More Coverage for Horeb

When lightning damaged their 500 watt transmitter six months ago, the Horeb Bible Radio station in Bolivia borrowed a smaller transmitter in order to stay on the air.

New Tribes Mission is excited that a new, larger, more powerful transmitter is now on its way to the station. The new 2,000-watt transmitter has been designed and built at the HCJB World Radio Engineering Center in Elkhart, USA.

The new transmitter, with its increased power, will widen its broadcast coverage area. This week New Tribes Missionary and radio technician Bruce Johnson is returning to Bolivia with his family and the new equipment.

The damaged 500-watt transmitter will be repaired by HCJB World Radio engineers and returned to NTM for use in another part of Bolivia.

Horeb broadcasts in Spanish and several tribal languages, and the new transmitter will enable the station's continued, far-reaching impact. There have been encouraging testimonies from several tribes that show the effectiveness of the radio ministry.

HCJB World Radio has worked with various local radio partners to plant local AM and FM stations in the Bolivian cities of Santa Cruz, Tarija and Tupiza. Four stations with eight transmitters in four cities (La Paz, Caranavi, Santa Cruz and Sucre) are also affiliated with ALAS, the ministry’s Latin American satellite radio network that makes Spanish programs available to local stations 24 hours a day.

Reaching Where Others Don't

Cross Rhythms Radio, the Community Radio Station for Stoke on Trent and Newcastle under Lyme, is proving the old truth that radio can cross boundaries which are sometimes unscalable by other means.

• This Christian-based community station is being heard in 3 Muslim cafés - because they couldn’t get a signal from any other radio stations.
• It's programmes can also be heard playing at an Asian general store
• A crew fixing the road regularly listens in
• And two drug addicts, who randomly tuned in to the station, decided to go to the ‘Time For Healing’ event.

When Christians are faithful in providing the tools - God makes use of them.

Weblink

• Cross Rhythms Radio

POD Bibles

A website originally set up to be the first live reading of the entire Bible over the internet now provides downloadable audio versions.

Last year, Auckland, New Zealand's Balmoral Baptist Church enlisted 200-300 people of varied ages to take turns reading the Bible live while concurrently broadcasting over the internet.

In response to participant's desire to maintain the "Biblecast," organizers provided chapters that can be downloaded to iPods and other audio MP3 players from www.podbible.com.

The growing site is now estimated to be providing around 1000 chapters per day to listeners.

One church elder said,

"The Bible was, after all, written to be heard and we believe that we are returning it to what it was. That young guy with the earplugs you saw on the bus on the way to work might not have been listening to the latest rock music, but doing his 'quiet time'."

Weblink

• www.podbible.com

Voice of Charity bombed

The Voice of Charity, a Roman Catholic radio station with an inter-faith perspective in Lebanon, was destroyed by a bomb on May 6. This is the most recent of a series of bomb attacks in Christian areas that no-one has claimed responsibility for.

The radio station, that has been run by Maronite Catholics in the Lebanese port of Jounieh since 1984, was destroyed by an estimated 50 pounds of explosives. Nearby buildings were also affected.

Fr Elie Nakhoul, representing Radio Voice of Charity on a visit to the UK, explained that "the attack was in response to the radio station's focus on Lebanese prisoners in Syrian jails". Syrian authorities have denied the prisoners exist and the Lebanese government has ignored the issue.

"Many mothers and fathers are sure that their children are in Syrian prisons" he said, "and we all want our children back from the Syrian prisons, back to their parents, this is our message and our goal". The radio has hosted phone-ins and focused programming on the prisoners. The radio and this campaign enjoys support from Christians and Muslims alike. "This is a human rights issue" insists Father Nakhoul "every Lebanese person supports the return of the prisoners".

Prisoners were taken during the Lebanese civil war, the last of them in 1989. It is believed that among them are two priests, Fr. Albert Cherfan and Fr. Sleiman Abou Khalil, missing presumed to be prisoners. The total number of undeclared prisoners is said to be between 500 and 600.

Partly because of the coverage of the issue given by radio Voice of Charity, a commission has been named by the government to investigate.

The radio station has broadcast harrowing interviews with ex-prisoners, whose existence was denied and who have told of being tortured while in jail. Other interviews have focused on the frustrations and anxieties of the family members of people presumed to be in Syrian prisons.

The radio station has responded to the attempt to silence it by going straight back on the air broadcasting from a tent in the ruins of the bombed building. "The cry for the return of the prisoners will not be silenced by the bombing" said Fr Nakhoul defiantly.

Voice of Charity's signal is picked up in Israel/Palestine, Cyprus and parts of Egypt and Jordan via its satellites and around the world through internet. As well as Arabic programming it also airs in French, English, Armenian and Italian, as well as eight other languages for migrant workers.

Weblink

http://www.radiocharity.org

THE WORD AT FRENZY 2006!

THE WORD AT FRENZY 2006! The Highland Hall, Edinburgh

The team from The Word are live at Frenzy from 11.00am until 10.00pm on Saturday 10th June including live broadcasts of Delirious?, Tree63, David Crowder Band, Tim Hughes plus lots more!

Text the team: 07799 007718

Weblinks

• The Word - www.thewordismusic.com
• Frenzy - www.frenzyfrenzy.com
  

Practical Help through radio

Radio talk show host Mike Gallagher, the eighth most recognized talk radio personality in America, recently got introduced to one agency whose passion and ministry zeal grabbed his attention.

"When I first learned about a group called Food For The Poor, I started to research them, I started to study them because something about this group touched my heart."

The more he go to know the group, the more evident it became that he needed to get firsthand knowledge of their work.

"Eventually, we got to a point where we could put together this broadcast where I could come with a group of people from food for the poor and tour communities all throughout Jamaica."

In mid-May, Gallagher did his national broadcast live from Love FM in Kingston, Jamaica to raise funds for 15 homes. Gallagher's listeners responded strongly to his description of the living conditions in the slum areas and raised enough money to build 17 houses in St. Thomas, Jamaica. Food For The Poor and The Mike Gallagher's show will continue an ongoing partnership to raise funds to build houses in Jamaica.

Along the way, Angel Aloma, Executive Director at Food For The Poor said,

"We went to Bellrock, one of the older communities Food For The Poor built in Jamaica. The gardens were flourishing (even in the "dry season"), there were new additions to some of the homes and even some new homes going up in the area, indicating a new era of prosperity. It was good to go back."

He described the needs as many and ongoing.

"We saw people living in the worst of conditions: crowded, unbearably hot, holes in the wall and on the roofs, rotting floors and little ventilation. I wondered how these people who have suffered from multi-generational poverty and neglect did not succumb to despair."
"I remembered God's words to Paul, My grace will be enough. It was inspirational to see God's grace at work."

Observing faith in action, Gallagher commented on the ministry aspect of the teams that build the homes.

"That's what Food For The Poor is all about. They have touched thousands of people's lives, just in a relatively short period of time, in the last couple of decades that they have been in operation."

Weblinks

• Love FM
• Food for the Poor
• Mike Gallacher
  

10 Years of SAT-7

SAT-7 marked its tenth year of outreach to the Middle East with a live 2-hour broadcast from Lebanon on Wednesday.

In 1996, SAT-7 began as only a two hour a week service. It now broadcasts 24 hours a day, carrying seven to nine hours of new programming each day. Nearly 80 percent of its programs are made in the region, many in SAT-7's own studios in Lebanon and Egypt.

Founder and CEO, Terry Ascott remembered the negative "advice" they received when birthing the SAT7 project:

"There were alot of people that said we would get jammed, we'd never get Christians to go in front of a camera because of fear of retribution. People said that the service would be jammed, talked about the fact that there were no music videos available, no programs no dubbed programs, no original programs that we could draw on."

Today, SAT-7's programs help equip the churches of the minority Christian communities it serves in the Middle East, training their congregations and giving the wider non-Christian audience a better understanding of the beliefs and teachings of Christ.

Funding was (and is) another big issue. As expenses grew, their future was often uncertain. However, with a decade behind them, SAT-7 is looking ahead to growth.

"One of our immediate goals is to try to develop a critical mass of programming in Turkish for the Turkish speaking areas of the Middle East and Farsi for Iran and Afghanistan where it's understood quite well. We've also got a vision to have a children's channel."

"With new emergent technologies, including wireless broadband Internet and G3 video for mobile phones, we have many new avenues through which we will be able to touch many more lives."

Weblink

• www.sat7.org