Saturday, September 20, 2008

Tuneful Tangemans

We saw Terri Tangeman and her sons, Benjamin and Cort, this week. I generally don't mention the names of young people on the blog, but these guys are part of an award winning music group, the Mountain Aires, and very much in the public eye. These young guys are accomplished musicians and I really enjoyed getting to hear them play.
Benjamin is on the far left in the group photo. Mentor, Marvin Heath can be seen in the white shirt at the center. The guys were working on one last song for their upcoming (November) Christmas CD. I did a Google search on them and found that songs from their first album, "Echo the Legacy," are available for download. The actual CD can also be found at the Great Smokey Mountain Association stores at parks in North Carolina, and from the group itself. These young musicians are budding businessmen as well.

Bonaire Birds

Well, we're in the States right now, but we've still got some great Bonaire memories on the laptop. We've also created some 8x10 photo books on www.winkflash.com that we'll use to share images of Bonaire with our family, friends, and ministry sponsors.

TWR Cary

Sandra and I were at the Trans World Radio office in Cary, North Carolina earlier this week. It was good to see some "old" friends and make some new ones. The photo above has the hopefully current statistics about TWR worldwide. You might have to click on the picture to see it big enough to read the info. There is a pdf that lists all those 225 languages available on the TWR web site.
The lobby has this big wall sized panel outlining the six ministry foci of TWR's Global Strategic Plan.

Saturday, September 06, 2008

Bonaire Day - Biker Day


Today is Bonaire Day, hooray. The official festivities are at the community center in Antriol this year, running from about 8:30 am until late tonight.

It is also the umpteenth annual Bonaire Biker Day. Now these are not the sort of bikes that my buddies and I huff and puff around Bonaire on. These bikes are beeeeg Harleys. Lots of bikers come from Aruba and Curacao to join the Bonaire contingent. They have special organized rides, meals and other festivities all weekend.

I'm attaching a picture of some of the bikes resting between activities.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Early Morning Musings - Reflections on a Flamingo

When Miguel and I rode by Gotto Lake early Tuesday morning, we couldn't help but notice the beautiful reflections in the mirror like surface of the water. So I drove back on Wednesday morning, braved swarms of "nose gnats" and shot a ton of pictures.
Here are a few friendly Flamingos posing with their imaginary friends.
I've been wanting to get images like these for a long time, since Keith Johnston gave me the inspiration.
It is probably safe to click on these thumbnails, even if you have a fairly slow Internet connection, because the file sizes are about half of what my usual pictures are.

Wild Weather

The weather here on Bonaire has been hot and sultry for a couple weeks now. Basically when storms pass through the northern Caribbean, they shut down the trade winds down here in the south where we are. One night last week the southwest horizon was lit up with an amazing light show. The lightning flashes were bright and frequent enough that it reminded Sandra of the strobe lights one sees when having an EEG. It was awesome, but a little weird too.
I'm not sure how these pix will look for you. They are of a type that will depend a lot on how bright your monitor is compared to mine. Back in my youth when I was living, cycling, and skiing in the fridged winter months, we paid attention to the wind chill factor that made it seem colder than the thermometer was indicating. I had to be careful about my prone to frostbite nose.
Well, apparently there is a warm weather factor as well. A friend just told Sandra that the NOAA reported that considering the temperature, lack of wind, and humidity, (I'd throw in Sun intensity too, but I don't know if they do) it feels like 120 degrees F on Bonaire these days. That makes me feel better, (well mentally at least) 'cause the thermometer is only registering temps in the low 90s, yet we've been melting. I've had an amazing lack of energy, even on my early 6 to 7:30 am bike rides. When we take a shower at mid day, we set the tap to the hot water position, because the sun heated water coming out of the cold water line is unbearably hot, and the nice insulated water heater isn't set that high.
But it could be worse, we're not bearing the brunt of all those storms. We really have to laugh when we watch the so called Tropical Update on the Weather Channel. There'll be this big storm just beating the living !%$#**&! out of Hispanola and the people on the TV spend most of the session waxing eloquent about if the storm is likely to hit the USA.
The islands are taking a beating. Here is what Georgina, the director of the Trans World Radio ministries in the Dominican Republic has to report. "Please keep praying. Some times I prefer not say too much of our happenings because I’m afraid of sounding dramatic, but life here for me is like an action movie. The stormy season is giving us a lot of hard times. My heart is broken because of those homeless. Most of the city is suffering long power outages. Not all our activities are able to go on normally because they depend on whether or not our staff and guests are able to get to our offices. I am able to get here because I drive the office car and I live 8 minutes far, and usually my way is safe."