Back in the Saddle

Hi all,

It has been a while since I updated our blog. A lot has been happening here in recent months so I thought it time to give you a brief update.

We returned to Ecuador on the 20th of January. It is good to be home in Ecuador again. The kids are back in school, Ruth is enjoying her Educational Therapy work at Alliance Academy International and I am settling into his new responsibilities at HCJB Global.

I am working on promoting "new media" opportunities within the mission, things like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. I have been running two Facebook fan pages for HCJB Global in Latin America since last October. One (HCJB la Voz de los Andes) is focused on the local radio audience in Ecuador, while the other (HCJB Voz Global) is focused more on regional and global ministries of HCJB Global. This last week we were giving away tickets to a Christian movie on the HCJB la Voz de los Andes page. A few weeks ago we had an open discussion about whether contemporary christian music is satanic or not. (Don't send me your comments on that please.) Many of our fans are from outside Ecuador. Many are from the USA, yet others are from Belgium, Italy, Spain, Peru, Argentina, and even Korea.

I have also been looking for ways to uses Twitter with our ministries. A week ago, the local HCJB radio station co-sponsored a conference for pastors. I attended the conference and sent out "tweets" every half hour or so about the lessons being learned in the conference. HCJB Global used Twitter very effectively in Jan. when we had a medical team on the ground in Haiti after the devastating earthquake there. I am also hoping to start some Twitter accounts for our ministries in Latin America.

Although these new technologies are pretty popular in western society, they are still pretty new in Latin America. We dedicated a whole hour on La Telaraña to Twitter one day. La Telaraña is tarted toward the generations who use this new media to communicate with their friends. Yet it was amazing how few of our listeners had even heard of Twitter. So part of what we will be doing is educating our audience about these new technologies. Interestingly enough, several of the local TV stations are now entering this new media field, so I am hoping that this will heightened awareness and draw more listeners to our sites as welll.

We will keep you updated on things as we progress. Thanks for praying for us.

Doug