Internet Praise.

Getting internet to our house has been no small task, trying since about Sept. of '18 when we moved and had our old system sent from our old home at Port Margot.

Yesterday morning the winds started picking up around 3 am, sometimes with enough force to make the house shudder. Morning prayers and then breakfast just after sunrise.  Breakfast choices: grapefruit, banana, cold corn-mush or sweet potato casserole [corn and sweet potatoes grown on this land] or cornflakes. 

By 7:45 Fritzlin was sitting on a short washing chair behind the house trying to hold his paper in the wind to do his school work. 

Cement delivery

Cory was at the satellite dish trying to adjust it while I sat on a chair near the house reading off the ever changing numbers of the computer that show signal strength or polarization check. The wind took off Cory’s hat once and threw it in Fritzlin’s direction. I’m dressed multi-layered as the wind is cold, but thankfully unlike the other days this week the sky is clear of clouds.

At 8:15 Kona alerts us of folks coming and we take a break to welcome the worker and donkey who carried two bags of cement up from the village this morning for the pond project. There was some more talk since cost turned out to be higher but still seemed fair.

Shim added due to small pole

Then we return back to pointing the satellite dish. Numbers and numbers and more numbers jumping up and down, back and forth. Hopes rising with the ‘pass’ that accompanies numbers 60 and above..but diving when the numbers fall into the 50’s, 40’s, 30’s and even below. 

Some timeouts to deal with our reluctant student, working on character development as much as math and spelling.

Add some tape to adjust the antenna angle, take off tape, add it again, straighten one of the three metal bars that had a slight bend, and then a metal stake to prop up the transmitter to adjust it to the correct location. Seems something warped during the past decade or so under the hot caribbean sun.

Then a steady "PASS", we changed it from manual to automatic and see the lovely word PASS. New steps and then a phone call to get our account numbers. "Call back in 15 minutes".

Dish angle adjuster screw was rusted and broke

Now that it is past noon we quickly cook some rice and a white sauce to add to some leftover vegetables. Then a repeat phone call for the information. Information in hand we try the last page.

In a measure of good hope, I cleared a spot on the the shelf where the modem will sit so we can have internet in the house. 

We put in the numbers and then…hit a snag. The next page will not come up like we were told to expect. We try it a few times. We turn things off. We refresh the modem, we notice that the old information is still on the modem page. Cory makes another call to Houston…’we have a problem’.

2 p.m. still waiting to see if the guy in Houston who needed to call HughesNet can get things straightened out for us. 

Working, with a metal pole support to tweak the transmitter angle.

2:45 got the call and tried again. No change so Cory hiked to the far internet spot with our Windows laptop to download the old Internet Explorer so we could connect. This old equipment can't be registered using the newer Edge browser. He checked our emails just incase the dish doesn't work. 

He returned after 4pm and started to work on getting the modem programming downloaded. He knocked a small hole under the tin roof for the cables to come into the house. Shortly after 5 we all rejoiced to finally have internet in the house!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

 Enjoyed chatting with family after supper from the comfort of our own living room! Received health updates of friends and family, answered some tax questions for Eli, connected with Anna briefly, learned some agricultural information and checked on the weather. 

Then right before we signed off for the night we noticed our neighbors had a green light on their Facebook. They too were celebrating having just gotten connected to internet in their house! They have phone signal close to their house and installed a phone signal booster. Our very first chat couch to couch. 

Looking forward to staying in touch better; being able to look up answers to school questions; maybe taking an on-line course, checking radar… We know there will be days of weather outages but we would have had that problem hiking to the other site as well.  Now we have that as a back-up system, and are very thankful for the new one. Thank you for everyone who’s prayed over the years.