Nukove Revisited

On Saturday, we went up past the Bopec oil terminal to the little Nukove beach. We visited this area recently when my mom and dad were here, but we didn't go in the water.

Our Trupial friends were still there (see my post from April 10, 2004) and still looked at themselves in the side view mirrors of the car. They have a nest in a tree right where one parks. It's pretty cool.

Nukove Revisited

Nukove used to be a really beautiful snorkel, with acres of gorgeous shallow water coral beds. In 1999, hurricane Lenny reduced it to a desolate moonscape, BUT there are signs of rebirth. The corals are beginning to come back. 

Alternate Blog Address

I've noticed that there have been a couple of occasions this past week, when my normal www.bradtwr.blogspot.com
blog address hasn't worked.

If this happens to you, try this alternate address, which seems to always work.
http://bradtwr.blogspot.com

College Hijinks

Our son, Richard, made it into his school newspaper. He is on the left side of the front row, wearing my vintage 1979 Cultimara/Avanti volleyball team warmup jacket from Bonaire. Having a girlfriend and not racing on the cycling team seems to have helped his academics. He got all A's and A-'s this last semester. 

Kibrahacha tree photos posted

I've posted 21 photos of the flowering Kibrahacha trees on our Club Photo site. There are close ups and panoramas and everything in between.

You can click on the thumbnails to see the pictures bigger, and you can click on the bigger pictures to see the full size versions, which are 1024x768 in this case.

It looks like I got some killer Kibrahacha tree pictures yesterday. You can click on this one to see it bigger and probably sharper. I hope to put a bunch of them on my club photo site when I am home on lunch break today. 

Ministry Trip to South America

I mentioned church leadership training in my last post. Another critical area that Trans World Radio has chosen to zero in on is women's ministry.

There is a team of women from TWR's Project Hanna ministry visiting Brazil and Bolivia this week. (through May 28) Please join in praying for a safe and effective trip.

By the way, three other areas of ministry focus have been identified by TWR, in addition to Leadership Training and Women's Ministry. Sandra's dad has been and still is very involved in one of these areas so I'll see if I can't highlight each of them as time goes by.

Bible School Trans World Radio

Some of you may be familiar with Trans World Radio's initiative to train house church leaders in China by means of the "Seminary on the Air" broadcasts and study materials. You can go here to see the Chinese language web site associated with this outreach. You'll probably have to load a language pack from Microsoft to display the characters. I didn't bother since I still wouldn't be able to read it. :)

Leadership training is actually needed in many parts of the world. Our ministry partners in Latin America report an "explosion of small churches" and a critical shortage of trained "Biblically Literate" pastors.

Our Trans World Radio - Venezuela partner has developed a "Bible School Trans World Radio" radio series as well as a training manual to assist these untrained church leaders.

Here is the cover of the manual, so you can see what "Bible School Trans World Radio" looks like in Spanish.

TWR is currently testing this curriculum with 70 church leaders in Venezuela. The goal is to roll this out across the whole of Latin America. Please pray for the team because scaling up this outreach from one country to the whole region will be a complex undertaking.

Kibrahachas are Blooming

The Kibrahacha trees on the hills to the East of our offices are blooming very nicely. A few to the north of us are blooming too, but most of these did their thing a couple weeks ago.
I'll try to get a picture or two tomorrow, before the flowers drop off. They only last a day or two, so one has to react quickly.

All-Natural Dog Chew Toys

Here is another shot of our coconut hound in action. 

This dog, who shall remain nameless, to help protect his ability to guard our house, likes coconuts. All the dogs like coconuts, but this guy can peal the husks off them and crack the shell of the nut inside, so as to get at the yummy coconut milk and meat.  

Whoo Whoo, Photos in my Blog

Well it looks like I can now put photos right in my blog. I think you can click on them to see bigger versions of them. This photo is so that my mom and dad can see the nylabone wishbone dog chew that they brought with them when they visited us in March. It is in the lower right hand corner of the picture to the right of the arrow. 

Ladies Retreat a success

Our church had it's seventh annual Ladies Retreat this past weekend. It was held out at the Kunuku Roi Lamunchi. Berni Lusse was the "guest" speaker.

They had about 50 ladies on Friday and about 50 on Saturday as well. This retreat used to be for the ladies of our church and invited guests, but this year women from other churches were involved in the planning and ladies from seven were in attendance.

The ladies retreat, together with the TWR Project Hanna women's ministry, could prove to be rallying points for evangelical women on Bonaire.

Two Comets Spotted

There are still a lot of clouds floating about, but in between them, the sky is very clear tonight. I saw both comets Neat and Linear tonight, right were the charts say they should be.

I couldn't see any signs of a tail on either one of them, but I'm glad to have spotted them at all.

I haven't had a chance to see much of anything for quite a while, so this is a big improvement, even with the moon hanging around.
I'm pretty worried that there will be clouds around on the morning of June 8, when Venus goes across the face of the Sun. But I suppose a lot could change between now and then weatherwise.

Mini Rainy Season

We've had what Udo calls, a mini rainy season, the last few days. We even had a good bit of thunder and lightning Friday night.
It looks like it's trying to clear up today though.
It has been pretty windless, hot, and muggy.
I think I see signs that the Kibrahacha trees are about to pop. Some of the ones up north did a couple weeks ago but not the ones here in the middle of the island.

Washington Park by Bike 2

I rode the main Washington Park loop on my mtn. bike again on Saturday morning. It was sunnier than the previous week but windier too, so the net effect was similar.

I had two full Camelbaks for drinking, two packs of granola bars for munching, a water bottle for spraying on my head to keep cool in the hills, and a water bottle full of flat coke for a sugar and caffeine boost. I normally don't drink any stuff with caffeine in it, so even one bottle of coke or an energy gel packet with caffeine gives me a noticeable boost. :-)

I wasn't near as worn out at the end of the 3+ hours this week as I was last week.

I'll have to bring along a camera some week. It will give me a good excuse to stop, heh-heh. This week I saw some flamingos, a big iguanna, and lots of dirt, rocks, and cactus.

40th Anniversary Mural finished

Ivan finished up the 40th anniversary mural on the front wall of the office wing last week. We've already received quite a few favorable comments on it.

Here is Ivan packing up his gear after a job well done, and another picture from slightly farther away.

I have a couple more pictures of the mural here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the thumbnails etc. Some pix are 1024x768 for windows wallpaper etc.

International Space Station to Eclipse Jupiter Thur. night

FLASH !
If you live along a narrow swath that stretches from Alabama to Maine, you might get to see the international space station go right in front of Jupiter between 9:30 and 9:39 on Thursday (May 13)night.

If you live anywhere on the East coast, you will probably enjoy looking at the space station go by, even if it just goes near Jupiter, instead of in front of it.

Here is a NASA page that tells all about it.

Also on that page are a couple great images of the ISS taken by people with telescopes in their back yard. This is something I am definitely going to try to do this summer, while I am babysitting the Thorp's 8" Celestron telescope.

Golf Course II

There was a little interest in my recent mention of a golf course on the east coast out South of Washi Kimba.

As far as I know, it is a real 18 hole golf course, but unlike any you have probably ever seen. I'll try to get some photos next time I ride out that way.

This week's Port Call newspaper had an ad for an upcoming golf event. These people do seem to really love the game, but Papiamentu speakers will quickly be able to tell that they aren't making any wild claims for the quality of their golf course.

I haven't been able to find a higher quality version of it their logo yet. This ad suffers from low resolution, heavy compression, and some lack of color registration during printing. But I like the logo and their initiative.

Blast from the Past

As you have probably realized by now, TWR Bonaire will be celebrating 40 years of broadcasting this August. This is a good thing in that it has inspired a number of projects.

I've posted pictures of building repairs and painting, and the anniversary mural, which Ivan just finished.

As time allows, I've been dubbing our old archival audio tapes into the computer and making CD's. Up until now, time has never allowed, but I'm making some headway this spring.

Berni Lusse is spending some time going through our archive of old photos from years gone by. The thought is to make some big wall displays, possibly arranged by decade.

There has also been some talk about posting some of these images on our www.twrbonaire.com website. That may or may not happen, but in a blatant attempt to increase traffic, I'm also thinking of posting some of the images here.

To whet your appetite, here's one of someone near and dear to the TWR Alumni online community.