… then I must be healthy as a horse by now. I can’t believe how many hours I’ve been sleeping. A couple nights back, I had an episode of busy brain syndrome — planning and organizing all the things I need to do when we get back to Roatán— and didn’t fall asleep till after 3:30. But most nights I sleep at least nine or ten hours. I guess I was more run down than I thought. I’m feeling much more rested now and, in fact, getting a little antsy. I think we have all our shopping done. We got a few things for ourselves and some for the radio station, mostly replacements for items damaged by that last lightning hit on October 15th. And we’ve been very busy being involved with Mildred’s parents and her dad’s medical issues. Having Jesse and Kristin here, too, has been icing on the cake.

Mildred’s dad is all set up with Hospice now and he really likes the people he’s met so far. We do, too! The difference between Home Health Care and Hospice is pretty remarkable. HHC is focused on getting you cured, so they were rather restrictive in the things Dad could and couldn’t do. Except for church and doctor appointments, he was practically home bound. Hospice emphasizes comfort and getting as much out of life as you can. They got him an oxygen concentrator right away, so he’s way more comfortable and energetic.

Mowing grass & chopping leaves

The grass isn’t all that tall yet, but the leaves were getting deep. Mildred’s dad likes to run them through the mower to chop them up and blow them off into the field. I worked on  it a while yesterday, but didn’t get it all done. It was nice to be outside after so many days of rain. As you can see from the picture, that is a sweet mower! Now the rains have come back, so we’ll have to wait and see if it dries out enough to finish the job before we leave on Saturday. Earlier in the day yesterday Dad, Jesse, and I all went to the barn and removed the orchard sprayer from the tractor. Jesse got to drive and I got to wrench. Then I got to wash all the chunks of rust and other crud off my face that I collected while working under the sprayer.

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Jesse is the proud new owner of his first ever digital SLR camera. He and I have been having a wonderful time roaming the farm and filling up our memory cards. We’ve been shooting everything from the mundane to the spectacular. We got some great sunset shots last night.

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Yesterday was a big day with the mowing, the mechanical work in the barn, visits from the Hospice nurse and chaplain, and visits from other health care people. Today is another big day. Dad has a doctor’s appointment for some minor surgery for skin cancer on his nose and then we plan to have an early Thanksgiving meal with Mildred’s brother and their family. With the six of us plus John and Linda, some of their kids and grandkids, I think we’ll have a great time.

Saturday will be another big day and a long one. Our flight back to the real world leaves Columbus at 7:15 AM. Since it’s over an hour to the airport, we’ll be getting up early, even for me. But we’ll get to Roatán pretty early the same day, which is nice. I wonder what route the plane will take since it looks like there will still be a hurricane in our normal flight path. We’re just glad it veered north of our island home.

What with the water well issues, the termites, and even a parade, I haven’t given you much news lately on the ramifications of the lightning strike we suffered a few weeks ago.  That’s largely because there wasn’t any news until the new radio and an identical spare arrived last Thursday. I spent a few days sorting out what needed to be done and getting the replacement data link radio ready to go into service. Peter and I started the actual installation this Tuesday. “How hard could that be?” you ask. Well, I thought it would be easy, too.

Peter - a station manager who climbs towers!

We finally have a link established, but it still is not ready for prime time. In the troubleshooting process, we took down the antenna dish (among other things) thinking it might also have problems and then put up the old rusty dish we had taken down in March. It turns out that the problem (the one in addition to a dead radio) was elsewhere, so Peter will have to change out the dishes again on Monday. When he does that, I think I should be able to get the signal strength back to where it should be and we can begin putting all the computers back where they belong and then be able to resume live broadcasts of Request and Dedication. Our R&D numbers have really sagged since we started having to prerecord the program.

But what we have now is still a huge blessing. We have a solid enough link to copy files from the studio computers to the on air computers up in the transmitter building. That saves us an hour or more per day as well as the daily physical beating we got from the road as we took those files up there on an external hard drive.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We probably could voice track directly to the broadcast computers now, but I elected not to set that up yet. That’s because, when we replace the dish on Monday, no one would be able to do studio work until we got the link working again. So, for now, I just use a little program to automatically copy the files up there every couple of hours.

Once we finish fixing the rust on the new dish, we’ll put that up — Monday, if all goes well — and then we can voice track straight to the broadcast computers. The next step will be to get the FM studio desk reassembled after the termite eradication. We also want to convert one of the studio computers and use it to replace the FM computer. The FM computer is getting flakier and flakier, but that job might have to wait. Mildred and I are taking a much needed week of vacation starting the middle of next week.

Mildred's parents, Ivan & Marilyn

A few days after that, we have plane tickets to go to Ohio for two weeks. Mildred’s dad’s health is declining and we really need to spend some time with family. One never knows how many opportunities there will be. Jesse and Kristin will be there for several days too since they will be passing through on their way to and from Niagara Falls in celebration of their fifth wedding anniversary. We are anticipating some wonderful times together. Jesse just got his first digital SLR camera, so he and I are expecting to have some great times capturing images and sharing them.

Kristin & Jesse

If you still have time after reading all this and watching the video about our data link repairs, have a listen to the HRGS Audio Update below. In the Update, we talk about the Silseths’ missing luggage. Happily, they finally did get it after our recording session. In fact, if you haven’t already watched the video, I suggest listening to the Update first, and then watching the video.

As our friends on Facebook, already know, we made it back to Roatán Saturday in one piece, but very tired. Mildred and I had a wonderful time in Tampa. I think that we got to spend more time with Jesse and Kristin than ever before since their marriage in 2006. We got to see lots of friends and participated in the move of our home church, Candlewood Community, from Pineview Middle School to a rental facility that looks like it will be a great asset to the ministry. They had their first service there Sunday morning. I wish we could have been there for that first service, but the whole process leading up to Sunday was a blessing to be a part of.

Here’s a picture gallery of some of the highlights of the trip. I think I already talked about some of the things I’m picturing here, but I tried to not duplicate any photos. The captions should fill in a few details of the story. Happy New Year.

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Link to prayer letter pdf

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas. We did. It was a special treat to celebrate it with Jesse and Kristin at her parents’ home along with the rest of her family. We spent almost the entire day there talking, playing games (both video and the old fashioned kind), and eating. Lots of eating! And every gift seemed to be a home run.

This is going to be a very brief entry. The real reading is in the prayer letter you can download by clicking the link embedded in this picture. This is a large file so, if you have a slow connection, be patient.

If you would like to contribute to our ministry, click here to download a pdf file you can print and mail to Bible Basics. If you don’t have a reader for pdf files, you can download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader right here. You can also support us through PayPal right here.

I think it’s going to be a busy week this week, as we help Jesse and Kristin with another project, try to touch base with more friends here in Tampa, and start getting ready for our Friday return to Roatán.

This has been a wonderfully relaxing vacation so far and we’ve had some wonderful experiences as well as some typical travel amusements. You could almost say that getting here was half the fun. Almost!

Ready to go!

Boarding in Roatán started a little after we were supposed to take off. I asked one of the staff people if there was a problem and he said there was not. I guess they just hadn’t gotten around to it yet, which is a little odd since it seems to me that planes are usually more punctual in Honduras than in the U.S. When we got to San Salvador, the plane pulled up at gate three, right next to gate four, which would be our departure gate according to our boarding passes. The flight attendant opened the door and the ground crew set out the traffic cones to guide us as we walked to the terminal and then they all started scratching their heads, rubbing their chins, and pointing. And we began waiting. Eventually, they decided that our plane had to be pushed back from gate three, start the engines, and taxi on over to gate eleven, most of the way to the other end of the terminal. After waiting to get pushed out and waiting for big jets to get out of our way, we finally got off the plane about 30 minutes before we were due to board our flight to Orlando. We were praying that our bags would be able to keep up with us.

Our planes that we didn't know were next to each other

Moon and clouds over the Caribbean

We hoofed it on back down to gate four, stopping along the way to buy a bottle of water and a sandwich. We got to the gate about five minutes before boarding time, so I asked an agent if we would be boarding on time or if we’d have time to eat our sandwich first. He asked where were we going, so I told him. He smiled and said that our flight had been moved to gate ten. He said that since we were going up for Christmas they figured we needed the exercise before eating so much. How thoughtful! Back we went to where we started from. But this gate had a security check. We even got frisked!! Then they made us give them the cap off our brand new, never been opened, bottle of water. But I didn’t have to give them the cap from the 1/4 full bottle of water in the mesh pocket on the side of my backpack. So, we went over and sat down, got out the partial bottle and drank that. Then we put that cap on the new, full bottle and I took the empty one over and dropped it in the trash can two feet from the security staffer who’d started the whole affair.

We finally got to Orlando – a little late – and went through the security gauntlet at this end of the journey. The security and INS people were incredibly friendly and made us feel wonderfully welcome. And then they seemed to have lost one of our bags and lots of other bags, too. We had to go through security just as if boarding a plane and then check our bags once more rather than simply carry them from the international terminal to the main terminal. Jesse and Kristin felt badly that they were late arriving due to bad traffic, but they ended up waiting for us because it took well  over a half hour to get people’s luggage from one building to the other. But we eventually reached our destination and have been having a grand time.

Jesse's old and new distributor caps

Jesse had planned to let us use his car while we are here since he doesn’t need it for school anymore since he’s now a genuine college graduate and works at home. But it died on him the day before we arrived. However, our wonderful friends Doug and Andrea Cress bailed us out by letting us use theirs for a while. After we got back from the Bible Basics offices yesterday, Jesse started up his car to show me how bad it was … and it purred like a kitten. Smooooth! Thank you, Jesus! Since it has lots of miles on it, I installed a new distributor cap and rotor on it this morning. The old cap didn’t look very healthy. This morning’s test drive reminded me of a certain Kawasaki I used to ride. Ran great. But cars lean the wrong way when you go around corners, so it wasn’t quite the same. Please pray for Jesse’s car because they really cannot afford to replace it right now.

Andrew and Jesse struggle to wait for Nichole's peanut butter jelly pie

We’ve had two major highlights already. Saturday afternoon we went with Jesse and Kristin to her parent’s house (Dave and Mary-Lynn Reilly) to help celebrate two birthdays. Their son, Andrew had recently had his 20th birthday and Saturday was Jesse’s 32nd birthday. He seemed to really like the 1/2 inch hammer drill Mildred and I got him. We praise the Lord that Jesse married into such a wonderful, godly family. They’re a ton of fun, too.

Jesse and his new drill

The other major highlight so far happened on Sunday. Our home church, Candlewood Community Church, is moving from the middle school they’ve been using since birth to a rental facility that is just the right size and perfectly located. We are all jazzed up thinking about the ministry possibilities now that we have a place we can more or less call our own. It will need some fixing up, but it has great potential. We are praising God for His wonderful provision. I wish we’d gotten better pictures because it was sure a special event. Pastor Ron Day and his wife Ardell graciously allowed me to put some of their pictures into the gallery below.

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We have some shopping yet to do before Christmas. And we need to wait till after Christmas for some other shopping because we don’t want to wind up with two of something. Jesse has a couple other things for me to do as well. Their water heater is right in the middle of a garage wall, and he would like it in a corner. That sure makes sense. The other job is for their air conditioner. Whoever installed it should be slapped. They located the condensation drain pipe right in front of the air filter slot, making it impossible to replace the filter. So I get to do some plumbing (my least favorite chore) and some wiring (my all time favorite chore).