Dominican Mission Trip – Oct. 25-Nov. 1

            Our original team was to be seven members consisting of Brian Morrell a biologist who happens to be deaf, Randy Smith a fish and game warden, Jennifer Wells in Law Enforcement, Wes Moody, a retired A.C. technician, Darrin Miller sound technician, Roger Hoskins an electrical lighting dealer and myself, Rick Parr, a Building Inspector for the City of Yuma. I was the designated leader of this trip.

            On the Sunday before we left, Randy Smith went into the hospital for surgery, so he was out. Darrin Miller had to back out at the last minute for family or work reasons. So now our team shrank to five. Pastor Manolo from the D.R. had flown up to be our guest speaker on Sunday the 22^nd and would be flying back with us. No Problem.

            Wednesday @ 5:15 p.m. we met at the church office to load up and go. Pastor Sam prays for us and off we go to Phoenix Airport. Mark Flint was driving us there and stopped off to pick up Darrin Miller so that he would have some one to talk to on his way back. I was hoping that Darrin had changed his mind and was going, but no such luck.

            Mark dropped us off at the airport and bid us good bye. The flight from Phoenix to Newark N.J. was uneventful and I may have gotten 2-3 hours of sleep. We boarded our plane in Newark on time and off we go. No Problem…Not! Forty-five minutes into the flight, the captain comes on the speaker and said that he was having “an air pressure problem that he could not resolve and we will be flying back to Newark to change planes”. The captain also mentioned not to be alarmed to see fire trucks and other emergency equipment around us when we landed. At this point I said a little prayer, “please God let us land safely”. No Problem. Prayer answered.

            Safe on the ground we got off the plane and head to a gate that was about 30-40 gates away. Of coarse Brian did not hear the new gate number so I told him. One hour later we had a new plane and off we went again. We called Barry Burnett in Santiago and let him know our new arrival time. No Problem.

            During the last hour of the flight the flight attendants bring around our Visa paperwork that needs to be filled out. As I was filling mine out I got to the place where my passport number was to be written. I check my pocket and find no passport. I look around the floor and I do not see it. Problem! As we landed I walked to the back to the plane and I was going to wait till the area was clear and make a thorough check. The lady sitting in the window seat in my row found it under her feet. No Problem.

            We arrived in Santiago three hours late. It took another hour to get through customs and get ours bags. It is sprinkling and about 85 degrees. Barry and  Samuel meet us at the gate and we load up our bags in the back of a white Ford Ranger and the five of us get into Barry’s Toyota 4x4 SUV the same size as a Sequoia but it is a diesel. Manolo with Samuel and we drive to Barry’s house where we had some dinner waiting for us. There we made our coffee orders and Manolo told me that we would go to his house first to give Brian a surprise birthday party.

            Three cars head over the hill to Puerto Plata, Manolo’s Honda in the front with Wes, Samuel  with the luggage and me driving the Toyota in the rear. It was rush hour traffic in Santiago so I chose the white Ranger with the tail light out and kept on his tail all the way out of town. We arrived at Manolo’s house a little after 9:00 P.M, had our party and hustle back to the hotel to check in before the front desk closed. We got to our rooms by 11:00 and crashed.

            Friday morning day one in Puerto Plata, raining. We are at the dining room right on the ocean at 7:00 to the smell of fresh coffee and food. We ate , gathered our tools and were off to our wiring project by 8:00. I had seen the electrical panel the last time I was there at Easter time so I had an idea of what was to be done. I had not been up in the attic to see just how bad it was. At Primero Batista Iglesia, Manolo met us and we started planning where all of the lights and fans were to be placed. He also mentions that a third electrical meter was supposed to be here on Monday. The ceiling had been stripped of its wood paneling so all of the wiring was exposed. There was a false ceiling furred down about one foot below the original trusses. What a sight for sore eyes.

 There had been three rows of lights down the middle and some lights around the stage. All had been tagged up to the romex feeders down to the lower ceiling with 18ga. Wire with no boxes just tape. There was a clump of wiring connected to about 10 #12 red wires from the switch center and scattering from there.

 Wes started taking the panel cover off and removing the switch plates from the switches next to the panel. Roger and Jennifer made a list of how many boxes that we would need so I could make a trip to the local hardware store for parts. Brian and I took some of the local help and started building scaffolding with what they had. There were plenty of sections but there were only four 2x6 rough sawn planks that were long enough and two sheets of plywood to use to stand on. There were also two ladders, a relatively new 6’ aluminum and an ancient 12’ aluminum ladder that was so bad none of us would even dare crawl up it. I called Barry and asked if he could get us a new 12’ ladder and we would gladly buy it. No Problem. Roger, Jennifer and Brian started new runs of romex down the rows. Manolo and I went to the parts store and gathered parts and returned. It was only three blocks away and I would make this trip several more times each day for more parts. When I returned I got brave and stuffed the 12’ ladder up through the access hole and took a look. There was a 2” PVC conduit with about 50 wires coming out, some romex, some stranded single wires and some zip cord lamp wires. The attic floor had a single pair of wires running to each light and fan, then zip cord tapping into each wire and jumping from place to place. There the table type fans hanging on the walls with there cords going up from below with the plugs still attached and live wires attached and untaped. Crawling around up there I was getting shocked. It is a wonder how this place had made it this long without a fire!

Saturday morning still raining, we arrive and access the situation. Manolo was there and I told him I was not sure if we could get the lights up and running for a church service on Sunday but we would keep trying. He said “No Problem”, he could make other arrangements if needed. By the end of the day we had the sanctuary lights working, but the switches were still giving us some problems. You would turn one switch leg on and two wires would light up. Some switches would work and others would not. We cleaned up the sanctuary, put back the chairs and pews and stuffed as much wires back in the main panel box as possible and left.

Sunday morning no rain. We go to the church and as we walk in, the service panel makes a large arc sound  from somewhere behind the panel cover. Manolo’s wife, Mierta jumps up out of the pew. Barry is also there and he says that the panel does this all of the time. We decide then and there that a new service panel would make life much easier.

We divide up in small groups and Jennifer and I go to the kid’s class. I had brought Kazoos down and showed the kids how to use them. We went back up the main service at the end and played a song together for the congregation. We next went to a lawyer’s house that had been an agnostic and had hated all churches up until about two months earlier. There we had lunch and fellowship with about twenty of the church members. We went back to our hotel and kicked backed for the rest of the afternoon. At 6:00 P.M. we went back to the church for their main service. It was packed and very spirited.

Monday, rain again. The weather service says there is a tropical storm flooding Puerto Rico and the south side of the Dominican island. Barry says he will be coming back over the mountain to give us a hand but does not make it. Manolo shows and I go with him to get a new electrical panel. The largest panel available is a 125amp with no main breaker, so I decide to buy two and bought all the parts to put them one on top of the other. When I got back we removed the old panel only to find an old rusty panel behind with wires coming up from the bottom and heading to the down stairs and an out building. I start installing the upper panel and Wes started to cut back and extend the old wires in the rusted box so they would all look new. As I am working on the upper panel with all of the electricity turned off I get shocked from one of the zip cord wires. Where is this power coming from if all power is turned off? I call Manolo and he informs me that it might be from the inverter down stairs. Manolo shows me the inverter and I turn it off and the zip cord goes dead. Problem solved. We find a zip cord running through the wall at the corner of a window that runs up to the attic. Roger goes up in the attic and starts to pull out all of the tapped in wires. By the end of the day all of the ceiling fans were up and running and both panels were coming together.

Tuesday, still raining. We are supposed to get done today and have the next day off. By 12:00 both panels had power. Roger and Jennifer were running new romex along the top of the side walls and adding junction boxes where needed. There are two small rooms at the front corners of the sanctuary and Manolo wants switched lights over both. The one on the right is a small office and the one on the left was a stairway exit that was being used for storage. Let’s see, 250 people in the sanctuary two stairways with the doors opening in on the south heading down stairs and the other one blocked off by with misc. stored items. What’s wrong with this picture? I do think there may have been another stairway through the east side little office, but I did not go that far to check. Wes and I were still working on the switch wiring. We gave up and decide to just run fresh wires in and all color coded for identification Dominican electricians do not care about color codes so a white wire or a green wire may be hot and a colored wire may be the neutral. No Problem. We decided to work a little late so that the next day could be short, so we did not make it to the Haitian village of Munoz for their evening service.

I made reservations for dinner for Wednesday evening at the nice restaurant at our hotel for 7:30 p.m.. No Problem, we will have it done by noon  and enjoy the rest of the afternoon.

Wednesday, still raining and Barry had still not made it over the hill to bring our coffee that we had ordered. As we started working, the power company showed up with the new meter which was supposed to be for the school. I talked them into letting me have enough of their cable to get to the bottom of our new panel system. So now I had to split up the two 125 amp panels and get a second disconnect install. Another two hour delay. I swapped Wes in for Jennifer and we worked on the switches, while Roger and Wes repaired all of the attic wiring. When everything looked good we buttoned up the panels and celebrated. It was now 7:30 p.m.. We hurried home with all our tools and I ran down to the restaurant to beg for an extension of time for our dinner, they agreed to no later than 8:30. We made it, No Problem!!!

Thursday morning, not raining and the clouds are breaking up, we see sunshine at last. We grab breakfast and start loading up for our trip over the hill. Manolo bids us farewell and Wes rides with Samuel and I follow with the rest of the gang.

I had met the manager of the casino on Friday night and he had asked me where I was from and I told him Arizona. Great, ‘would it be possible for you to escort my daughter’s dog back to Phoenix where she was going to school?’ I told him that if he would make all of the arrangements that I would consider doing this. I was a little apprehensive about the request and one of the church members worked there at the hotel and I asked him if this guy was o.k. or not. Alan said he was good so I went back the next night and said I would give it a go, and that Alan from the church had said that he was o.k.. He asked which church we were working on and I told him. Sure enough he was at the airport with the dog in a traveler cage.

I had bought 48 bags of coffee and was running out of space in my bags so Jennifer loaned me a small carry on bag. With all of the distractions of the dog going, some how I left the bag in Santiago and we flew off without it. When I got to Newark the bag was nowhere to be found so I made a missing bag report.

We took off from the airport on to Phoenix with about an hour delay on the tarmac. We still made it to Phoenix within 20 minutes of our original time. Mark was there to pick us up. We finally made it to Yuma at about 1:00 a.m., early Friday morning.

Other than getting electrocuted a half a dozen times, I am no worse for the wear. Jennifer, Roger, Brian and Wes all got a little sick while we were there but we all survived to live another day. We can’t wait for our next adventure to the Dominican Republic and we will be ready for whatever they throw our way.