Coincidence?

Hi all,

A couple of weeks ago our local radio team went to the city of Ambato, Ecuador for the day. HCJB, la Voz de los Andes, has a transmitter in Ambato that repeats our FM programs in Quito. For years we have heard testimonies from our listeners in Ambato, but we rarely have the opportunity to connect directly with them unless they come to Quito. So we decided to go there for a day of "live" programming, and inviting our listeners to join us.

When the day arrived, our advance team headed south at 4:30 a.m. to set up for the transmission that began at 8:00 a.m. But, they soon learned that our transmitter in Ambato was "Off the Air"! How could that be? We had been planning this for weeks. Our listeners were expecting us. Now they could not even hear us! How would they know to come?

A lightening strike had taken out the power feeding the mountain where our transmitter is located. Coincidence? I don't believe in looking for "evil one" behind every tree, but I also don't believe a lot in coincidence... especially in this situation.

I immediately started receiving phone calls from our engineers as they began to strategize how to get power to our transmitter. Portable generators? Meanwhile, the president of the local pastors association quickly began to call pastors to pray. And pray they did. They prayed for 3 hours until the power company was finally able to restore power at around 11:00 a.m.

But our listeners were not deterred. Even though they could not hear us at first, they came anyway. Many of them expressed their gratitude to our staff, sharing how they had been touched by our ministry. Several wanted to give to our annual fund raiser "Mision Compartida". Others signed the hand-written Bible that HCJB Global and the Ecuadorian Bible Society have been sponsoring for the last two years. Our producers probably came away more blessed than anyone by this encounter with our listeners.

Thanks for praying for our producers and the ministry they are having in the lives of our listeners. Pray that they will continually communicate God's Word to our audience, not only in Ecuador, but in all of Latin America.

If you want to listen to our FM station click on the following link:

http://www.radiohcjb.org/copyrightnewfm.php

Doug

A Powerful testimony!

Hi all,

I wanted to share with you a powerful testimony that we heard in the last week or so. Carlos Pinto is a missionary with HCJB Global and a Peruvian national. He was recently in Lima, Peru attending a leadership meeting for COMIBAM. While there, the ALAS satellite network team asked him to participate in their live program called "Hola Familia" (Hello Family). This program is targeted toward the family and the issues facing the family in Latin America. Experts on family issues are often consulted during the program.

Pastor Antenor Rojas welcomed Carlos to radio station "Armonia" and indicated that HCJB Global was responsible for helping the station get on the air some 10 years ago. Carlos also discovered that this local pastor had received much of his spiritual training through our Academia Cristiana del Aire (Christian Academy of the Air) discipleship training program. The material was originally written by Glen Turner's father who was a missionary from Church of the Open Door and served with HCJB Global many years ago.

Once on the air, Carlos and Pastor Rojas were able to participate in the program along with our producers who were in our studios back in Quito. This was a special treat for Pastor Rojas as he indicated that the program was very popular in his area. Carlos was able to verify this claim very shortly after the program ended when various people began calling the station to thank Radio Armonia and radio HCJB for presenting such important themes about the family.

Later, a young lady arrived. Carlos writes, "... the pastor told me that she had heard the radio and wanted to ask a question. Her name was Roxana and she told me, 'I have problems in my marriage but the truth is that I am so excited to speak with someone from HCJB that the only thing that I want to say is that it was through listening to radio HCJB that I came to know the Lord and since then all of my problems seem small in comparison to the greatness of knowing God'. Seeing her face express a mixture of tears and smiles was the best payment God could have given those of us who labored at the radio station. Seeing transformed lives, and thankfulness to God and the radio, are unequaled experiences."

Later, the Pastor invited Carlos out for lunch at a typical Peruvian food restaurante. At the end of the meal, Carlos intended to pay for his portion, however the Pastor said, "No... various christians who heard the program today called me and told me that they had wanted to meet the person who had come from HCJB but because of their work they could not. These brothers are the ones who will pay the bill. I am paying now, but they they have asked that I take you to lunch and they will give an offering to cover the cost of the meal."

HCJB Global has a long history of telling others about the eternal life we can have in Jesus Christ. These believers originally heard the gospel message through our short wave transmissions. Today they are hearing it through technologies like satellite. Tomorrow we hope to be sending the message through technologies like the internet. And we will keep changing to new and effective technologies until Jesus himself comes to back to take us home.

Doug

New Opportunities

Hi all,

New opportunities for ministry come along all of the time. Many of them are things that we dream about being able to do in the future. Some are things that we didn't even expect to come along. Well, we at HCJB Global Latin America have been waiting for some new opportunities to open up for a while now. These opportunities involve ministry in two of Latin America's largest countries, Mexico and Brazil.

Mexico and Brazil have long been countries we have broadcast to via short wave and we have wanted to expand our ministry and reach into each of them. Yet radio licenses issued by the federal government to Christian broadcasters have been rare in both countries. Yet just in the last couple of weeks we have heard of one group in Brazil and perhaps two groups in Mexico who may have been issued legal radio licenses. The license in Brazil is particularly encouraging as it may well open the way for several more groups to obtain a license by using the same process. So please be in prayer for these groups and the new opportunities that we may have in helping these groups bring christian radio to their local communities and reach out with the Gospel message to their neighbors.

Don't forget to watch the video of our ministry here in Latin America at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVI1UnKkOCO

Thanks,

Doug

New Video

Hi all,

I wanted to let you know that HCJB Global in Latin America has just posted a new video to YouTube that I would invite you to watch. We made it initially in Spanish and decided to translate it to English as well. It describes our ministries in Media quite well and shows the diversity of ministries that we have in Latin America. We also have the video on DVD that we can make available to you all if you would like a copy. The DVD has higher video quality. I would encourage you to share the video with your churches, friends, family, mission groups, etc.

What the video does not show you are our plans to move more into digital media in the future. We have been talking for a long time about how we can begin to really use the internet for ministry in the future. Some of those ideas are beginning to come together and we hope to start using some things like FaceBook, podcasting, internet streaming, etc in the near future to create new audiences. We do need to be careful that we create ministries that we can sustain financially in the future, and that is our biggest obstacle at the moment. If anyone has experience in these areas or some good ideas to toss our way, by all means write to us on e-mail. We would love to hear your ideas.

OK, just click on one of the links below to watch the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVI1UnKkOCQ - English version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOQ4jOp-ArM - Spanish version

Doug

Tall Towers

Hi all,

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