Those who have been around for this year especially, and for a while, know we share about these pesky issues, and our poor vehicles that make the trips and sometimes don't make it back.  

In the not-great picture above taken by our customs agent, you can see the next step forward: we have purchased a new Land Cruiser pickup to help the farms/moving material work!   

This one will be for Sampedrana primarily.  The white 2000 F-250 we have for that farm...has been down almost all year with problems.  This Land Cruiser should last 20 years or more with good care, and given the global craziness, we were fortunate to be able to get a new one, and even fully optioned (for us...that means a winch, cow catcher, and other safety equipment) will be about $35,000 all told.  

We have been saving what we can from people drinking coffee, but we are still about $17,000 short of having this fully funded.  We have been using our group vehicles to help with this, but that isn't helping us maintain those vehicles for when we have groups!  

Want to donate to help us pay this off?  It will be coming home this week, so it will be working while we figure out how to balance the books, but given the options available, this was by far the clear winner on all fronts. 

If you have questions about the backstory of how we could get this with supply chain issues, want to know why this is the best overall option, what it is equipped with that makes it great for this use, or anything else...please send me an email!  

If you want to donate though to help us get this funded and take a load of our minds, click here to help!

Where did I leave off?  We are in Columbus Ohio currently, getting ready for several days of ICOM (International Conference on Missions) and then next week to new ground for us, the GMHC (Global Medical Health Conference) and I wanted to give an update...but not comprehensive, as praise God, that would just be too much stuff to fit in one blog post.  

vehicle woes continue, which is a pain...but a good pain.  We are driving so much, doing so much with the churches, that unfortunately this is just a byproduct of that.  If we stayed put more, less issues.  Sure, some of the trucks are getting older, and we are working on some replacement plans, but for now, I get excited seeing that the funds have come in for the new clinic construction in Sampedrana (almost done) and Las Botijas (just starting) and the road work.  If we worked in parts of the country that were already well established...we wouldn't have these issues.  But we are working in areas that are largely forgotten by the government and everyone else.  

We are trying to help build something bigger than us, than the areas we serve.