Tower Painting Completed

Another year, another tower. We have four antenna towers connected to our 100kw AM transmitter. The plan is to paint one every year, and repeat...

Here is the happy crew of TWR staff and contracted local guys upon the safe completion of this year's tower painting project.

New Bonaire Pastor

The English language, International Bible Church of Bonaire, welcomed its first full time pastor while we were in the States this fall. Amazingly enough, we met people in the States who knew Pastor Toto Baran from his early days in his native Guyana, and others who knew him and his wife Felicia from his recent inner city ministry in Newark, New Jersey.

Here we see Pastor Baran, the church elders, and some Bonaire pastors at the Installation service.

Logos II Returns to Bonaire

The Operation Mobilization book exposition ship, Logos 2 paid a visit to Bonaire a couple weeks ago. We're sorry we missed it because we hear that it was a great time for one and all.


Anyone remember the whale that got impaled on the bow of a cruise ship a couple years ago? Well one of the high school teachers and a bunch of students restored and assembled the skeleton. Here are some of the Logos 2 advance team checking it out at the entrance to Washington Park.

Family Fun in NJ

Some have noticed that we have many more pictures of our dogs than of our son. This may be because our son has been away at college for the last five years, while the dogs are around, dare I say, underfoot, every day. Also the dogs don't say "daaaaaaa-aad" when I snap their picture.

We said goodby to Richard and Nancy on Saturday afternoon and drove to my parents' place in PA. We arrived in Lancaster before the snow started, hooray.
We plan to head back to Bonaire on Tuesday.


We had a fun "early Christmas" with Rich and Nan before hitting the road.

N and S Carolina

We've been in North Carolina since November 8 or so. The first few days, we visited Sandra's dad, who was in the hospital with what turned out to be a staff infection that he probably picked up a couple weeks earlier, when he had prostate cancer surgery. He is doing much better now.

Then we were at Westover Church, in Greensboro, for their fall Global Celebration. We had a great time giving presentations about our work with Trans World Radio, seeing old friends and making some new ones.

Then we headed to South Carolina for some fun family time. Sandra's parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary yesterday, hooray!

We spent some time walking and looking for shells on the beach. I got in some good bike rides and Sandra's brother Rick got in some golf. The first two days were quite warm, and the last days got a little nippy.


We saw some horseshoe crabs the first day just after low tide, but none two days later, at low tide.

200 languages

As of this month, Trans World Radio is broadcasting in 200 different languages and dialects. (We do eight from Bonaire.) TWR reached the 100 language mark just 10 years ago, after 41 years of broadcasting.

The complete story, as well as some other more than a little bit interesting stories are in the November e-snapshots email.

You can read them at the TWR web site, and you can automatically receive each month's e-snapshots if you want to.

Lasting Fruit - Drought in Brazil

Trans World Radio's vision is to reach the world for Christ by mass media, so that lasting fruit is produced. Lasting fruit is Christian-ese for a significant and permanent change in the lives of our listeners as they become true disciples of Jesus Christ.

For example, this guy listened to TWR programs from Bonaire as a kid. He later went to Bible school and is now an itinerant pastor/evangelist traveling up and down the rivers on his boat, the Lion of Judah. The area is so vast that he can only visit any given village a couple times a year, but he encourages the people to listen to the TWR Bible teaching programs in the mean time.

He uses the river as his highway and the boat is sort of like a floating motor home.


There is an extreme drought in northern Brazil this year, probably the worst one in recorded history. It is epic enough that I even saw it mentioned in the Denver Post when I was out visiting my brother. Here are a couple pictures from an email I received from Dan Canfield.


Besides being a serious health problem, the drought has crippled the transportation and the economy in the vast Amazon Basin.


And of course, the drought makes it extremely difficult for Christian workers to meet the spiritual needs of people in the region.
Here is what long time radio speaker, Dan Canfield, had to say about the drought, and the power of radio.

And we can say that the Living Water, transmitted by radio is not hampered by low water levels. Radio waves fly over sand dunes, dry river bottoms and burned out jungles. “

I usually cannot pick up your program on my regular radio/cassette player, but now that my good radio is getting fixed, I am able to tune into your station on this one in spite of it being old. Everyone is amazed. We live far from town and cannot attend church, so your programs are our only spiritual food. Brother Daniel, may you continue to send out the message of the Word of God. We need your ministry. Even though we have not met, your voice is known wherever we go. Could you send us your Bible correspondence course?”

Can you believe that people in those lost areas are listening to the programs? Then when you actually see them you understand the truth.

Several pastors have written to say that after spending weeks of travel to get to those outlying areas, the radio was there every day so they could return to their towns and churches rejoicing in the follow-up. In these days of Amazon drought, people are depending even more on the radio message.

Moab Musings

My brother and his wife and Sandra and I all piled into the car early Tuesday morning and drove from Denver to Moab, Utah, for a day and a half of biking and hiking. We saw lots of terrain that reminded us of Bonaire, but on a mind bogglingly larger scale.

The world famous Slick Rock trail was really tricky to ride without doing serious bodily injury, but we managed to pull it off. It was also a lot of fun in an extremely challenging sort of way, and the views were awesome as well.


You can click on the pictures to see them bigger.

My brother and I cycled into Arches National Park the back way through the desert and ended up at this Balanced Rock area. We then met up with our wives and checked out other parts of the park by car.



This is called "Delicate Arch". We had to hike a mile and a half each way to see this up close and personal, but it was totally well worth it. The whole area was really beautiful in a rugged sort of way.

Surprise, More Biking

Wow, Saturday turned out super clear and sunny, and about 62 degrees.

After a morning trip to Kohls where I bought some underwear and socks on super sale, (we always stock up while we're in the States) we all piled in the car and went to a cool park a little ways up Deer Creek Canyon.

That picture on the left is me going DOWN Deer Creek Canyon. Down is definately better than up, here in the rarified air around Denver. You can click on the pictures to see them bigger.

We road some cinder paths that had me huffing and puffing due to their steepness. We also enjoyed some super narrow singletrack on the backside of the park.

I must confess doing a double take when I saw a sign telling one what to do if attacked by a mtn. lion. Fortunately, the only wildlife we saw was people walking some nice dogs.

In the picture on the right, we see my brother and me enjoying the view.

Colorado Cycling

I'm visiting my brother and his family in Littleton, Colorado. We're getting in some great bike riding on the multitudinous bike paths and trails south of Denver.

Yesterday we rode up Waterton Canyon to the Colorado trail, and the single track Roxboro Loop.

The photo on the right shows one of the friendly bighorn sheep that we encountered.

The one on the left is my brother negotiating one of the many switchback turns on the Colorado trail.

You can click on the pics to see them bigger.

Bonaire in the news

Cousin Bud just alerted me to a nice newspaper article about Bonaire in the San Francisco Chronicle. It captures the spirit of the place and they type of people who would like it there.

Medical update and opportunity to comment

Here is another chance to use the "comments" feature to guess exactly how I managed to wound myself, in the foot this time.

The photo of my calf that I posted in August showed the result of my bike's front chain ring biting my calf when I frantically unclipped and put my foot down on a gnarly Washington park hill.

This most recent wound occurred at a missions conference in Maryland, so the much loved answer "a hungry goat" won't work this time.

Also on the medical front, it seems to be time to begin paying the price for 29 years of fun in the sun on Bonaire. I have an inch and a half incision with like six stitches in it on my shoulder where a nice young dermatologist removed a basil cell cancer on Monday. I won't post any pix of that one. I'll have another basil cell removed on Nov. 1.

I had my first colonoskopy last Friday. It went well and the doctor waxed eloquent about how great my colon looked. (You can vote on whether or not I should post pix of that one!) It must be all the raw broccoli we eat on Bonaire and all the shredded wheat I've been consuming here in the States.

TWR E-Snapshots

I've been telling people at our furlough meetings about the various ways they can stay up to date on the doings of TWR around the world.

I subscribe to the TWR e-snapshots email service. It is only one email per month, but sometimes I learn about cool stuff that I put in this blog.

For example, this month has brief stories about: new programs for Niger, a Swiss lady who married a guy she knew was HIV - positive, new developments in India, and an update on the new Spanish program for South American pastors and church leaders.

I first wrote about it on May 24, 2004 and it looks like it is progressing well.

Pastors and church leaders in Latin America are hearing and benefiting from a popular radio program called Escuela Biblica (Bible School), a broadcast aimed at providing solid biblical training to those who teach God's Word to others. In countries like Venezuela, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Chile and Uruguay, the 15-minute weekly broadcast is a theological shot in the arm for many lay shepherds who lack seminary education or sound doctrine.
We've aired this program for about two years, and it's getting a tremendous response, says Annabel Torrealba, director of RTM-Venezuela, a TWR partner ministry. Torrealba says her staff has received numerous requests for correspondence materials and other Christian literature. These resources are used to help prepare sermons that are preached every Sunday, she explains.
Besides providing theological instruction to existing pastors and leaders, the Escuela Biblica broadcast helps emerging evangelists and believers experience growth in Christ. The program covers topics like discipleship, the ministry of the Holy Spirit, parables of Jesus and spiritual maturity, says Torrealba.

You can sign up for e-snapshots and a bunch of other good TWR stuff here on the TWR web site.

Merry Munchkins

We were at a missions conference in Maryland all last week. Christian workers from Europe, Africa, the USA, South America and Bonaire :) were there to report on their ministries.

We had a great time with our host family of 6 persons, who's names all begin with the letter K.

You can click on the picture to see it larger.

Missions Conference Posters

We were part of a week long Missions conference in Maryland last week. Here are posters that 6th through 8th graders made about the missionaries that were there.

You can click on the pictures to see them bigger.

They had to do a collage type poster including certain elements like a map, picture of the missionary, flower or bird from the country, and a Bible verse.

The young people had some great ideas.

I'll not be more specific about the location of the event for the safety of the young people.

Creole Programming for Haitians

We broadcast programs in the Haitian Creole language each evening from Bonaire. These programs are currently being produced at Radio Trans Mundial Dominicana. That's the TWR office in the Dominican Republic, for those of you who are "Spanish challenged."

Pictured here is Pastor Joseph Leveille, who translates and voices the Creole version of the Thru The Bible program. Pray for Pastor Leveille and the staff of RTM - DR office as they work on the last year of this five year long Bible survey series.


The men in this photo supervise another 190 pastors that work with Haitians living in the Dominican Republic. Here, Georgina Thompson, the director of the TWR ministry in the DR, is presenting them with 2000 copies of the just printed Creole version of the daily devotional book, "Food for Faith."


You can click on the photos to see them bigger.

biking bliss

It's been unseasonable warm here in New Jersey, up until this past weekend anyway. I must admit that Sandra and I found the weather a whole lot nicer than Bonaire at this time of the year. Actually, Sandra has had the flu or something since we arrived here a week and a half ago.

Now that it's getting a little cooler, we'll have to bundle up, especially when I'm on the bike and generating a mighty headwind.

Most of my time on the bike has consisted of going round and round good old Brookdale Park. It's pretty boring, but I can get a much better workout than I do in traffic. I'll probably venture out of the park to attack some hills this week though.

As you can see in the picture, not all of my riding has been out in the sunny spaces of the Garden State.

I thought it was named after The Parkway, ha-ha, but Aunt Teak, down in Neptune, assures me that NJ still has lots of small farms producing luscious Tomatoes, Corn, and Peaches.

We had some fresh corn on the cob on Saturday, Yum!

Bye Bye BBC

Our fearless maintenance team on Bonaire has just started painting another of our almost 500 foot tall antenna towers. I imagine it will take a couple months to complete the job. First they have to scrape the old paint and corrosion off of the tower parts. They they prime it, and finally they give it a color coat. All this while dangling high in the air, buffeted by the Caribbean trade winds.

Before they started on the tower painting, the guys were busy removing the old 500kw BBC (Brown Boveri & Company) radio transmitter. We haven't used it for quite a few years now. The main circuits of the transmitter were built into a 40 foot shipping container, but the power supplies filled another couple rooms. You can see some of the power supply components, now that the main unit is out of the building.

You can click on the pictures to see them bigger.

On the Move

Our Fall Furlough has officially begun. We're in PA with my parents right now, enjoying the good life at Willow Valley. We'll be heading to NJ on Tuesday for a doctor appointment and to hang out with our son, Richard for a few days.

On the 24th and 25th, we'll be at the Asbury Park Baptist Church, in case you are in the area.

Perry and Sally Zavitz (pictured in Sub-1) are on Bonaire to help cover the work while we are away. They'll be downloading, processing, and preparing all the English programs we broadcast on the big AM transmitter.

Bike Race number 3

Our third mtn. bike race of the year was something of a fizzle, with only five riders turning out. However three of the five didn't ride the last race, so we were happy to see their fresh eager faces.

We turned it into a sporty training ride, with the faster riders waiting or even doubling back to rejoin the slower riders. That way no one got lost or discouraged.

Saturday morning I went around the course with Andre and James to trim a couple trees that were in the way and to mark the course. Here we see James and Andre posting signs at the start of the one mile long serious single track / donkey trail section.


You can click on the pictures to see them bigger.

Andre explains the route.


Here I am flying out from the final single track section. A big thank you to cousin Bud Gillan for taking these action photos.


Here are a few of us hanging out after the ride, with a donkey spectator in the background.

Everyone had a great time and we've already set up plans for a weekly Saturday ride starting next week. We're hoping that we can generate more interest if we don't call it a race, but merely a "fun training tour." I'll be in the States until December but the gang is planning to train hard so as to put the hurt on me when I get back to Bonaire. I do have a bike in the States, so I guess I'd better ride it as much as I can.

Planetary Parade Continues

Have you been watching Venus and Jupiter in the evening sky, as I suggested a couple days ago?

It's not too late to get outside and enjoy the show.

A skinny crescent moon will joining the planets Tuesday and Wednesday. I think Tuesday night will be especially striking.

Sky and Telescope has a chart showing what you can expect to see each night. Scroll about half way down the page to see it.

If you have clear skies and a clear view of the western horizon, you might take a look tonight (Monday) and see if you can spot the extra skinny crescent moon down near the horizon after sunset. I looked Sunday evening, when the moon would have been about 28.5 hours old, but I didn't see it in the haze. grrrr Monday evening should be much easier.

Annual Biker Weekend

Our mountain bike race is next weekend. This past weekend was for bikers of the Harley Davidson kind. It's become an annual event, with bikers coming from Curacao and Aruba. Here are some of the bikes parked at Habitat.

Sandra and her cousin, Bud, were snorkeling way out in the deep water off of Andrea 2 the other day when Sandra heard an ominous rumbling. The clouds were looking weird so she thought "tornado" but didn't spot one. Then she looked around for approaching boats, but none were approaching. Finally they realized that it was the 100+ motorcycles going on a tour around the north end of the island.

On Sunday, we were just leaving the TWR studio building when we heard the rumbling approaching and saw an amazing site. The bike parade came from town, rode around the traffic circle and headed back towards town. The bright colors, flashing chrome, and thundering rumbles would have made a great video sequence as the seemingly endless stream of bikes passed by itself, coming and going on both sides of the road.

Planetary Parade

We've been watching Venus and Jupiter getting closer and closer together after sunset in the west for about a week now. They made their closest approach last night.

These planets are pretty bright and if you go out tonight and for the next few evenings, you can watch them pull away from each other.