Many of you have heard us talk about the fact that HCJB Global had an agreement to remove our tall shortwave towers in Ecuador. We completed that effort at the end of December as agreed upon with the Airport authorities in the country. These towers were the tallest ones that we had on the property, but that does not mean that we are no longer broadcasting on shortwave. We still have 14 antennas on the property that were not affected by the agreement. We will continue to operate on these antennas until some time in the future. However, we will eventually stop broadcasting from this site all together.
January is a fairly "normal" month. It is somewhat of a catch-up month for many of us at the radio station as December is so busy with special activities. It is also a time of evaluating the events that occurred in December. For instance we found that 4,584 people attended our 3-day "Mision Compartida 2008" event. We have as many as 2,246 donors, and 86% of those donors are women. We also discovered that in spite of the financial crisis our donors gave 37% more by the end of December than they did last year. That is a real blessing although we are certainly not out of the woods yet financially.
It was great to have Rachel home for the holidays in December. We enjoyed catching up on each others activities during the previous months of separation. One of the kid's traditions at Christmas time is to make ginger bread houses. You can see Rachel's creation here. Rachel seems to be enjoying college and has made some good friends. She left for the US again on Jan 1 to attend the "January term"at Huntington University. She was involved in a mime class during that month. She really seemed to enjoy that. She is back in normal classes again now.
Thank you all for praying for us and for the very generous Christmas gifts that many of you sent us this year. We feel very blessed to have each of you on our team as we serve the Lord here in Latin America. It has been a difficult several years for us, but we are encouraged that this new year will bring new opportunities for reaching Latin America for Christ and helping others do the same. Thanks for being part of the team. We appreciate every one of you.
Doug
