Blah Blah Blog : Pic of the week

TOM'S FAVORITES OF THE WEEK

This is intended to be a gallery of my favorite pictures updated every week. I say intended, because the pictures that appear here may not be my favorites, and they may not be updated every week, and honestly they may not even be my pictures. .

So maybe a better title would be
"SOMEBODYS PICTURE(S) FROM THIS WEEK OR ANOTHER"

Well here we are week 3 of June and you are still looking at May week #4. Do me a favor, e-mail me if you are reading this so I know at least SOMEONE is looking at what I am doing. Instead of trying to catch up, I am going to post a few pictures together. Here is Philip and Janine leading worship at a "Hora Feliz" or Happy Hour at Luz del Mundo(Light of the World) Church. The second picture is the inside of the sanctuary.

May 2008 week 4 --Karate football?--
#5 is Efrain, a young guy who works at the hangar. He is addicted to football and plays on a team from Hogar Nacer(one of the boys' homes here). The team is doing better this year, and won this game 2-1.

May 2008 week 3 --Ja9 and PTT--
Just a fun picture of Janine with Peter at a friends birthday party.

May 2008 week 2--7:30am anniversary marathon?--
Our church here decided to celebrate their 20 year anniversary with a 7:30am kids marathon! Peter wanted to know why anyone would get up early to run, while Philip thought it was a grand idea. He finished third in his age group and did a GREAT job!

May 2008 week 1--Aeronautics 101--
I had the privilege of teaching a friends AWANA class this week.
About 15 jr. high students came out to the hangar and we talked about airplanes, gravity and faith.

APR 2008 week 4--Small engine repair class--
Three of us from SAMAIR had the opportunity to teach a group of Ayoreo indians about small engines. The SAM Ayoreo team is doing an assesment to find where each boys gifts and abilities are so we can help him delelop. I taught about hand tools,and basic 4 cycle engine principles, and Ben and Bruno helped the boys tear appart 2 lawn mower motors. Great fun!

APR 2008 week 3--futbol--
We helped with a small football ("soccer" to us gringos) tournament at our church for kids from 7-12 years old this weekend.
There were lots of prizes, trophies, medals, for the kids. We even had a plywood goalie shootout competition. The boys art teacher painted him (thanks Katie!) and the kids LOVED trying to kick the ball through the holes! Philips team took first place! No, I was not the ref. They won fair and square.

APR 2008 week 2--San Ignacio Del Velasco--
I had a great trip out to this small town in Eastern Bolivia. During the flight, it was easy to see evidence of flooding. The river seems to be back within it's banks. I have posted 2 pictues for this week. One of the airport terminal/tower and one of the river.

APR 2008 week 1--family moto--
This is a fairly common sight here. The odd part of the picture is that someone is actually wearing a helmet on their head. Many people here wear their helmet on their elbow or on the handlebars, so if they see a policeman, they can quickly put it on their head.

Mar 2008 week 5--HIFR--
I took this in 1989 with a cheap point and shoot camera through a porthole in the ship I was stationed on in the Coast Guard. They call this a HIFR "Helicopter in-flight refueling".

Mar 2008 week 4--Mowing the Airstrip--
A small glimpse into my office. This is the airstrip in front of the hangar where I spend most of my days. The strip is 4000 feet long (about 3/4 mile) and takes a few days to mow. Luckily someone else has that wonderfull job every few months.

Mar 2008 week3--Butterfly hotcake--
Sorry I missed a few weeks in there. You will just have to imagine what Pictures I might have taken! This week I am going to put a picture on that Janine took Thursday morning. She was making pancakes for the boys and two friends who stayed the night, when she noticed this "butterfly" pancake. I read this week that someone bought a corn flake in the shape of the state of Illinois for $1500 on ebay. This butterfly was eaten, but if we find another one, we will be sure to let you have a chance to bid on it.

Feb 2008 week 4--Pizza face--
Friends from the home office in the States came down for meetings, and brought us some special treats--including USA pepperoni! We had fun making pizza with it. . . .

Feb 2008 week 3 -- Brotherly Love--
After weeks of working overtime, we took a day off and went to a pool to play. They boys loved playing in the water (we did too). Here they are sharing a Coke.

Feb 2008 week 2 -- Great big bugs--
With all the flights we have had lately, we have had to work a few evenings and nights to get maintenance done. To work at night we have had to use lights to see what we are doing, and this draws bugs. This is by far the biggest cock-roach I have ever seen. It was about 5" long and REALLY ugly.

Feb 2008 Week 1 --when it rains, it pours--
We have had another season of record rains, causing mud slides in the mountains, and severe flooding in the east. Many roads are out and people are stranded. We ended up flying in a week more than we usually do in a whole month. I became the flight co-ordinator as both of our pilots were flying all week. This picture is one of the main roads from the city of Santa Cruz heading east. The river overflowed it's banks and the road ended up working like a dyke to trap the water and flood the town of Pailon. The road was cut to allow the water to go through and keep the town from flooding worse. For almost the whole week they used wooden planks to walk across so people could get in and out of the city. Pics by Captain A.Aguilar and Captain G. Dahl

In the top right corner you can see the planks where people walk across and in the bottom right corner you can see people waiting for their turn to get in a boat to cross the flooded area. The people are standing on the rail road tracks, that go right to left in the picture. They, too, are flooded, stopping all trains in the country.

Jan 2008 Week 4 --Sylvia and Yhonny
I had the privilege of being the photographer for a friends wedding this week. Sylvia is one of the youth at our church here and taught Sunday School with Janine. The wedding was scheduled to start at 7pm, but didn't get underway until almost 10. Peter fell asleep before dinner was served, and we made it home around 1:30am. (Yes, some blamed it on the photographer who drove the new couple to a fancy hotel for pictures between the ceremony and the reception, but it really was not his fault!)

Jan 2008 week 3 --hard landing--
First I want to say THIS IS NOT ONE OF OUR PLANES, NOR WAS IT ONE OF OUR PILOTS. We received another emergency flight request for a small plane that crashed on landing in eastern Bolivia. Bev Smith who is a nurse went along on the 2.5 hour flight (each way) because there was little information about the pilots condition. She patched up the pilot enough to travel to the hospital here in the city, but he suffered a compund fracture of the lower leg, lacerations to the face and was beat up prety bad. Pics by Cap. A.Aguilar and G Dahl

UPDATE- Teddy, the pilot who was injured, had surgery on his leg and is recovering well at home. His plane was a total loss.

Jan 2008 week 2 --SAM Family--
We spent this week at a conference with the other SAM missionaries here in Bolivia. My parents were here to help teach the kids with Richard and Janice Caveliere. Pastor Ray and Marlene Pritchard came to teach the big kids.

Jan 2008 week 1 --Tiny Passenger--
The day my parents arrived I received a call for an emergency flight. Dad and I raced to the airport to maintain contact with our pilot by radio. Two hours later the plane landed with a five day old baby with severe jaundice. The local village had no medical care so she was flown to Santa Cruz. When I asked the nurse carrying the baby on the flight how I could help, she handed me the baby. My dad took this picture of us.

UPDATE- This little girls family came into the hanger in the middle of Feb. to say that their daughter is doing well, and now back home. Thanks for the flight.

Dec 2007 week 4 -- three wee kings--
This is from the Christmas play at church that Janine wrote about in the blog for Christmas day. The boy in the middle is Samuel, one of my buddies at church. Some of you may remember him, he was the one that was hit by a car two years ago and the doctor pronounced him dead. He looks pretty good huh! God is Good!

Dec 2007 week 2 --one of those days--
This is what happens when your axel shaft breaks while in the middle of a rotunda. This is our truck, I was driving and headed to a meeting when I felt the rear end hit the ground followed by a loud grinding sound. Looking in the mirror, I noticed the wheel bouncing down the road. Nothing a few hundred dollars couldn't fix.

Dec 2007 week 1 -- Dad--
We have been blessed with visits from my parents every year, and this year they will be here a second time! This picture was taken during their last visit while we were at the worlds largest butterfly enclosure. This butterfly loved my dad! This is the desktop picture on my computer and it makes me laugh every time I see it. I love you Dad! (and Mom too!)

We thought you might like to take a guess . . . .
From what I understand, these are not available in the US, because the brightly colored fruit part often causes a poison-oak-like rash on the mouth and hands. In Costa Rica, Bolivia, and other places, they eat them anyway.

In Costa Rica, I remember they cooked them and put them over ice cream (I never tried it. A friend here, however, tried one uncooked and said it really burned her skin.). In the States, you can buy processed versions of the little green part. That part is not the stem--the green part actually hangs beneath the fruit.

Figured it out? . . . . They're cashews! Now you can see why they're so much more expensive than other nuts, huh?

Nov 2007 week 4 --Sweet Smile--
One of the things we are involved in here is to help out at one of the many orphanages/ care homes. This is Rosario, one of the older girls in the home. I understand she was orphaned--that her parents died a few years back. Please pray for these precious children, that they would learn the love and forgiveness of their heavenly father.

Nov 2007 week 3 --GOT DIESEL?--
Janine mentioned in the blog last week about the diesel shortage. With over half the vehicles running on diesel, the lines to get it are painfully long. I have met some who have waited 12 hours for fuel with no guarantee they will get it!

Nov 2007 week 2 --somebody threw away a perfectly good horse--
Though not uncommon to see animals going through your trash here, we thought it was funny to see a horse getting its dinner from a dumpster.

Nov 2007 week 1 --as far as the eye can see--
This is a picture of the crowd at the cemetery for "day of the dead". It was a huge crowd, around 90,000 people packed in to pray, cry, grieve and sell stuff. It was a carnival type atmosphere.

October 2007 week 4
This is the flight crew that returned from a ministry flight today (10-31-07) to a small indigeneous village in Eastern Bolivia. From the right is our pilot Alonso, Ayore pastor Beniel, Doctor Placido Mercado, Benjamin and Missionary Mario. In fact I did take this picture today and yes it is one of my favorites. Why is it a favorite? Our goal at SAM is to train national leaders. What better picture to show than this group of all Bolivians going to reach their fellow Bolivians?