Update - July 23

july 23

juan:

Hi guys, get ready for a geeky blog entry! The past few days have been very busy. The Bishop got word that I know the UNIX O/S and appointed me the 'LINUX EXPERT', which is a laugh. They are running Linux Fidora 9, because hey, it's free. The hospital keeps most of its records manually on spreadsheets (a real pain). A couple of years ago, they contracted a local software company to create a hosptial administration system for them, but it is not in production due to bugs and also due to a needed linux upgrade. Needless to say, everyone has been waiting for this to go into production, but the expertise here is limited. So last night, the software company, the IT team, as well as a Godsend named John from Egypt and Christine and myself were upgrading linux and installing the new version of the software. It was challenging, but it was fun and we all learned a lot. We were up until 3am and successfully completed the job. We rock! John is very skilled at building networks, so he is going to teach us and help us improve the existing network because it's crazy slow. He is also going to setup an Exchange email server so that the compound can have internal mail, another much needed tool. I can't wait to learn all these new things. Geek alert!

Their linux system is quite neat. There is one server, and everyone has these 'thin clients' which are the size of a typical router and are nothing more that mouse, keyboard and monitor ports to interface with the linux terminal server. So everyone shares the server. I've heard a lot of complaints that the system is slow. I have been monitoring the system and have found processes that typically take 100% of the CPU and remain indefinitely. I have written some scripts to manage this and hope to find or turn on some kind of system monitoring tools. The IT team doesn't know linux very well. They have struggled to support it. Hopefully I can teach them a few things to help them out.

On the missionary side of things, we are getting more and more comfortable here. I am beginning to enjoy the visitations more and more. I like yapping about my beloved friend Jesus. Quiet time is a struggle. I still find I'm half asleep during it, but I expect it to get better. The cooks here are amazing. Every meal is delicious.

One of the guys has found out that I brought an international driver's license. I had no real intention of using it. He wants me to start to drive, which scares me a lot because the traffic here is crazy, there are no rules, you have to be a bit aggressive (which I'm not), you drive on the other side of the car and on the other side of the road. I expressed my cowardice and hope they don't make me do it. The reason they want me to get comfortable driving is that they recently lost a driver (how irresponsible) and need a replacement. This is for driving the group to do
visitations. We'll see. I have a real gift for avoiding work :)

Vinny, your comment was hilarious bro! It made my day. You have a heart of gold my friend.

Winn, we don't have our own internet connection, so skype is difficult. Best to keep our converstations in email or blog form. We thought we would have internet, but we don't. We have to walk to a nearby internet cafe or use one of the computers in the lab. Thanks for your comment bud. Keep them coming :)

We really appreciate your blog comments. Please continue to write them. We miss you all. Keep us in your prayers, as we keep you in ours.

Please pray for a lady name Beatrice, who is struggling to feed herself and her children. God Bless.