Greetings. In our last update we said, “Sometime in the next few days Mahan will drive the Hilux to the Land Transportation Office to renew the registration. Please PRAY for good weather and a dry road as it is difficult and sometimes even impossible to travel on our road in wet weather. Also please PRAY that everything will go well with the emissions testing and all of the things that will need to be completed at the LTO in order to renew the registration.”
It rained very hard much of the night before the day (Thursday) that Mahan planned to travel to the Land Transportation Office (LTO). He planned to leave the village at 4am, but we asked him to wait until 8:30 to see what the weather was going to do. By that time the river was down enough so the truck could cross it. Mahan apparently did a great job driving though the slippery, slimy mud for hours. He, his wife, a helper, and two people who went in order to get x-rayed to see if they have TB arrived at the town where the LTO is at mid- afternoon five and one half hours after leaving our village. An average of 12 miles per hour. Not bad considering the road they traveled on before they reached pavement.
The emissions testing went well. Then Mahan went to buy insurance which is required for registration. Both insurance agents in the town said that they would not sell him insurance that day but to return on Tuesday the following week! One agent suggested that he leave all the registration paperwork and money with him, and the following week he would go to the LTO and complete the registration so when Mahan returned that week the registration would be all done. A lot of money was involved – the cost of the insurance, the cost of the registration, and a large penalty because we were late in renewing it because of our not being here in the village because of Gene’s stroke and pacemaker implant. So, Mahan left the papers and money with the agent.
Mahan sent us a text message about it and Gene asked him to go back to the agent and retrieve everything because we had no idea if the agent could be trusted. Mahan returned to the agents office at 4:15 and it was already closed. Not a good sign.
They all stayed overnight in the town, and the next day Mahan returned to the agent. He sold Mahan the insurance right away! The next fly in the ointment was that the emissions people put the wrong color for the truck on their paperwork so Mahan had to return to them to get that fixed. But, finally, the registration was completed. But, the LTO did not include a new CR (title) with the paperwork – the need for a new one having held up the renewal for weeks! We’ll just have to see how it all goes next year without a proper title in hand. Oh, the LTO was also all out of this year’s stickers to put on the license plates. But, that is a common occurrence so no worries.
Thanks for praying, it is a real relief to have the registration renewal finally completed. It all has to be done again next August.
In a few days we will be flying out to our NTM guesthouse in town and then in January we plan to proceed to the city where we have dental appointments, appointments with both cardiologist, appearance at the immigration office, and we have buying of three months worth of supplies to do.
We PRAISE the Lord that He has given us the strength to finish the final revision of all 66 lessons of the evangelical phases of the Manubu’ teaching program. The files have all been converted to PDF files and are ready for a copy center in the city to make many reams of xeroxed copies.
Please PRAY for good flying weather so we can fly out and also good flying weather to fly back in in January. It has been known to begin raining here at the end of December and continue nearly 24 hours per day until the middle of March!