Work before the Welding

Jeyson loves welding and is constantly looking for opportunities to serve and improve his welding skills at the same time. He has received some incredible gifts of welding equipment and has been putting them to use, both around the hangar and in other ministry opportunities that have come up. Last weekend he even had the chance to take this portable welder to the director of Asas's house to weld his metal gate door which had fallen off....which had made it impossible to go out the normal door of the house! Now it's all back to normal.

And in between working on the latest plane that arrived in Anapolis from the Boa Vista, his trip to the north, and taking care of his exhausted pregnant wife :) he has been gearing up to begin TIG welding. Jeyson never ceases to amaze me on how thorough and careful he is. I tend to be impulsive, but Jeyson always makes sure he does a good job preparing for a project before digging in so he can do it better. Beginning TIG welding has been no different - even here in Brazil where everything takes a lot longer to begin with since we can't use the internet to shop around like in the States. The first step was buying an argon tank. After LOTS of in person shopping around the mom and pop shops here for the lowest possible price, (then some saving up for it ;) we made the purchase.

Then, he modified this little cart to hold it on, and that part of the equipment is in business.

Jeyson also welded himself a little metal table which he'll use for practicing TIG welding, and ordered from the States a special plug that they don't have here that he could use to make his own extension cord so the machine could be plugged in. (the outlets are different here, and the only one that fits the welder is far away)

In the meantime, Jeyson is constantly reading the manual, watching instructional videos, and joined a welding forum where he can get more feedback on some things. Then, we made a special trip to a store an hour away from us to try to pick up some special electrodes. We went to the biggest, specialty welding store around (it even said they had EVERYTHING on the sign out front :) Sadly, they didn't have the one item we came for in stock, and even crazier, no on the in the store had even heard of it before! They had Jeyson get on the phone with the distributor and they are trying to order some into the store. Talk about some serious, thorough prep-work!

On a funny side note, when we were at the welding store in Goiania, (this is a store that ONLY sells welding equipment) there were a couple of guys on a ladder welding part of the storefront that had broken. Ironically, even though the store was filled with safety gear, the men were using none of it! And even though there were helmets all over, they were just using little cardboard visors to block their eyes. hahaha! All you can say is WELCOME TO BRAZIL! Obviously these guys didn't put as much thought and care into their welding prep as Jeyson :)