We had a mostly glorious week this past week with one major exception. You’ll remember Travis and Emily Mitten who had to return to the U.S. because of Emily’s incredibly difficult pregnancy. We learned last Wednesday that they lost the baby. She is still carrying it and and we are all praying that her body will release it soon and naturally because she is so weak from her illness that surgery is pretty risky right now.

Travis was here with us when Emily learned of the baby’s death. He and his brother, John, had come (along with John’s two oldest daughters) to finish cleaning and packing their house. Almost all their big items are in a storage building now. Thanks to tremendous help from some friends, they finished quickly and, on Wednesday morning, we all went to the beach. When I got back to my phone I had a message from Emily to have Travis call home right away. You can read Travis’ perspective here: Light in Our Hearts. We also talk about it in the HRGS Update which you’ll find at the bottom of this post.

That’s in contrast to an otherwise fabulous week. We are now into our second week of all day English and all day Spanish. We only had one little surprise. The instructions for our automation software made no mention that it only runs reliably on one processor. So we had a couple crashes before Peter stumbled across that information on their web site and I disabled one of the processor cores on each computer. Rock solid now. I’m putting the finishing touches on the replacement FM broadcast computer now. There’s more info in the HRGS Audio Update at the end of this post.

Partly related to that project is my desire to make a trip over to Utila. I need to see what is keeping the transmitter from going to full power. I also need to get the phone line fixed so we can again use the remote control and monitoring system. And, since we will soon have a team here replacing guy wires, I need to see to a few preliminaries related to that. I had hoped to go Monday, but events conspired against me. Mildred has been sick, mostly sick in bed, for several days. Now I think I may be getting it, but so far, it seems like a much milder case than what she has. But when I woke up at 4:40 to get ready to go to the ferry, my throat was pretty sore, my body was pretty tired, and the waves were really big. Riding those waves the way I was feeling didn’t seem like something that would lead to a productive time on Utila. I hope I can get over there before the end of the week. Mildred still doesn’t feel good and her voice is way too shot to do anything with a microphone, so I’ve taken on some of her duties. Of course she had already done some of my studio work during the full court press to get the dual language project on line on time, so I guess I owed her.

When we went to the beach last Wednesday, the wind was blowing the wrong way for good snorkeling, but it was still a beautiful day. I put together a little photo gallery showing some of our contrasts here on the island. There are pictures from where we went last week, West Bay, which is one of the finest beaches in the world. For contrast, I took some shots of the beach in front of our house. Since we are on the normally windward side of the island, cleaning the beach is a non stop chore for this part of the island. Lastly, we received a visit yesterday from one of the largest cruise ships in the world – the Norwegian Epic. NCL just took delivery on her about a month ago, and this ship is huge.

There is plenty more to tell about, but no time to write it and you wouldn’t have time to read it. Here is the photo gallery. I hope the captions explain things for you. Don’t forget to scroll down and listen to the Update. Thanks for your prayers.

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Before I tell you about our week, I should give a little update on my mom in case you’re wondering what’s happened since our last blog entry. Mom saw her cardiologist yesterday. She feels a lot better about having the catheter ablation procedure now that he has answered her questions. But she is not going to make a final decision until she sees the specialist. I think that happens next week on Wednesday. Otherwise, she’s feeling pretty well. If you would pray for her from time to time I’m sure she would appreciate that; I know I would. Her name is Elizabeth (Betty) Crawford.

We’ve been very busy speaking at churches and meeting with supporters, relatives, and friends. We have at least one engagement slated for nearly every day. In fact, we spoke at two churches Sunday morning and then went to a third in the evening, just to sit back and enjoy a concert.

Last night was a special treat. At the radio station we probably get more requests for music by Kevin Spencer and Friends than from any of the other artists we feature. And we have a lot of them! Kevin and his family live just a few miles from Mildred’s parents. So do his parents, J. B. and Barbara, who are also very popular at Inspirational Radio. They sing in about 260 concerts a year, but we managed to catch them between road trips and had supper with them last night. I’m surprised we didn’t get thrown out of the restaurant — we had way too much fun.

The night before that, we were up in Findlay and ate supper with our longtime friends, Milo and Joyce Gallant. That’s one of their daughters, Jennifer Withrow, in the picture below with her family and us. Mildred used to babysit Jennifer and her sister. Oh, the stories we could tell!!

It hasn’t been all travel and meetings, though. I helped Mildred’s dad get the blades off his mower so he could sharpen them. Then I got to use the mower for a while. If we ever get one like that at the radio station, I’ll not be letting anyone else do the mowing. It’s quiet, smooth, powerful, and has a 62″ cut and power steering. I like it! I also helped him get his big sprayer hoisted up and mounted on his little red tractor. He’ll soon be needing it for the fruit trees.

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We’ve had time now and then to enjoy some of the beauty of God’s creation. This has been an especially beautiful Ohio spring. That gave me a chance to try out the macro capabilities of our camera. The little “Spring Beauty” blossoms in the pictures below are about the size of a pencil eraser. They are all through the woods and in big areas of lawn as well. It seems like every tree that blooms is in full bloom right now, so everywhere you turn you see color. It amazes me that this sin-cursed world is often so beautiful it nearly takes my breath away. I can’t imagine what it will be like after Christ has finished His work of redemption.

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I took a little break from sermon preparation and visiting supporters to take a stroll with my camera recently. It’s been a while since I’ve done that. It sure was refreshing to really focus for a while on some of the examples of God’s marvelous physical wonders and the interesting ways we humans interact with it. Sometimes that interaction is a good thing and sometimes not so good. And once in a while it’s just odd.

There are lots of gorgeous flowers around here. I’m not a flower expert, so if you know the names of any of them, I’d love it if you posted a comment so I could label the pictures properly.

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I love it when a plan comes together – even if I’m on plan “D” when it happens. Plan “A” was to go to La Ceiba on Monday morning and go straight to the medical center downtown for an ultrasound to try to discover the source of my mystery pains. Then I would proceed on over to Utila to install a timer to make sure the transmitter shuts off after broadcast hours end. When I got to the the medical center, I found out that I was not supposed to have eaten breakfast. Gee! That would have been nice to know beforehand and it didn’t matter that breakfast was a light one and that it was five hours in the past and my belly felt like an empty sack.

On to plan “B.” Since I needed to run some errands in La Ceiba, and it was too late to catch the morning ferry to Utila, I took care of the errands while I was there. After lunch I was just tired of that stuff, so I went on out to the docks and just hung out until the Utila Princess was ready to go. I figured that I could go to Utila, get my simple little task accomplished, and then return in the morning to La Ceiba for the ultrasound.

While I was waiting I observed what looked like an interesting example of Latin American foresight – or lack thereof. Notice the pictures below. This flatbed truck had about 150 bags of cement. Rather than pull up alongside the ship, they backed up to it. No problem for the first few rows of bags. But,with every row, these poor muchachos had to carry the bags farther and farther. At one point, they were bent over, gasping and spitting while their boss yelled at them to get a move on.

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Eventually it was time to go to Utila and, thankfully, we had unusually smooth seas. I didn’t know that it was going to be such a short-lived condition. We were a little late getting to Utila, and by the time I got to the transmitter site, it was nearly dark and the sand flies and mosquitoes were in a feeding frenzy. Deep Woods Off was not a problem for them at all. I could barely see what I was doing and they were driving me insane. (Or should that be more insane?) Anyway, I had to give up for the night. That meant that I could not take the morning ferry back to La Ceiba. So much for plan “B.”

Plan “C” was to get this timer installed in the morning and then do a few other chores. Then take the afternoon ferry to the coast, spend the night at a hotel in La Ceiba, and get my lab work done in the morning, maybe even in time to get the morning ferry back to Roatan. But, the simple little timer installation had some surprises for me, and it took most of the day to get it all sorted out. It works great but it made me too late for the afternoon ferry.

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I found out, when I got back into town, that it didn’t matter anyway because the ferry could not run that afternoon. A norther came in with high winds and forced the harbor in La Ceiba to close.

So I went to plan “D.” I went to supper and met a nice couple from San Pedro Sula there on a short vacation. He is originally from Oregon, but has lived in Honduras for several years now. Then I set my alarm for 5:30 so I could catch the morning ferry, if it was running. When I got to the ferry ticket office Wednesday morning, they were still waiting on word from the harbor captain in La Ceiba. We soon got the all clear, though, and boarded the ferry. This time it was the bigger of the two Utila ferries. During the voyage, I learned from the mate that the small one had actually broken a beam on a wave the day before and would be under repair for a few days. Wow! I’m glad I wasn’t on board for that!!

The seas were rather gentle (but still pretty high) and we made good time getting to La Ceiba. I got right in to the medical center and did not have to wait long for my ultrasound. The results were the best I could have hoped for. The liver, gall bladder, spleen, and pancreas were all fine. The tests confirmed what I’d already known; I am still the proud owner of a hiatal hernia. I guess it’s just getting worse.

Coming back on the Galaxy was a fairly nice trip. I shot a few pictures in the La Ceiba harbor, which was looking kind of somber in the drizzle and fog.

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When we got back to Roatan, there were two cruise ships docked right across from our dock, so I took the best pictures I could in the fading light. I had to boost the camera’s iso all the way to 1600, so the pictures are pretty grainy, but I’m just glad I had the Nikon with me so I could get them.

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This morning I went to see the doctor and he made some changes to my medication. We’ll see how that goes and take it from there. God is always good, even when He makes us be flexible.

I know I’m dating myself here, but who remembers the old Clint Eastwood movie, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly? I think we could make a movie about life here in Roatán called, The Beautiful, the Bad, and the Bizarre.

Last week was just a gorgeous week. I needed to go to Utila to take care of a few chores, but Peter was away for a few days on vacation. So, since Sunday was still beautiful and the forecast was for more of the same in the early part of this week, I packed on Sunday, left the house Monday morning about 6:00 and drove up to Dixon Cove to board the Galaxy Wave on my way to Utila. As I left the house, I noticed fairly brisk winds out of the west, which is often a sign that the weather is about to become less than ideal. But I went ahead, because I’d put this off for too long. It turns out that I made it OK, but it certainly could have been nicer.

The ride to the coast on the Galaxy Wave was fairly pleasant, but I could tell it would be a rough ride over to Utila from La Ceiba on the much smaller Princess II. I was right! As we got closer to Utila, the island sheltered us from the biggest waves, but the first two thirds of that last leg were pretty exciting.

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Once I got to Utila, Lance Bodden set me up, as usual, with an ATV which I first used to get to the hotel and check in. Then I ate lunch and I went to work. The place where we have been staying on Utila, by the way, is quite a pleasant place. It’s called the Utila Lighthouse and is run by O’Neil and Thelma Bodden. Since it’s built on big wooden posts over the water, it does sway in the wind a little at night, but it’s pleasant once you get used to it. Here’s a link that gives some pictures of the place. Pay no attention to the prices. Those are not what they charge me, praise the Lord. About Utila

Now we come to the reason for this title. The flower below is a sample of the ones surrounding our AM transmitter site, which is in the midst of a cow pasture. The view from that location is just beautiful, but I don’t get to see much of it when I’m inside the transmitter shack.

The bad picture is pretty self explanatory. Vandals got in past the chain link fence and barbed wire and snipped off practically all the wires on our backup generator. Our friend Lance discovered the break-in a couple weeks ago. I guess he really shook the bushes over there to try to find out who did it and to get the authorities to investigate. But this is Honduras – they don’t investigate here. Lance was just about sick over the whole thing and was blaming himself. Of course, it was not his fault, but that gives you an idea just how much he cares about Radio HRGS. I’m pretty sure I discovered how they got in (a small gap under the fence, covered with barbed wire that they spread and slithered through), and I’m thinking about a way to address it.

The bizarre picture is a scene that made me do a double-take, and then a triple-take. I walked ’round and ’round that fence post at first, trying to figure out if that was really a mouse fatally trapped in a hole on top of the post or a part of a mouse lying in just the right position to make it look that way. Nope! It was just what it looked like. What a way to go!

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As for the work I went to do, that was largely successful. Normally, we send our signal fromRoatán to Utila via microwave and feed that to the AM transmitter. But that receiver had quit on us and we were forced to use a special FM receiver that Frederick Henderson had found and installed. It was doing a pretty good job, but we have plans for changes that will require an operational microwave link to Utila.  Toward that end, I took a replacement microwave receiver with me and it is connected now and working wonderfully.

As for the injured shoulder that I was telling about last week, it’s doing much better, but still hurts if I do the wrong thing. I had another appointment yesterday with the orthopedic doctor. He was going to give me another shot. But he didn’t show and that visit has now been rescheduled for this coming Monday.

Two final quick comments as I get ready to wrap this up. Today I took what I’ve been told is the last of the documents we need for our resident visa (aka permanent residency) application to the airport to have them sent off to our lawyers in Tegucigalpa. Please pray that this is finally the last demand from immigration. The other thing I wanted to mention is my apology for not having an audio update this week. There just was not time, with travel, shoulder rehab, and all the other things going on. Hopefully, we can be back on schedule next week.

So long for now, and thanks for praying.