Newsletter from Nicaragua for our family

Dear Family and Friends,
Several wonderful things have happened with us lately. The most amazing is that we now have full time high-speed Internet at our house here in Tronquera! It took a week of work checking land contours, an hour of flying the plane checking signals, and then it took 2 days to cut a trail into the jungle to the top of a hill, where we put a repeater. Finally, it took a week of living deep in the jungle with 10 local guys building a 25 foot tower.  It relays the signal from our nearest town 12 miles away, to us another 4 miles from the tower. The people were happy to have the work, and it was a nice challenge to build a tower on top of a solid rock with 50 foot drops on 2 sides. Pictures are on our web site under photos, family.
We have done a mobile clinic in Lapan lately, and also in our local village of Tronquera and nearby Santa Rita. We saw 64 people in Lapan, a place that is very hard to access by road. The people were very happy and appreciated the airplane.
The airplane is keeping busy with emergency flights. We flew 2 pregnant ladies out of Lapan, and one lady with pregnancy complications from Waspam to Port. I am currently working on setting up better radio communication for Lapan.
Our runway inspection of all the runways went OK for Lapan and Tronquera, but San Carlos, the main place that needs our help, did not pass the 6 month inspection. We will inspect them again in another couple months. The people there did not keep the runway in good shape, in spite of a meeting I had with the leaders telling them the inspector was coming.
One of the best things that has happened to us, is we have an English speaking doctor with a nurse wife who took their training in Mexico living next to us at the Tasba Raya Clinic in Francis Sirpi.  They have agreed to work with us for a few days every month. Since they know good Spanish, and are a doctor nurse team, and know English, they will be a very valuable asset. We will be able to run a much more regular program in several remote villages with regular clinics to help us work to prevent emergencies.
This coming month as Christmas comes, we plan to distribute some food to the local villages. This area has been hard hit by the hurricane flooding, it wiped out the crops on all the edges of the river.
Currently we have been blessed with funding for a hangar, and that is my priority project to get finished. It will be wonderful to get the plane out of the elements. I have been working on getting this done for almost a year now and I finally see it is able to be finished.
We have broken ground on a widows house. It will have a pad of 20 x 35 feet and the house will be 20 x 25 out of cement. We hope to start pouring the floor in January.
We thank you all for your continued prayers and support. We are thrilled to have better communication now that we have Internet. Especially Marilyn being able to speak with her family daily has been a wonderful blessing.
Merry Christmas to all!
Clint and Marilyn

--
Wings Over Nicaragua
Clint and Marilyn Hanley
Web: www.wingsovernicaragua.org
Email: hanley@softhome.net