Fire!

Please read this so I don’t have to repeat it.

The fire at Nick and Jocelyn’s electrical box destroyed all of the insides – melted plastic everywhere – and it was a box Matthew had just completed two months ago right after they moved in.  Matthew and I realized that some of you might think it was because of something Matthew had done or not done.  Matthew readily admits that something could have been done incorrectly in his work, but I want to be clear: the power in the country is not clean or constant and the fire was most definitely something caused by the power coming in.

The voltage varies greatly.  Some days the 220v power comes in at 250v, which can cause things to explode (and has!) and other days it trickles in under 100v…causing things to not work.  But, more often, the voltage just goes back and forth throughout the day, which is why all of our appliances and electronics are safest when connected to a voltage stabilizer (which is probably self-explanatory).

As Jocelyn mentions in her post, there was a small explosion fire outside along the road in front of her neighbor’s house just before their box caught fire.  No doubt the two things are connected.  The power lines here are supposed to be the buried kind, versus the power lines on poles, but they’re mostly just the laid-in-the-dirt-on-the-side-of-the-road kind; hence the numerous outages and problems.

The rain all day Monday probably had something to do with the tiny explosion, which probably had something to do with the fire in the box.  And in the end, SNEL will not provide the funds to cover the repairs.  And then we could go on to discuss the politics and economic policies of this country…but let’s not for today, okay?

So, after a 12-hour power outage yesterday (the new normal for the past few weeks), we were quite surprised when the power went off again late last night.  When the power goes off at night at our house, it almost always indicates something broke (versus the “normal” outages, which are SNEL’s attempt to save (hoard) money by power sharing – again with the economics here…blah blah blah).  And we looked across the street to see that those neighbors still had their power, confirming that something indeed had broken.  So, we went to bed and called our contact at SNEL this morning.

The cabine had caught fire.  It was a small fire, but still…more voltage problems.  The voltage the past few days has been very poor, lights dimming and even rolling brown-outs during the day, so this really didn’t surprise us.  Oh, SNEL, what shall we do with you?

Our contact is a good guy and fixed it temporarily and had our power back on by 8am or so, but while I was writing this post two hours later, it went off again…which probably means he’s fixing it.  Yay!  Or it could be the start of our daily 12-hour outage.  Boo.  (Edit: Power was on exactly five hours later – sweet!)

Oh, and want to know of a small miracle from this very morning?  Since the power had been out all night, this morning we turned on our generator to cool the fridges and what not.  I soon smelled gas in the kitchen, which is the closest room in the house to the generator room outside.  Matthew smelled it too and went to investigate.  Apparently, the generator had somehow learned to dance across the room and landed next to a gas jug, which is plastic.  The hot exhaust had melted a hole in the side.  We are praising God that this particular jug had been EMPTY!  Otherwise, this fire post would have ended a little differently…

In a side note, please pray for the team here.  We feel under attack lately – everything is breaking or coming apart, and these fires are an example.  Whatever we’re doing, though we cannot necessarily see it, Satan is pretty determined to make sure it’s difficult.  Each family is going through something hard or stressful, something in their home is broken or breaking, some husbands are away in the US for training for extended periods, and some are feeling overwhelmed or stressed.  Satan’s efforts to discourage us will be better fought with prayer and encouragement from you all!  We know the Lord will prevail and we are far from losing hope, but to know you’re praying for us here would lift our spirits.  Thanks!