Don't Make Me Get the Chainsaw!

As you may know, part of how our campus at BMMC functions with building projects is by providing its own lumber. We have a skilled lumber man named Oswald that works for us full time. He is kept busy fetching and cutting wood for various projects. For all you environmentalists out there, you will be happy (happier) to know the he is definitely not clear-cutting our beautiful jungle. In fact, Michael has gone out with him a couple times to find trees and it has taken literally all day to bring back one log. They drive the huge tractor deep into the jungle, locate a choice tree, cut it, and haul it back by chain behind the tractor.

As you can imagine, being gone all day and only coming home with one log can be a bit discouraging. That is why we recently purchased a log trailer that should be able to hold 3-4 logs on it at a time. This will save around $100 per trip in fuel and also 2 days worth of work, so we are very pleased about it. They've made 3 trips so far and it has performed well, although they had to reweld a portion and change the wheel bearings. We bought the trailer on the condition that we would be payed back in lumber for our treehouse. It's going to be a little while before we can start that project though.

The current project that this lumber is going toward is the mission house we will be building in Mashabo. Last year BMMC had a large wood mizer sawmill donated to the cause. It is used to cut whole logs into boards. The wood mizer uses bandsaw style blades, think of a hula hoop with teeth, that stand as tall as I do, and though we have several blades to work with, they get dulled fairly quickly. That is why they are training me to sharpen them. I will write more on that a little later with pictures, but let me just say that until I learn it, it is a rather dangerous job for me. Luckily I have only cut myself open once. No biggie! :)

Speaking of building things in Mashabo, we have some more good news. Gilbert got together with several of the SDA leaders in Mashabo yesterday and talked over a formal proposal he had of building a church. As I understand it, this will be one of the school's mission projects. The villagers were very excited about the prospect and have offered to go out and cut all the logs for the church and even some for our mission house. They will then be cut at the campus on the wood mizer. This will save Oswald a huge amount of time as he will be able to focus his energy on cutting and preparing the lumber.

Michael build a little drying rack this week to help keep the lumber in good condition. Basically when boards get cut they just throw them into unruly piles. As such, there are a lot of boards that are almost unusable because they get so warped. Michael's rack will at least give the wood a chance to start to dry on a level surface. This is going to be important because they're going to be using the woodshop to mill all the floorboards and wallboards.

It's amazing how much goes into these projects! I so admire the patience and strength that goes into everything. Hopefully it won't be too much longer before I am writing about these promised buildings going up.