Oregon Trips

We have made several trips to Oregon during the past few weeks. Last week we stopped by Oregon city to see some of our family there and were blessed to see Jenny, a "long lost" cousin from Bend, Oregon with her husband and two children.

Then it was on to Hillside, Oregon.
This church was build by my great grandfather and is full of Bamfords. We enjoyed spending time with family there. After church we went down to my Dad and Martha's place for lunch and table games.
The following weekend was a trip to Portland to see our friends, Mark and Letta. Mark and Letta served with us in the Philippines for many years and so it was a joy to get to spend a few hours with them.Mark and Letta took us to a mall for lunch. It happened that the mall had been invaded by aliens of all types. Fortunately they didn't seem to want to abduct anyone and they all spoke English. The fellow below was handing out plastic aliens. In reality the aliens were all part of a big Japanese comic book show going on in the area. I noted, that Letta does talk to strangers and I can only attribute that to prolonged exposure to downtown Portland.

A fair day in August

Going to the fair with Aunt Kay (standing behind Thomas) was a lot of fun. We are watching an event called the tractor pull. (see the picture below) This tractor pull is for children driving peddle tractors. These kids really gave it their best shot and the crowd enjoyed watching them do it.
As we wandered the Kitsap County fair grounds we saw lots of interesting displays. All the displays were organized into groups. We thought the exhibit in the picture below would be very interesting, but it turned out to be much tamer that the name suggests.
Thomas and James enjoying the Sheriff's exhibit.
Our family with Uncle Harry who was holding down the 4-H booth.

August Activities

Meet Emily and her husband Jon. Emily is Heidi's niece and we enjoyed having her and her husband Jon over for dinner last night. We are enjoying our time on home assignment. Seeing friends and family has been a real treat for us. We have also enjoyed visiting many churches. Heidi counted our speaking engagements over the last two months and found that we have had 19 speaking opportunities.

Olympic Bible Camp

Summer in western Washington means huckleberries in the woods. We don't often get to spend much time in the woods while we are home from Philippines, but this time we did and we enjoyed eating the berries.Our reason for camping was a Bible camp put on by American Missionary Fellowship. This year I was invited to be the missionary speaker for the night meetings. We really enjoyed getting to know the workers and the campers. The camp was a lot of fun for our kids. There were plenty of surprises.
A real bonus was getting to spend some time with my nephew, Billy, and our niece, Rachelle. The kitchen crew did a great job! Right boys?

Thomas enjoyed launching a rocket he made out of a plastic bottle. We really appreciated all the hard work the AMF folks went to so that the kids could have a fun and challenging week of spiritual growth.