Little Musicians

Joshua and Joel have music in their blood I believe. They both enjoy listening to music and both of them like to sing. When it comes to things that make noise, well, they are like any other kid their age.

The drums are a favorite, probably because they make the most noise. They both seem to have a good sense of rhythm as well.

We have them in a music class for kids where they teach rhythm, the sound of the notes, and the sounds that different instruments make (mainly percussion). The instructor is very dynamic and does a great job getting the kids involved and doing thing.

We have also enrolled Joshua in AWANA which just started this past week.

It is good to have them interacting with other kids and learning while doing something they enjoy.

Death in the family

Please be in prayer for Marlene's family. Her uncle died Saturday afternoon. He had been ill for quite some time and was in a long-term care hospital. The good news in this is that after having rejected the Gospel for all of his life, he had prayed to accept Jesus one week before he died. He was 84 years old.

Annual Members Meetings

September has come and is now more than half-over. What does this mean for members of HCJB Global? Annual Members Meetings or AMM for short. This year we had scheduled 4 days of meetings (3 1/2 hours in the morning and 2 1/2 hours in the afternoon). Fortunately, by the time Thursday noon had rolled around, we were finished!

As has happened since I've been a part of HCJB, we had time for preaching, reports, and the business of the mission. The spiritual part was, as always for me, the best part of the meetings, although it was fascinating hearing reports from the various regions, giving testimony to what God is doing around the world.

Our speaker this year was Peter Grainger, Senior Pastor of Charlotte Chapel in Edinburgh, Scotland. He brought four messages on our theme: "Treasure in Jars of Clay".

The host site this year was our Technology Center in Elkhart, Indiana with video links to Colorado Springs, Colorado, McAllen, Texas, and Quito, Ecuador.

Apart from a couple of hiccups, we had basically no technical difficulties throughout the week. That was a blessing!

The Lone Ranger

We had a few days of vacation and went out to Puembo, a small town about 45 minutes south-east of Quito. While we were there we had the opportunity to go horseback riding.

Joshua, especially was taken with the horses. When I climbed on the first one so that I could put him in front of me, he wanted on the second one. He wanted to ride his own horse. I wasn't so sure about that but thought we'll give it a try. Well, it was like a duck to water. Joshua sat on the horse and rode easily for the 30 minutes we had them.

It was a thrill for Joshua. When we got back to the hacienda, he kept going back out to take a look at the horses.

Joel enjoyed the horses as well, although he was more tired when we actually went for the ride.

Vacation...

What's that you say? You read correctly. We are on vacation this week and will be taking a quick visit to Puembo a small town about 45 minutes south-east of Quito. We wanted to get away from the noise and routine of the city. Stay tuned next week when I'll put some pictures up of where we stayed.

Front page news

This is rather old news but kind of interesting. For those of you who read Spanish, I've included scans of the national paper El Comercio from July 20, 2005.

A co-worker had asked if I would agree to being interviewed for a piece his cousin was doing for one of the national papers. The main theme is why foreigners come and stay in Ecuador.

What had not been expected was to see my face on the front page above the fold. The headline reads, "More foreigners make the country their second home."

The section where the story ran is called "Daily Life" and the heading of the article says, "Business and tourism are the magnets".

The tendency is that even though immigration doesn't count statistics from resident foreigners, in the previous five years the number of people entering the country is growing.

Here is the translation of what they wrote for me.

The Canadian Barry Hamm (43 years) on the other hand, arrived in Ecuador in 1995 to visit some friends. "Really, I fell in love with the country, I liked the people, the views, here there is everything, desert, land and ocean." After this first view, he didn't give it another thought and has been living in Quito a little more than six years.

His career as a missionary brought him to work with HCJB Radio as Director of Information Systems. Here he married an Ecuadorian and today they have a baby 14 months old. His first visa was a missionary visa, renewable every two years and currently he says that he has a spousal visa. "I'll be here until God takes us to another home," he adds with enthusiasm.

Our photos on-line

After thinking that people could see our photo albums, a friend asked me if we had more photos. I then realized that we hadn't put up a link in the blog for our photos. So, here it is.

Now don't go expecting a vast quantity of photos, but slowly we are putting some up so you can see what's up.

Enjoy.