battery of tests, Camilo couldn't find the problem either...which actually made Carl and Barry feel somewhat better.


So, after concluding that it was likely an issue with the telephone company, Carl, Steve, and Barry set out to finish all of the wiring as best we could and trust that the Lord would fix the internet on Tuesday, the next business day. (On Thursday, the 23rd, we received confirmation that the telephone company DID fix the problem and the Institute is online again!!!)


We then packed up all of our tools and headed back to the hotel. We were all going out to supper that evening to celebrate our last day of work at the school! Our hosts were taking us to one of Pastor Jose's favorite restaurants for the best hamborguesa in Colombia. So we got cleaned up quickly and reassembled in the lobby of Hotel Lord.


The restaurant, called El Corral, was in a very large mall in a different section of town. The burgers were truly huge and delicious, and a good time was had by all.