The Early Bird Catches the Conjunction

I've been watching Venus and Saturn in the pre-dawn sky. Saturn was just below Venus this morning, but should pass by and be higher than Venus tomorrow morning.

If you click on this picture, you can see Castor and Pollux, the Gemini twins, on the left side. On the right are Saturn and brighter Venus. I shot this at 4:40 am. but could still easily see these stars and planets at 5:30. The sky might be too bright at 5:30 where you live.


Here is a web page that tells about what the planets are up to these days. What I have been seeing here on Bonaire is not what this site says I should be seeing. It is probably due to the fact that they are showing what the planets look like from up North and I'm in the tropics.

Kibrahacha Trees in Bloom (again)

The heavy rains last Saturday caused many Kibrahacha trees to bloom this week. I hopped in our trusty Maruki and checked them out. It appears that the trees that bloomed in May didn't bloom much this time and the trees that didn't do much in May, did their thing now.

This is pretty much the same shot as you can see in my May 26 posting.
The tree on the left was real colorful last time and the one on the right was pretty bare. This time the one on the right has the flowers and the one on the left is more sparse.


Here are some more trees and a nice carpet of blossoms on the ground.


This one is for cousin Bud, who has a thing for prickly pear cactus.

More 40th Anniversary Pix Added

The Club Photo site seems to be working fine now.

I've added more pictures from the Friday and Saturday activities to the first album.

And I've created a second album with pix from the Sunday service of celebration.

You can click on the thumbnails to see the pictures, and then you can click on the pictures to see even bigger versions of them.

TWR Tenpins

The Bonaire business bowling league has started back up. There is a web site where you can see all the teams that are involved. They even are posting the scores, but ours isn't up yet as I write this.

Here is a look at the six lanes.


We faced off against one of the two teams from the Papa Cornes school. You will note that we need uniforms, hint-hint.


As others are happily bowling away, Maggie Fuller is looking for her ball that the machine ate.


The house logo.


Sandra usually averages 80. She outdid herself last night after a brief coaching session with her father. Click on the picture to make it bigger.


The bowling league is a good way to get out in the community and visit with people, like we used to do in the volleyball league back in the days when we were young and healthy.

Training Pastors in the Caribbean

A man, originally from Jamaica recently wrote to the Thru the Bible radio program. This longtime TWR ministry partner produces a Bible survey series that covers the entire Bible over a five year period. TTB began in English, was first produced in Spanish here on Bonaire in the 70's, and is now on the air worldwide in over 100 languages.

Anyway, this fellow, who has been listening since the 70's had this to say, "Many of my friends in the Caribbean, who have not had the privilege of attending Bible Colleges, have used your program, with the outlines you provide, to study and to educate themselves in God's word. Therefore your program serves as a Bible school training center for many who are in the ministry."

Club Photo not working Tue

I uploaded a bunch of pictures to my Club Photo site last night. When I went in this morning to organize them, none of they would display.
I then checked out lots of other albums both at home and here at work, and lo and behold, no ones photos are visible.
So don't feel bad if you can't see my photo albums right now. It looks like no one can see anyone's photos.

TWR in the Newspapers

Well, we are coming back down to earth after the big 40th Anniversary weekend. I'm in my office importing Spanish, Macuxi, and Baniua radio programs into our automation system file folders and database.
That takes time, so I'm blogging!

The Dutch language newspaper, Amigo, had a story and pictures on Friday, about the TWR Bonaire 40th anniversary.

The Papiamentu paper, Extra, had a story and three pages of pictures in the Saturday edition. You can view or download the Extra at their website. This Saturday edition is about a 6 meg. PDF file. Bonaire alumni should check it out. You might see yourself!

Today's Extra (Monday) has two more pages of great coverage as well as a full page photo on the cover. As I write this, the Monday edition isn't posted on the website yet, but I'm sure it will be there soon.

Sunday Morning

I woke up to wet roads and no wind this morning. That was almost enough to lure me out for a road bike ride. But I'd probably have hurt my achilles trying to go fast, and I usually don't ride before church on sundays, because its too hot in the Activities Building for me to cool down.

So I did some work on my pictures of the TWR 40th anniversary activities.



I've posted a bunch of them on our Club Photo site. I'll add captions as well as more pictures soon.

Achilles Update and Tropical Wave

After two weeks, my achilles tendon injury is healing well. I've done a lot of hanging out watching the olympics on TV with my foot resting on an ice pack.

I rode to work on Wed. without pain, it's less than a mile each way, and then I went for an easy ride on Friday afternoon. I got up bright and early on Saturday to have a go at a longer ride and wouldn't you know it, right when I got outside the rain started pouring down.

That big orange and red blob just above South America is a tropical wave the is passing over us. There isn't too much wind, but there is rain and some lightning in the South. I'll be unplugging all our appliances and electronics soon if it gets closer.

Friday Night Fun

We kicked off the anniversary weekend with some food and fellowship in the activities building. The Tuckers and Tom Corcoran joined us after they arrived on American Eagle at 8pm.


We chowed down on veggies and Bonairian snacks like pastechis, and croquettes.


Here we see Grandmas Lusse and Mial catching up on the latest photos.


Jon Savage led us in some rousing choruses. You can tell Jon is an accomplished guitarist, 'cause he can play with his eyes closed.


Rich Fuller, our fearless leader, read us some greetings from our regional partners.

My Office

Knowing that people might be touring the studios and offices today, gave me the incentive I needed to finally get some pictures hung on the walls of my office.

If you click on the picture to see it bigger, you will be able to see items of interest such as: computer training books, autographed bat and baseballs, 1960's era Yankees pennant, old bike wheel, and a microfiche reader for perusing Suzuki Samurai dealer parts books.

Memory Lane

Berni Lusse and Susie Milgate have assembled photo panels with pictures of the TWR of yesteryear.

They are in the studio lobby for the 40th anniversary celebration and will stay there after that.

I have photos of each of these panels on my club photo site. I left the photos at a very high resolution, so if you have Internet Explorer set to NOT auto resize the pictures, you will be able to scroll around and see the individual pictures on these panels.

Sandra has put scans of some of these archival photos on the TWR Bonaire web site, so you can see them full size. There are links to them from the home page.

Bonaire Youth rally

Oops, I hit the enter key prematurely and got some of these pictures out of order. But if you scroll down, you'll get the whole story eventually.

About 90 young people came to the youth rally. They did a great job decorating the building with a watersports theme.

The young people sat on giant driftwood logs, when they weren't standing to sing.

Snacks were available after the rally.
Don't forget, you can click on these pictures to make them bigger so you can identify friends, loved ones, and others.

The next morning when I came in to set up the sound system for church, all evidence of the rally was gone. One would never have suspected that the building had been transformed into a windsurfing beach 8 hours earlier. Rumor has it that some of the cleanup crew was there until 4 am.

(this is the part that was supposed to lead off this story)
School is starting back up here on Bonaire. A few local churches got together and held a youth rally saturday evening at the TWR activities building.

Three local pastors did the speaking and Dennis Martinus organized the music. Here is the band. 

TWR - Bonaire Celebrates 40 Years this Week

The weekend of August 20-22 will be our big 40th anniversary weekend here on Bonaire. We'll have a bunch of special visitors and special activities. I plan to post plenty of pictures here and on my Club Photo site, so stay tuned.
Don't forget that you can click on any of the pictures in my blog to see larger versions of them.

Pelican School is Open

Thursday was the first day of the new school year here on Bonaire, including the new Pelican School that is located in our old office wing. It was funny to see the parking lot full of cars again.

Here is a look at the opening day, get acquainted, party. Looks like mostly Dutch kids, which figures, I guess, since the school is taught in Dutch, and the other schools are moving to Papiamentu in the lower grades. By the way, the guy leaning against the wall at the top right of the picture owns a bike shop here on Bonaire. He is also an international water polo referee.

We put a kitchen in what used to be Scott or Joe's office, I think.

Ivan is putting the finishing touches on the boys bathroom, in what used to be my office.

We put in a back door at the end of the hall to server as an emergency exit and for easy access to a play area that the school may build back there.

Here is a shot from yesteryear when the open office area was being added to the office wing. I have more pictures from the archives on our club photo site. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the open office construction photos.

No Bike Ride Today

Last night was another of our FNL (Friday Night Live) shindigs for the students of the two medical schools here on Bonaire.

While I was (foolishly) playing volleyball with the students, being careful monitor the stresses on my aged knees, I did something to my achilles tendon. I heard a pop sound and felt pain. Grrrr.
I'm going to be good and do lots of rest, ice, and elevation (my foot is propped up on my trusty Cambridge Soundworks subwoofer as I type this) and see if I can't be back to normal soon.

I think swimming might work ok, if I can't ride for a while.

Trans World Radio in Spanish

In the Spanish language, Trans World Radio (TWR) is Radio Trans Mundial, or RTM. If you speak Spanish, or if your church has a Spanish language ministry, I thought I'd help you get acquainted with the Spanish version of TWR.

Here is the home page of RTM. There are also individual pages for:
Brazil
Bolivia
Chile
North America
Peru
the Dominican Republic
Paraguay
Uruguay
Venezuela

Here is the first page of the July newsletter of the Dominican Republic office of TWR. There is a story about a lady who came to faith in Jesus Christ after listening to TWR. There is also a story about the Project Hanna - Women of Hope ministry for women.

If you click on the picture, it will load a version big enough for you to read it. At least it did on my computer. If your computer starts to load the picture very large and then shrinks it to fit your screen, you may need to click on the Tools heading at the top of your screen, and then click on Internet Options, then on Advanced, and then Uncheck "Enable Automatic Image Resizing" under the Multimedia heading. This way the picture will stay big and you can scroll down to read the whole newsletter.


Here is page two of the July newsletter. It has an overview of the last 15 years of the DR office and some prayer requests.


Here is the August newsletter. There is a story about a guy who came to know the Lord at a Steve Green concert on Bonaire, which was part of our 25th anniversary celebrations. Later this month, we'll be celebrating 40 years of broadcasting from Bonaire.


Here is page two of the August newsletter. It has stories about a new producer for one of their youth programs and a profile about Amy Richardson, who was a summer intern at the DR office. Amy maintained an online blog while she was in the Dominican Republic. Way to go Amy!

Sardines

At first I thought it might be a New England thing.... I can remember frequently having sardines and crackers for a Sunday evening snack in my youth.... and Jon Savage is from MA. But it turns out that Bob Lassiter (NC) and Ivan (Bonaire) also are sardine lovers.

They decided to have a Sardine feast one day at lunch and invited the rest of us to join them. As you can see, there were no takers, but it looks like they had a grand old time scarfing down Sardines, baked beans, crackers, Gouda cheese, and Coke. Bob L. says one is supposed to drink Pepsi with Sardines, but he couldn't find any on Bonaire that week.