We are off and running as we enter what is already a tiring week. Sunday night Rev. Evan Drake, president of our mission, began a three-night series of meetings about the biblical family. Families are just as dysfunctional here as they are in the U. S.  Each night’s meetings were very well attended and he really seemed to have everyone’s attention.

Rev. Evan Drake - marriage seminar

Monday night, Evan broke out of his outline briefly to talk about purity before marriage. At then end of the meeting, he invited the young people to come forward if they were serious about remaining pure until marriage. There was a pause of maybe 20-30 seconds and then one young lady came to the front. Then all or nearly all the others came forward too. Next Evan asked if there were any couples who wanted to improve their marriages. In about a minute the front of the church was pretty packed. What made this surprising was that he did not make a lengthy invitation, and he didn’t apply any pressure. He just said to come if you want to do this and he let the Holy Spirit do the convincing.

Dr. Eugene Priddy - preaching in West End

At 1st Baptist Church - West End

Sunday morning, our founding president, Dr. Eugene Priddy, spoke down in West End. At the end of the service, a man came forward to receive Christ. Pastor Bush asked me to pray with him as he surrendered to his Savior and King. What a wonderful privilege to be there to witness a new birth. Pastor Bush said the man had been coming to church for a while and they had talked several times about his need and Sunday was the day he finally took that all important step. Several people have recently trusted Christ at that church and are continuing to attend, read their Bibles, and grow in faith. I’m very excited about what the Lord is doing through Pastor Bush in West End. Even so, as he told me the other day, the need seems to be growing faster than we can reach people with the good news.

After church on Sunday, we (the visitors from BBI and the Radio HRGS staff) went to the Argentine Grill in West End for “lunch.” I put “lunch” in quotes because we were supposed to meet at 1:30. However, Evan, Herman, and Sam got lost on the way and so it was almost as close to supper time as it was lunch time. By the time we got the food, we were more than ready for it. And that worked well, because the meal was abundant and delicious. But it is an outdoor restaurant, so you do have to accept a few of the things that go along with eating outside. What a great time we had!

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I spent most of Tuesday working on our reluctant lawn tractor. As I said in the HRGS Update below, the new carburetor got it running. But it still has no power. It seems to be running lean, so I’ll pull the spark plug today to check on that. However, there is no mixture adjustment to the carburetor. I have other theories, but checking them involves tearing down the machine, because the compression is a little lower than it should be. A valve not fully closing, maybe? On top of that — or should I say underneath that — there are at least two new rust holes in the mower deck. Those John Deere zero turn riding mowers are starting to look very attractive!

Last night was is the last night of the marriage seminar. I was up way past my bed time, but it was well worth it. Evan is not just a good teacher, he teaches good stuff. He and the others from Tampa will be leaving on Thursday, so maybe today we’ll all have time to visit a while. It seems like we’re usually too busy here to be able to talk about all the things we should be talking about. Know what I mean? Hope you have a great week. Here’s the audio update.

No, I’m not going to school, unless you count the school of hard knocks. “Phd” stands for “Piled higher and deeper.” That’s what it feels like so far this week.

As you probably know, if you’ve been keeping up with our blog, we got the computer changes made for the updated FM broadcast computer. That was Saturday night and all seemed well Sunday. But on Monday the gremlins came in swarms and they continue to stream out of the woodwork today. There are all sorts of strange things happening on the network — things like copying files and finding that some are at their destination and some are not, file names changing by themselves, computers disappearing from the network and coming back on their own, and so on. (Virus scans are negative!) On top of that, the studio air conditioner has started acting up. Our mower is on the fritz and we are expecting VIP visitors in about 10 days.

The shoulder I injured last November is needing almost 10 hours of therapy a week. And there are countless other things I need to fix or invent on top of getting ready for the project to replace the guy wires on our AM tower. As you will hear in the Update below, I found some rust at the base of our new aluminum FM tower that has stainless steel fasteners. Things really do seem to be getting piled higher and deeper. Or, as my mom would say, “The hurrier I do, the behinder I get.” Hmm… that sounds familiar. I guess I’ve said it here before, but that was almost two years ago.

It feels a little overwhelming sometimes. So today I stopped to remind myself about what it was like in the days following my surgery when I got the titanium plate in my right wrist and had a cast on the other hand. I guess this hasn’t been all that tough of a week after all. And compared to the life the Apostle Paul led, even that time in my life was like a walk in the park. Paul really had his priorities squared away. “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” — Romans 8:18. In my reading, I found that at the Nicene Council, of the 318 delegates attending, fewer than 12 had not lost an eye or a hand or did not limp on a leg lamed by torture for their Christian faith. I guess I can put up with balky computers and malfunctioning machines to help share the Good News to these islands. In fact, if 1 Corinthians 9:16 is true — and it is, I’d better keep it up. “For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for I am under compulsion; for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel.” There is nothing better than being where God wants you to be and doing what He wants you to do. May we all lean on the Lord’s strength while we work on our Phd’s.

Island Kids

In the early years of modern missions, the philosophy seemed to be that, when entering a new mission field, the first task was to westernize the local population before focusing on sharing the actual Gospel. Thankfully, we have grown a little wiser over the years in that regard. But the loss of heritage in any society is tragic. While presenting the Gospel and dealing with sin, it’s important that missionaries remain sensitive to the non-sinful traditions that make each culture unique. I love to learn about the history of this place. Beside being fun for me, I think it helps me relate and communicate better.

That brings us to a special HRGS Audio Update. I’ve probably lamented publicly before how the mainland culture is overwhelming the island culture. I would guess that somewhere around 40,000 people have moved here from the coast in the last 10 years, roughly tripling our population. The younger generation is losing their sense of history and forgetting much of what makes this such a special place. But there is a group of people who are working to rekindle a love for the culture and history of these islands. Two of them, Artlie Brooks and Pastor Felix Gale joined Peter in the studio this week to talk a little bit about our history here in the islands and some of the activities they are planning.

The Update starts, as usual, with Peter and me reminiscing and prognosticating and then moves on to Artlie and Pastor Felix. I really enjoyed hearing this conversation because I love to learn about the history of the places where I live and visit. If you enjoy that too, set aside about 27 minutes and learn a little about this fascinating place.

This week, as Peter and I sat down to record the HRGS Update, we wondered what we would talk about. We felt like last week was such an uneventful week that we would not have much in the way of news for our listeners. Having been slowed down with some kind of bug that showed me a lot more mercy than it did Mildred, I was a little behind on just about everything last week. Then, of course there was the trip to Utila, which put me even further behind.

But, as you will hear, we just started in recording and soon discovered that there was plenty to talk about concerning HRGS, especially our exciting new programs. At the end, we mentioned that Emily Mitten was about to be induced so that she could deliver the remains of their baby. That happened yesterday and the baby’s remains as well as the placenta came out quicker than expected and with no serious incidents, praise the Lord. She is feeling much better, but the whole Mitten family needs our continued prayers for comfort and guidance.

Mildred is feeling considerably better this week. She was sick in bed most of the time last week with that respiratory bug that’s so popular around here right now. But we are both still coughing a lot, so it’s not all gone yet. It’s a good thing she’s feeling better now because it’s time for her to prepare the monthly financial reports that have to go to the home office. This is a time of the month when she puts in lots of extra hours at the station.

Last on my list is our resident visa application. We are still waiting for that mystery document that no one seems to be able to get for us. I’m hopeful that we will have it soon. In the meantime, I’m going to Tegucigalpa tomorrow morning to meet our new lawyer. You might remember that our previous lawyer left the firm to begin her own private practice. I have to take some papers to him and pay some fees. He and I will go together to immigration to renew our tourist visas. This time they will only be good for 60 days. Then, the next time, they will only be good for 30 days at a time. So this is going to get highly inconvenient if we don’t get our resident visas soon. Round trip plane tickets to Tegucigalpa are $215, so we can’t afford to take the passports there every month. Besides that, I can’t afford that much time away from work. That leaves one other option –  sending our passports via a regional airline to our lawyer so he can deal with them and send them back to us. And that provides lots of opportunities for our passports to get lost. So please pray that the Lord would light a fire under whoever is holding things up.

With all this sickness and the mess with immigration you might think we’d be down, but the Lord is sustaining us and giving us reasons to rejoice every day. Sandi told us that a listener came to the station the other day and said she is listening to us in both English and Spanish at the same time. She said her kids told her to make up her mind and listen to one or the other. Her response was, “You will never know what this station means to me!” Yes, I think I can get out of bed tomorrow and face another day. Thank you Jesus for letting us participate in Your work in the hearts of these precious people that You love so dearly!!

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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