Buckman prays with Terena Christians in Brazil (photo by M. Harrison)

As Larry Buckman reminisced several years ago with leaders of Brazil’s Terena people, they remembered the impact of his parents’ tireless work with this Brazilian tribal group to provide them an education.

The Terena were not just looking back, however. Anticipating future ministry, they asked Buckman to return to them to help strengthen their Christian congregations for mission work among other neighboring groups.

Win Buckman Sr., now deceased, and his wife, Francis

The conversation occurred on the sidelines of an anniversary celebration of the school founded by Win Buckman Sr. and his wife Francis in Taunay village in Mato Grosso do Sul state in southern Brazil. Already working with a different tribal group, the Buckmans agreed in 1956 in respond to a Terena request for basic education in Portuguese.

Today, five decades later, many Terenas are trained professionals in different disciplines. “We have pilots, doctors, lawyers, pastors and politicians.” Buckman said. The Terenas wanted help from Larry and his wife, Fay, however to train themselves and others to share the gospel with hard to reach tribes hidden in the Amazon rainforest. This meant not only embracing Larry due to his parents’ work, but also welcoming him as a leader among them.

What can be accomplished in a radio program that lasts just two minutes?

Juan Bendezu believes that if advertisers can sell automobiles or toothpaste in a one- or two-minute commercial, a life-changing message can also be introduced in the same amount of time.

Bendezu directs Radio Inti Andina (Andean Sun Radio), a Christian station in Ayacucho province in southern Peru. The station broadcasts in Spanish and Quechua, a language spoken by the indigenous people in the area.

“We’ve downloaded the Corrientes Misioneras (currents in missions) program from the web,” Bendezu wrote. “Upon hearing our listeners’ suggestions, we’re now broadcasting the program Monday through Friday at key times in the morning and the evening.”

A listener wrote of his limited understanding of missions beforehand, but now says, “listening to these programs, I have understood what we’re expected to do — what we have to do — without fear.”

Archive photo shows Enrique Romero

Three Ecuadorians and a Dominican were recognized for longtime ministry work in a Dec. 16 commemorative observance in Quito, Ecuador, to mark the 80th anniversary of HCJB Global.

One of those honored at a Sesión Solemne (Solemn Session) was Enrique Romero, who in 1941 began as a chauffeur at the pioneer missionary broadcaster, Radio Station HCJB, in Ecuador’s capital city. This was just 10 years after the ministry’s initial Christmas Day, 1931, broadcast in English and Spanish on a 200-watt transmitter in Quito.

Working with ministry co-founders, Clarence and Katherine Jones, Reuben and Grace Larson and others, Romero eventually assumed other responsibilities that included directing the Spanish Language Service.
Helped to the stage to be honored was an elderly Ecuadorian pastor, Isidoro Guerra, who was then honored with a plaque before the group of several dozen invited staff and guests assembled for the 90-minute event. In his 30 years with the mission, Guerra too had carried out various projects. Working from HCJB Global’s former international transmitter site in Pifo, Guerra began by distributing radios with a single frequency fixed tuned to Radio HCJB. He became a control room operator for Himnos de la Vida Cristiana (Hymns of the Christian Life), a popular program that continues to air today.

Isidoro Guerra

He also served as a pastor and counselor, contributing to the on-air teaching through the Bible Institute of the Air, later renamed Academia Cristiana del Aire or Christian Academy of the Air (ACA), an outreach now operated by the World Radio Network, a cooperating ministry of HCJB Global.

For their 41 years of service with the mission, an Atlanta couple, Pastor José “Chema” and his wife, Carmen, were recognized by Media Director Anabella Cabezas. The Reinosos first met decades ago while studying together in a program launched by the mission’s then-president, Abe Van Der Puy, to get Latin Americans into the mainstream of missionary life.

HCJB Global's Curt Cole honors Carmen and Pastor Jose Reinoso

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,700 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Stan Swanson worked in the broadcast industry but attributed the pull to missions to "a keen interest in the ability of radio to reach the masses."

As the son of an engineer, Stanley Russell “Stan” Swanson’s interest in shortwave radio had already been ignited by the time he reached age 12. In 1940 in Chicago, he first heard Radio Station HCJB, based in Ecuador. That began a relationship between listener and broadcaster that was to last several decades.

Born June 11, 1928 to Walter S.R. Swanson and Edna Swanson, he graduated in 1946 from Taft High School in Chicago. Swanson then went on to attain an electrical engineering degree in 1950 from Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN. He also took graduate courses in electromagnetic theory and transient analysis from the University of Maryland and afterwards taught various electrical engineering courses at North Dakota Agricultural College (presently North Dakota State University) in Fargo.

In the early 1950s, Swanson went on to engineering work with Motorola, Inc. and Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C., Stromberg-Carlson and later General Dynamics, both in Rochester, N.Y. With the radio station WCMF in Rochester, he carried out various engineering responsibilities and also served on the station’s board of directors.

Stan Swanson

Asked about early missions involvement, Swanson recalled that “members of our church paid for a trip to Quito and Panama to repair and install equipment that had been donated to HOXO.” The station in Panama, HOXO – The Voice of the Isthmus, was affiliated with HCJB Global. Swanson and his wife, Shirley, served with HOXO from 1969 to 1978.

After that, the Swansons and their sons moved to McAllen, TX, to work with radio station KVMV where Stan served from 1978 to 1984 as an engineer. He also filled in as interim manager for a few months. As other stations were added along the U.S.-Mexico border, the World Radio Network (WRN) was formed.

“Those of us who knew Stan and had the privilege of serving with him, will tell you that he was the model to which all missionary engineers should aspire,” said Glenn Lafitte, who was learning Spanish at the nearby Rio Grande Bible Institute in Edinburg when he first met Stan. Lafitte would go on to managerial roles in the network that included a supervisory role over Swanson years later.

Photo credits: Wesley Dean and Martin Harrison
The trombone goes silent as the large screen video fades to black, only to have a lone trumpeter step into the spotlight, taking up “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” where the recorded audio left off. For the moment, Roberto Rojas has set aside conducting the Coro Vozandes(Vozandes Choir) to perform before an audience in the elegant National Sucre Theater in Quito, Ecuador.

Roberto Rojas

Soon after putting down his trumpet, Rojas was back to directing the choir and its accompanying “big band” once again during a weekend of concerts sponsored by Radio Station HCJB. More than 4,000 people attended the six performances Friday-Sunday, Dec. 2-4, in a celebration of two anniversaries.

In addition to commemorating the founding of Quito in 1534, the concerts featured a video. Brief and fast-paced, it summarized HCJB Global’s eight decades of ministry, culminating in a trombone duet of the mission’s signature hymn, celebrating God’s eternal faithfulness. The radio station began broadcasts on Christmas Day, 1931.

Peruvian born, Rojas has been in music ministry in Ecuador for decades. Seventy voices, mostly of Ecuadorian singers, made up his choir. The accompanying orchestra consisted of Canadians, Americans and Ecuadorians. A children’s choir of students from the Conservatorio Superior Nacional de Música and the Alliance Academy International included little Lottie Harrison whose British parents serve with HCJB Global.

Beginning with Himno a Quito (Homage to Quito), each concert saluted the Ecuadorian capital with several traditional songs with audience participation. One song, Mosaico Cubano (Cuban Mosaic), offered a Caribbean rhythm while the other songs represented musical representations from the Andean highlands.

Establishing esprit de corps was critical for a 13-member group that worked in Haiti recently and a situation that might have deteriorated into discord instead turned out to be a template for success.

“The team was very diverse—really three separate groups of people—and for the most part we didn’t know each other before the trip,” said David Rhodes, project coordinator at the HCJB Global Technology Center in Elkhart, Ind. He led the ministry’s second team in six months to work on an orphanage of a partner ministry, Kids Alive International (KAI).

Team members from the HCJB Global Ministry Service Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., and the Technology Center along were joined by three friends of new missionaries Jeff and Jackie Benedict. Together they worked at KAI’s orphanage in Cap Haitien from Nov. 25 to Dec. 3. The team’s stated purpose was to help with a major construction project to build eight family-style homes at the organization’s Cap Haitien facilities in northern Haiti. But building relationships took high priority too.

“I was really pleased at how well the team bonded,” said Rhodes who had overseen some 60 work teams while serving as a KAI missionary with his wife, Connie, in Peru for eight years before joining HCJB Global in 2009. “The team members all had good hearts and just loved the children. It’s not always how much we accomplish that’s important, but other things too, like the effect the trip has on their personal Christian lives.”

photos by A. Saavedra

From quiet counsel with pastors in a prayer room to clowning around not far away, the staff of Radio Station HCJB in Quito, Ecuador offered visitors a three-day open house known as Mision Compartida. As missionary Américo Saavedra ambled around the station’s campus, mingling with the crowds, he snapped photos of the fun and frolic.

Misión Compartida is a radio sharathon in which donated items include chickens, goats and guinea pigs, as well as cash donations.

A gallery of memorabalia from HCJB Global's history adorns the walls of the Larson Conference Center. Misión Compartida on Dec. 9-11 was one way that HCJB Global celebrated the 80th anniversary of its founding in 1931.

story by R. Kurtenbach
photos by G. Bulmer and A. Saavedra

Pictured left to right at Misión Compartida: Marian Douce, Wayne and Norma Pederson, Tammy Kooistra, Marina Chico.

As Norma Pederson, the wife of HCJB Global’s president, pitched in to dismantle tents in Quito, Ecuador, it was apparent that she grasped just how much work goes into staging a successful radio sharathon.

Norma and her husband, Wayne Pederson, helped Radio Station HCJB in Quito and HCJB-2 (La Conexión) in Guayaquil with sharathons that concluded last weekend. Wayne told of being “totally impressed and pleased with the team here … and so honored to be part of what God is doing in Latin America.”

“It’s not just a fundraising event but a major community happening with a children’s tent, health screenings, games, a food tent and [promotional] gift items,” Pederson said of Misión Compartida, which means “shared mission.” At Radio Station HCJB in north Quito, a dozen or so tents dotted the parking lot and lawn. Live programming with talk and laughter, music in Quichua and Spanish and more emanated from the Larson Conference Center on the station’s campus.

On a Monday afternoon earlier this year Steve Wilson, director of HCJB Global Hands’ Hospital Vozandes-Shell (HVO) in Ecuador, was in his office when the chaplain, Pastor Henry Cabrera, hurriedly came by his office.

“Could I borrow the hospital truck to go pick up Marta?” he asked. “There has been some sort of explosion, and her grandson is in the emergency room.”

“Of course,” Wilson answered. “Go get her!”

He was talking about Marta Aguinda who works in the HVO guesthouse about a quarter of a mile from the jungle hospital. It was 3 p.m., so Wilson told him that he should look for her on the road because she was probably on her way home.

“I went to the emergency room a few minutes later,” Wilson related. “Pastor Henry and Marta had just arrived. I soon found out that two of Marta’s grandsons were injured—not just one. Apparently they had been playing behind the house where they found ‘something like dynamite,’ lit a match to it and it exploded.”Within about two weeks, both boys were released from the hospital. Arón has made a full recovery, but Justin continues to need follow-up care as he adjusts to life without hands. The rest of his body is healing physically, but he has a lesion on his neck that will need further surgery. This fall Justin was also expected to be fitted with two prostheses.

Click here for opening segment of Call of the Andes from 1981

A number of people who formerly served with HCJB in Ecuador were surveyed to determine a adequate name for this new communications tool. Although it was close to call between “Call of the Andes” and “Saludos Amigos”,

the favorite was “Call of the Andes.” Both of these were once English-language programs on HCJB, so congrats to Ken for choosing a catchy title “Saludos Amigos.” It was Nate who pointed out,

“Saludos Amigos is too close to the Amigos publication from Healthcare and Community Development,” which I deemed an excellent observation. “Call of the Andes” was also a radio program and maybe one of you can tell the history of the name. Thanks to all of you who replied promptly.

It is intended as a community page, with several of you helping me to review material before it is posted and all of you to contribute with stories, anecdotes, clarifications and comments. Thanks for taking the time to stop by. As they say in Ecuador . . .

Ciao!

Ralph

Communications Coordinator

Latin America Region, HCJB Global

Hospital Vozandes del Oriente, HCJB Global’s mission hospital in Shell, Ecuador will celebrate its 50th anniversary September 12-14.

Activities will include: an open house, a program featuring testimonies by missionaries, hospital employees, and special guests, and a program by the hospital worker’s association.

Eighty-one-year-old retired Wycliffe missionary John Lindskoog looked into the face of a Chachi man, Santiago Añapa, at the dedication of the Scriptures in the Chachi language last month, culminating 53 years of translation work.

“If you had not come, where would we be now?” asked Añapa, referring to the Wycliffe missionaries who have seen the project of translating Genesis, Exodus and the entire New Testament through to completion.

Uncharacteristically, Añapa then broke into sobs, according to Neil Wiebe*, who along with his wife, Ruth, headed the project since 1970 after receiving it from Lindskoog and his wife, Carrie.

“Twenty sets of 40 CDs of Mártires Tapuyo’s recording of the Chachi Scriptures, a five-CD chronological series of 40 lessons on the character of God, and a CD of Chachi music are intended for group use in Chachi communities that agree to listen to them regularly,” said Wiebe. Tapuyo has been one of the main Chachi translation workers for several years.

The 10th patient to receive medical care at HCJB Global Hand’s Hospital Vozandes-Shell in Ecuador was among those attending the facility’s 50th anniversary celebrations Sept. 12-14.

Presented with a plaque, former patient María Dávalos mentioned some of the first missionary doctors: Ev Fuller (founder of the hospital), Art Johnston and Wally Swanson.

“María was delighted to learn that Dr. Swanson was actually present, and she was able to share a few words with him afterwards,” said nurse Florence Judd.

The weekend event included a video presentation showing original footage from 1958 when the hospital was dedicated as Epp Memorial Hospital. Nate Saint, a pilot with Mission Aviation Fellowship, donated land for the hospital as he saw the facility as a way to care for needy jungle dwellers and assist the many missionary efforts in the area.

Sources: HCJB Global, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor

As the “sí” and “no” factions in Ecuador wrap up campaigns aimed to convince voters of either the benefits or drawbacks of a proposed new constitution, Radio Station HCJB in Quito stands on ground it has occupied for decades—praying for God’s will.

Duncan Bell, an HCJB Global missionary engineer for 18 years before retiring in 2006, died of an apparent heart attack at Hospital Vozandes-Quito in Ecuador the morning of Friday, Sept. 26. He was 77.

Born in Hamilton, Scotland, on Aug. 4, 1931, he married Wilma Chapman in Washington state on March 30, 1974. Their children are Duncan, 30, of West Covina, Calif., and Shona, 28, who is married to David Boyes, Jackson Hole, Wyo.

“For most of my life I believed that Christianity was old-fashioned and that in this modern era that we had outgrown the need for superstition and religion,” Duncan wrote in his application to HCJB Global. “I believed in a god because I assumed that it all had to have come from somewhere, but the god that I believed in was one of my own imagination and certainly not the God of the Bible. I had no need for the person of Jesus Christ.

“Twelve years later [at the age of 43], I started attending church to please my wife, and after two years I was converted, having seen for the first time my fallen life, my despair and my need for a Savior, Jesus Christ.

Note: The HCJB Global Technology Center in Indiana, USA was featured in Radio World Online recently. I include a portion, published on this blog with permission by RW Online. A number of staff members at the Technology Center have worked in the Latin America Region of HCJB Global, including the Jacobsons (see below), the center´s director, David Russell, and others. Read about ways that our co-workers use technology for God’s glory and the furtherance of His Kingdom. -Ralph

HCJB Global considers itself a pioneer in its work on Digital Radio Mondiale, the digital broadcasting system for broadcasting bands below 30 MHz, which includes international AM broadcast and shortwave bands.

Source: Mission Network News

While Ecuador now has its 20^th constitution in the nation’s history, HCJB Global Voice emphasized the need to seek God´s will in matters of governance. Doug Weber of Radio Station HCJB said instead taking a side, his staff provided air time to pastors to pray for the referendum that determined whether or not Ecuador would adopt the charter. Weber believes the HCJB programming built church unity. He says the station´s apolitical approach to the election spoke volumes to the government.

Note: Ruthie J wrote this quick update, signing off as “The Idaho Potato”. She writes in all caps, but she is not shouting. I think it has more to do with macular degeneration in her eyes. I will try to add a photo of the Jordan Studio, more commonly known as “The Cave” to those of us who worked in English Language Service.
I have set up a category tag called “Mailblog”, a name which hearkens back to the old “Musical Mailbag” letterbox program on Radio Station HCJB. If you correspond via e-mail with me about your time with HCJB Global in Latin America Region, please include an “okay” if your update is also shared with others on calloftheandes.wordpress.com.
I have added a link to our own blog where I featured Ruthie, as well as Leonard and Imogene Booker in an entry called “Aging With Grace”.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Wayne Pederson will become HCJB Global’s new president Nov. 1, the international missions organization announced today.

Pederson, now vice president of Moody Broadcasting, will replace David Johnson, who stepped down in June after serving for seven years. Dr. James D. Allen has been serving as acting president.

Pederson is the seventh person to serve as HCJB Global’s president. He has been a member of the board of directors of HCJB Global for two-and-a-half years. He also has worked with the ministry to raise money for key projects, including the launch of its satellite ministry in Latin America and Russia.

“The board is delighted that Wayne has accepted the call to become HCJB Global’s president. With his combination of godly character, seasoned leadership skills and passion for HCJB Global and its mission, he is uniquely equipped to serve as our president,” said John Baugus, chairman of the board for HCJB Global.

“Wayne Pederson has a great heart for missions, and he is intimately acquainted with HCJB Global,” said Glen Adams, the HCJB board member who headed the search team that selected Pederson. “He is an exceptional leader with many years of experience in Christian broadcasting.

Sources: HCJB Global, Lansing State Journal

Former HCJB Global missionary Ross M. Sattler of Eaton Rapids, Mich., died on Tuesday, Nov. 11, just weeks after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was 61.

Born on Dec. 14, 1946, in Grand Rapids, Mich., Ross graduated from Grand Ledge High School in 1965. He then completed his masonry apprenticeship and worked in that field for 41 years. His biblical studies were at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.

In mid-1983 Ross and his wife, Sherralyn “Sherry,” began missionary service as short-term workers with HCJB Global Hands in Ecuador as Ross worked on the construction of Hospital Vozandes-Shell, replacing a 25-year-old facility.

Source: HCJB Global
Photos: M. Harrison

A nativity scene and the musical strains of “Joy to the World” played in shocking contrast to “Vía Dolorosa” (way of grief) and crucifixion scene on the same stage at concerts by HCJB Global’s Vozandes Chorus, the Quito Metropolitan Symphonic Band and a Christian arts team in Ecuador recently.

The HCJB Global events were staged at the Sucre Theater in Quito’s historic downtown section on Dec. 4, 6 and 7. Central to the concerts was the baby Jesus, but Ecuadorians also watched the story unfold as Mary considered the Savior’s tragic yet glorious mission on earth—death by crucifixion. The musical was performed by Navidascua (translated as ChristmasEaster).

This colorful and lively dance drama was dedicated “to those who are passing through certain doubt and the improbable truth,” according to a printed program. By the drama’s conclusion, events and thoughts have pushed its main character to a Scrooge-like revelation about Jesus Christ and His claims about Himself.

Source: HCJB Global

file photo: HCJB Global

Crews removed the last of the tall antennas and towers at Radio Station HCJB’s international transmitter site in Ecuador since they would obstruct the flight path of the future international airport for the capital city of Quito. As earlier agreed upon by the Quito Airport Corporation (CORPAQ) and HCJB Global, the towers were removed prior to a Dec. 31, 2008, deadline. “The last of these tall towers were taken down on Dec. 24 at 9:30 a.m.,” said Geoff Kooistra, operations and engineering director for the station.

Sally Schroeder Isaak, a German broadcaster at Radio Station HCJB in Quito, Ecuador, for 30 years, died of cancer in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada, on Monday, Jan. 19. She was 82.

The daughter of Mennonite parents, Wilhelm and Sara Schroeder who emigrated from Ukraine to Canada in 1925, Sally was born in St. Françoise Xavier, Manitoba, on Feb. 19, 1926. Her parents had excellent singing voices, and they became known as the singing family. Sally loved music all her life.

HCJB Global Voice brings a philosophy of Christian radio to all its efforts around the world, encouraging, assisting and enabling partners to promote Christian radio. The mission trains evangelicals to operate their own stations, seeking to empower and mobilize local radio stations to make a difference within their communities. In Latin America, the staff works in live programming and radio production, as well as distributes high quality programs.

The pincers grab and pull, then grab and pull again. But it’s not a scene playing out in a B-rated horror flick.

The steady beep . . . beep . . . beep of a heart monitor reveals that this is, instead, a surgical theater. More accurately described as a needle-holder, the pincers use a small curved surgical needle and thread to sew a stitch, then another, and another.

Meanwhile, physicians and medical students watch the surgical procedure on a monitor in a Hospital Vozandes-Quito (HVQ) conference room as the surgical team in the operating room two floors below provides commentary and updates on the surgery via cell phone contact.

A portion of Vivaldi´s “Four Seasons” on the strings of a violin begins the dedication of the Barbara Roberts Chapel at Hospital Vozandes in Quito. Flowers, lights and music establish a solemn scene for an audience gathered in expectation.

“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.”

A gentleman takes it all in, deeply moved but also with heart grateful to God for His many blessings to him.

“He makes me lie down in green pasture.”

Certainly remembrances of the early years, perhaps names, places, events crowded into his mind …. doubtless the memory of his wife could not escape him.

“He restores my soul.”

Many years have passed since January 2, 1949, when Dr. Paul Roberts and his wife, Barbara, first came to Ecuador, where they stayed and ministered for 11 years. Roberts, a servant of God and a physician, dedicated his life to serve and was of tremendous blessing in God’s hands to lift the Hospital Vozandes Quito.

Source: HCJB Global
If you want to know how well a radio station is communicating its message, ask a taxi driver.

Recently in Huancayo, Peru, HCJB Global missionary Carlos Pinto hopped into a cab to visit the Tambo neighborhood. When the driver learned that Pinto was heading to Radio Armonía (Radio Harmony), he immediately called on his dispatch radio to ask for the address.

“Three fellow taxi drivers gave the exact address and said it was a Christian station,” Pinto said.

Former HCJB Global missionary Judith “Judi” Cook Harrison died at her home in Colorado Springs, Colo., early Thursday, April 9, following a 12-year battle with cancer. She was 56.

Born to Robert and Jean Prescott Cook in Springfield, Ill., on Jan. 9, 1953, Judi graduated from Glenwood High School in Springfield with many notable achievements. She was class president for three years, a member of the National Honors Society and Illinois State Scholar, recipient of the “Daughters of the American Revolution” award, a member of the Glenwood Singers, and winner of solo musical contests in piano and flute.

Judi met her husband, Jack Harrison, at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill., where she was active in several college music groups as principal flutist, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1975. Jack and Judi married on June 19, 1976, after which Judi worked as a teacher of mentally challenged children and with an insurance company.

Source: HCJB Global

In light of the recent H1N1 flu outbreak, HCJB Global Hands’ Hospital Vozandes-Quito (HVQ) in Ecuador is tracking new flu cases and leading Ecuador in monitoring the threat of pandemic influenza.

“We’ve been thinking the world is ready for a flu pandemic, but we’ve been focusing on the avian flu,” said HCJB Global missionary Dr. Richard Douce, an infectious disease specialist and resident expert on influenza in Ecuador. He and Ecuadorian Dr. Wilson Chicaiza have been actively tracking flu cases at HVQ for nine years in collaboration with the U.S. Navy tropical medicine lab in Lima, Peru. As a result of the data collected, they have isolated two types of influenza and are now watching for the latest strain in Ecuador.

by Jessica Siekmeier
photos: Eckehart Wolff

Source: HCJB Global
For many children, their diagnosis of cerebral palsy (CP) means spastic muscles, dislocated hips and the inability to walk. Determined to change the story of Ecuadorian children with CP, doctors from Chile, Colombia, Venezuela and Argentina come to Ecuador each January to learn from each other and perform life-changing surgeries on cerebral palsy patients.

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating” was a message that set a high standard.

“The test of ministry,” former HCJB Global President David Johnson told missionaries at the 2003 Annual Members’ Meeting, “is not so much what happens in the lives of the people to whom you and I minister, but what happens in the lives of those they minister to.”

Borrowing from family life, Johnson (pictured in file photo) said parenting skills are not as much reflected in the children, as in the grandchildren. His message, emphasizing discipleship as well as evangelism, came several years before HCJB Global missionary Allen Graham had met Cirenio in a remote area of Brazil.

Sources: HCJB Global, El Comercio

Ecuador’s Ministry of Health said cases of the influenza virus H1N1 have risen to eight just days after a report of the nation’s first case. The first incidence of the illness was confirmed on Friday, May 15, by Ecuadorian Health Minister Caroline Chang (pictured at left in file photo).

The parents of Adriana Elías, the first person in Ecuador to be diagnosed with the illness, challenged whether their 12-year-old daughter, a student at Colegio Americano in Guayaquil, indeed had the virus. They claimed in a media briefing that she suffered from rinopharynitis, not influenza A (H1N1), commonly referred to as swine flu.

Source: HCJB Global

“FamilyLife Today,” a popular U.S.-based radio program that airs on Radio Station HCJB in Quito, Ecuador, received an added boost when more than 300 people attended the station’s recently sponsored seminar on fathering.

The Spanish version of the program is fairly popular in Ecuador, said Doug Weber, HCJB Global Voice’s radio director for Latin America. “We’ve received many good comments from listeners about it, so we wondered whether or not people would come to our station to attend a seminar on the family,” he said.

“FamilyLife Today” is a radio outreach of Campus Crusade for Christ International’s FamilyLife ministry. Weber’s production team handles the Spanish-language translation, production and distribution of the program throughout Latin America.

Sources: HCJB Global, God’s Fuel: The Story of John Douglas Munday

Known to many as “Don Juanito,” John Douglas Munday died Saturday, June 6, in Quito, Ecuador, at the age of 80. A funeral service and burial was held the following day in Quito.

Born Jan. 24, 1929, to Edwin and Jessie May Munday in Victoria, B.C., he later left his home country for a lifetime of missionary service. After several months with missionaries in Peru, he arrived in Ecuador in 1958.

An English teacher, Munday was commissioned as a missionary from a Plymouth Brethren assembly known as Victoria Gospel Chapel. During two decades he directed the orphanage, Diospaj Ñan (God’s Way), for boys. Diospaj Ñan offered a home and hope for orphans.

Source: HCJB Global

What do recent giant steps of ministry transformation mean to Esther Neufeld, longtime program producer with HCJB Global Voice’s German Language Service (GLS)?

Fewer steps to arrive for work.

Not that she commuted great distances before, but the new offices of Vozandes Media are just upstairs from her apartment. She lives less than a block from Radio Station HCJB in Quito. For years via international shortwave, the voice of Neufeld and other producers has traveled via the airwaves to German-speaking audiences across the Americas and Europe.

Vozandes Media–newly formed and officially recognized within Ecuador–is continuing the ministry to German-speaking listeners who respond from 60 countries. Its administration shifts to HCJB Global’s World Office in Germany instead of remaining under the mission’s Latin America Region.

Sources: Shortwave Central, Radio World, Microsoft Watch, The Inquirer, HCJB Global

Brazil’s announcement in late May that its Communications Ministry would seek input on a national digital radio broadcasting standard brings new encouragement for the growing adoption of the Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) standard in the AM, FM and international radio bands.

Brazilian Communications Minister Helio Costa announced a 180-day public consultation period to select the best digital radio system for Brazil. In its blog site, Shortwave Central called the announcement a “major breakthrough” for the DRM Consortium that anticipates contributing to the dialogue.

Herb's record 60 years make the cake. Sweeter as the years go by!!

Herb, Paul, Marian, John, Herb, Dave and Marty were among 100 or so HCJB Global retirees and staff who attended the Forever Family reunion in mid May in Colorado Springs.

Leonard and Imogene, Norma, Lois and Dee, Norm, Helen. These HCJB Global alumni had a smile and a song at the Forever Family reunion in May.

Travis, Bill,  Leonard, Elizabeth, Ruthie, Margaret, Marylee, Mac and Nan enjoyed testimonies of the Lord’s care and the Lord’s work recently. About 100 HCJB Global alumni gathered in Colorado Springs for a Forever Family reunion.

Longtime HCJB Global missionary Lois Hatt Vásconez died Thursday, July 9, in Quito, Ecuador, after a valiant battle with cancer. She was 83. A memorial service was held in Quito on Friday, July 10. Lois retired from the mission on Jan. 1, 1996, after having served for more than 42 years, but she continued to be active, helping in music ministries and teaching piano lessons long after retiring.

Born in Ohio on Oct. 16, 1925, she attended schools in Adrian, Mich., and graduated from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago in 1946. With a sacred music degree, Lois joined the staff of Grand Rapids School of the Bible and Music (now Cornerstone University) in Grand Rapids, Mich., heading the music department and serving as dean of women.

Longtime missionary Jorge Zambrano, a veteran of 35 years of ministry with HCJB Global, died Thursday, July 23, at his daughter’s home in Norristown, Pa., after battling cancer. He was 63.

Born in Ambato, Ecuador, on Jan. 3, 1946, Jorge was raised in a religious home, yet without the knowledge of Jesus’ love for him as an individual. At 18 he came to the U.S. seeking a new life as a guitar player. Instead, he found new life in Jesus Christ through the ministry of Hawthorne Gospel Church in New Jersey.

As his wife, Denise, of nearly 37 years put it, “Jorge embraced God’s gift by admitting his sin, believing in Jesus and committing his life to the service of his Savior.” In an interview several years ago, Jorge said he knew about Radio Station HCJB since childhood. “After I accepted Christ as my Savior in May 1965, my initial spiritual growth took place through listening to the Voice of the Andes all the way from Ecuador via shortwave.”

Source: HCJB Global
The end date for international broadcasts from Radio Station HCJB in Ecuador has been moved up as the missionary radio ministry defines new strategies for future outreach.

Anticipating the opening of the new Quito airport near the station’s international transmitter site in Pifo, staff member have already dismantled all but 14 antennas and towers. Present shortwave broadcasts in Portuguese, Spanish, German and indigenous languages, including Quichua, had earlier been announced to end no later than April 1, 2010. These international broadcasts will cease between September and November 2009.

Announcing the earlier closure date of Pifo, Graham Bulmer, HCJB Global’s director for the Latin America Region, said, “These times stretch us, causing us both to doubt and to grow in faith and hopefully drive us to confess our dependence on God. We believe He is guiding us. We hold all things with open hands and pursue understanding of what God expects of us as stewards of the resources of His kingdom.”

Sources: HCJB Global, IBB Fact Sheet

HCJB Global and the International Broadcasting Bureau* (IBB) are cooperating on a series of digital broadcast test transmissions on shortwave that began on Aug. 17.

The test broadcasts from IBB’s facilities in South Carolina utilize Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) equipment that was developed in part at the Indiana-based HCJB Global Technology Center. DRM is a universal, openly standardized digital radio system boasting near-FM sound quality plus the ease of use that comes from digital transmissions.

The improvement of analog shortwave listening compared to AM is immediately noticeable. Countries such as India and Russia have chosen DRM for their future radio systems, while Brazil is considering it.

by Jessica Siekmeier
photos: Courtney Potter

Prevention was the order of the day at HCJB Global Hands jungle hospital in Shell, Ecuador, Saturday, Aug. 22, as more than 100 residents from the small town on the edge of the Amazon came to a health fair, providing various medical screenings and workshops.

Staff at Hospital Vozandes-Shell offered free eye screenings, glucose tests and pediatric growth checks along with talks on physical therapy, dental hygiene and nutrition throughout the event.

Sources: Mission Aviation Fellowship, Mission Network News, NASA, HCJB Global

A small but significant symbol of evangelical missions is orbiting the earth during the 13-day mission of the Space Shuttle Discovery which launched late Friday, Aug. 28. On board the Discovery is a piece of the Woodbee, the yellow Piper PA-14 plane flown by missionary pilot Nate Saint of Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF).

Ruta de las Iglesias

HCJB GLOBAL TROTTERS, RUNNERS and WALKERS

A laser focus is important, but even more so during one’s last months of life. So it was for Pastor Brian Cooke. In failing health and with his own mortality looming before him, Cooke marshaled his energies for a long-held earthly passion before meeting his Savior.

Cooke coordinated one last church work team, traveling thousands of miles to help Ecuadorians build and maintain a clean water project.

Cooke died on May 31, 2009, with loved ones and friends holding a thanksgiving service honoring him at Mayfield Community Church in Harrogate on June 11. He is survived by his wife of 48 years, Enid, a son, Tim, and a daughter, Alison.

Source: HCJB Global
A pill or an injection cannot cure the ailment of many who live along Peru’s Ucayali River … because the problem goes beyond physical needs.

And the solution is the gospel of Christ, according to Paola Vélez, an Ecuadorian third-year resident at HCJB Global Hands’ Hospital Vozandes-Quito. A family practice physician, she visited Shipibo indigenous villages such as Nuevo Ahuaypa along the upper Ucayali in late September.

Sources: HCJB Global, Stemm Lawson Peterson Funeral Home

Edmundo E. Zarria, an Ecuadorian technician who worked at Radio Station HCJB in the 1940s, died Saturday, Sept. 19, in Elkhart, Ind. He was 91.

Zarria was born on Aug. 18, 1918, in Quito, Ecuador, to José María and Julia (Chávez) Zarria. As an adult, he owned an electronics repair shop and also worked at Radio Station HCJB.

Zarria helped with live radio links during the station’s coverage of relief efforts after a devastating earthquake struck the central Ecuadorian city of Ambato in August 1949, leaving thousands dead and even more homeless. He also helped with the “Gospel Sound Truck,” a vehicle fitted with radio equipment and public address speakers in which station staff performed music and preached the gospel message across Ecuador.

Source: HCJB Global
Missions topics ran the gamut during workshops offered in Quito, Ecuador, as part of HCJB Global’s launch of the missionary mobilization initiative called Corrientes.

Altogether, the seminars drew 150 people—ranging in age from the 20s to the 80s—from Quito-area churches. The workshops took place late last week amid missionwide and citywide launches of Corrientes that aims to help prepare Latin American bi-vocational missionaries to serve in other parts of the world.
Cutting-edge digital media and use of social networking was highlighted by HCJB Global President Wayne Pederson who spoke on the topic, “Evangelism Through Digital Media.”

By Jessica Siekmeier, working visitor, HCJB Global

Early Sunday, Oct. 4, a 19-year-old woman gave birth to the first set of triplets known to be delivered at Hospital Vozandes-Shell. Tania Caiga arrived at the hospital at full term, expecting to give birth to twins.

She had learned by an ultrasound at 30 weeks that she was expecting twins, but after delivering two babies early Sunday morning, it was clear there was still another baby on the way! One girl and two boys were born between 2:55 and 3:05 a.m.

Drs. Mark Nelson and Becky Brice delivered the triplets and were as shocked as the parents to discover there was a third baby. Brice was the first to suspect something was awry when she felt Caiga’s abdomen after the second baby was born.

“I looked at the mom and said, ‘Are there three babies?’ And sure enough there was another head,” Brice recounted. The third triplet had to be resuscitated, but like his siblings weighed almost 5 pounds and recuperated quickly. Caiga was treated for high blood pressure after the delivery and spent a day in intensive care, but by Wednesday the mom and all three babies were ready to go home.

Little Jhony (Johnny) Chuin Vargas is getting fat.

The bane of many, weight gain is blessed news for Jhony. At 4 months old, his plumpness connotes health despite the odds formerly against him. He began life in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest with a brain/facial malformation called frontonasal encephalocele.

Jhony needed medical attention, but the geographic barriers to care were only outdistanced by what seemed like economic impossibilities. That’s where Patti Sue Arnold and the Love Fund at Hospital Vozandes-Quito (HVQ) were used by God to divert Jhony’s life from pain to gain.

His Achuar parents, having few economic resources, took him to Casa de Fe (House of Faith) in the jungle town of Shell. He was then referred to HCJB Global Hands’ Hospital Vozandes-Shell and finally taken to HVQ for an operation by neurosurgeon Dr. Hugo Velasco. The hospital’s Fondo de Amor (Love Fund) paid $2,668 of his nearly $9,000 bill. (photo shows Jhony, mother and uncle)

“He’s doing great [and gaining weight],” Arnold said. “I have a therapist who comes two days a week and he says as far as he can see his development is that of a normal 4-month-old.”

Jhony’s case represents tens of thousands of patients helped with outpatient or hospitalization costs. The concept dates back to 1949 when Canadian physician Dr. Paul Roberts envisioned a full-service hospital to serve Ecuadorians of all social classes, regardless of their ability to pay. In fiscal year 2007-2008 alone, the fund helped 8,014 HVQ patients with $323,451.

The cost of private healthcare is prohibitive for the average Ecuadorian. Many rely on the country’s social security system or government hospitals, but the realities can be harsh and stark. A mid-2006 editorial in the Quito newspaper, El Comercio, spoke of “reluctance—even fear” of going for care at a government hospital. That same year, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa campaigned on healthcare improvements as part of his platform.

Source: HCJB Global
Clutching their diplomas, four communications graduates were hugged and congratulated by professors, family and friends after an Oct. 17 ceremony at Radio Station HCJB in Quito, Ecuador.

The graduates of the Christian Center for Communications/Northwestern College (CCC/NWC) were admonished by NWC President Dr. Alan S. Cureton that tough times may lie ahead, but that “dark days give God an opportunity to show Himself strong.”

Class 2009 valedictorian David Changoluisa told the crowd, “The reward is large after completing this. We don’t leave with just one diploma, but with three. We’ve gained friends, confidants and experiences that have helped us grow.” The other graduates were Santiago Clavijo, Sara Ortiz and Mónica Posligua.

Ortiz said later that she had enrolled after hearing about the school from a friend and from a university exposition in her home city, Quito. She hopes to begin work at a newspaper and move to being a magazine editor. Each student must complete a final project before graduation, and hers analyzed the communications strategy of Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa.

Source: HCJB Global

On a steep and narrow street in Oruro, Bolivia, Dr. Carlos Pinto wasn’t too sure he’d found the radio station he was looking for.

“I checked the address and it was correct,” said Pinto, a trained psychologist serving with HCJB Global, “but found no sign indicating it was a radio station. I tapped the bell on the door of what looked like a garage, and quickly a person’s very friendly face appeared.”

Intermingled joy and pride at receiving a visit from an HCJB Global staff member bubbled forth as Radio JHV’s general manager, Fernando Valdivia, greeted Pinto.

“And what does JHV stand for?”asked Pinto as the pair became acquainted. “Jehovah” was Valdivia’s reply.

At 13,000 feet above sea level, the mining town of Oruro is inhabited by about 200,000 people mostly of Quechua origin. Several years ago, Fernando’s wife sensed a leading from God that He would provide Christian radio in the community.

Ready Response by HCJB Global Amid Ecuador’s Power Rationing

Sources: HCJB Global, El Comercio, El Telégrafo, Clarín

Despite nationwide power outages in Ecuador, HCJB Global Hands and Global Voice ministries continue to present the gospel both on the air and face to face. Electricity rationing began on Thursday, Nov. 5, amid decreased domestic power generation and lower import of power from Ecuador’s neighbors.

The mission maintains emergency generators at its Vozandes hospitals in Quito and Shell as well as at Radio Station HCJB. To aid the power needs at Hospital Vozandes-Quito, workers replaced a 200-amp cable with one that doubled the current transport capacity.

With this power assistance from the back-up generator, the hospital is operating at full strength except for a CAT scan machine.“Because we are expecting more power cuts in the country, we want to make sure the hospital can function as normally as possible,” said HCJB Global’s Hermann Schirmacher.

“Honestly it’s been pretty seamless,” added Steve Wilson, assistant director of Hospital Vozandes-Shell. “The electricity goes off, the generator comes on.”

story by: Nate Dell
photos by: Chet Williams

After working on his canoe motor, a Waorani man named Oma said, “In the past people have sold or given us motors but never showed us how to fix them when they were broken. Now we understand how to repair them.”

Many similar comments flowed during a late November small engine mechanics course on the banks of the Curaray River in Nemompade, a Waorani community in eastern Ecuador.

Missionaries Jim Yost, an anthropologist formerly with Wycliffe Translators, and Nate Dell, of HCJB Global, travelled from the U.S. along with friends and family to help with the course. Dell formerly served as missionary to the tribe along with his wife, Rachelle. Youth World missionary, Chet Williams, also helped organize and run the workshop. They were also joined by Menewa Nenquimo, a young Waorani man now attending the School of Missionary Aviation Technology in Michigan. His skilled translation and mother-tongue instruction proved invaluable for the group.

Travelling from 11 different villages, Waorani tribe members hiked jungle trails or travelled by canoe to attend the course in a central location .

They brought chainsaws, generators, Weed Eaters and outboard motors for hands-on instruction and assistance. Twenty-seven men received certificates for completing the course, the majority of them receiving toolsets subsidized by the team’s churches and friends.

by Ralph Kurtenbach

Centered around salvation through Jesus, the Quito Day concerts by Radio Station HCJB’s Vozandes Choir in Ecuador continue exploring new artistic horizons.

The celebrated ballet troupe, Ballet Jacchigua, interpreted in dance three songs. The folkloric dance group, called First Live Cultural Heritage by the United Nations, planned and performed specially conceived steps to “Gloria a Dios” (Glory to God), “Recorriendo Nuestro Ecuador “ (Traveling Ecuador) and “Chulla Quiteño” (Quito’s High-Class Bum). The latter is an all-time favorite for residents of Ecuador’s capital city.

Sources: HCJB Global, World Development Indicators 2008, Internet World Stats, ResearchandMarkets.com

photos by: M. Harrison, A. Graham, C. Chan

“Kaboom!”

Many times at Radio Station HCJB’s sharathon in Quito, program hosts excitedly announced “Kaboom!” when all the station’s telephone lines were jammed with donors pledging financial support.

Simultaneously at Misión Compartida, (Sharing the Mission) quiet conversations prevailed in another area of the station’s campus. Local believers were shaking kingdoms in unseen ways . . .through prayer.

Many visitors toured HCJB while others shared heartaches with those offering hope in a counseling room. Also, local believers arrived at scheduled times to pray for listeners who had shared via electronic mail, phone calls and in person their specific spiritual, emotional and physical needs.

Several program hosts of HCJB 690 AM and 89.3 FM connected with listeners via radio. Additional connections occurred face to face and on the social networking site, Facebook, where Internet users could become “fans” of the HCJB Global page. An estimated 13 to 20 percent of Ecuadorians have Internet access.

Though the stations’ Facebook fans still number in the hundreds, HCJB Global’s Doug Weber said “it’s a start.” His research showed that the fan numbers doubled during Misión Compartida and that 63 percent are between the ages of 18 and 34.

Story by: Ralph Kurtenbach

File photos

Sources: HCJB Global, InterVarsity

“The best way to experience Urbana is by attending the multitude of seminars and by developing new contacts and new friendships,” according to Christy Chappell, communications director for InterVarsity’s Urbana 2009.

Attendees are invited to meet and make friends with HCJB Global’s Nate Dell, Roger and Lois Reimer and Amy Wong at the event. More than 17,000 students are expected to descend on St. Louis for the triennial missions conference set for Dec. 27-31.

HCJB Global will be sharing a booth with SIM as the two organizations have worked closely together on numerous radio and healthcare projects throughout the years, primarily in Africa.

file photo

Living among the Waorani people of Ecuador, Dell and his wife, Rachelle, experienced firsthand how Jesus’ teachings can transform cultural mores and individual lives.
Prior to their return to Colorado in 2001 due to Rachelle’s health issues, the Dells were involved in the daily life of the Waorani in the jungles of eastern Ecuador. They can tell of a vibrant church with no stained-glass windows but colorful living testaments of Waorani believers. Nate has also worked with various short-term teams and has been involved in opportunities for healthcare, mass media and leadership development in Ghana.

The Reimers will be at Urbana to represent the new Global Involvement department of HCJB Global which includes four arenas of opportunity: college internships, working visitors, ministry teams, and vision journeys.

Source: HCJB Global

Interview with Helen & Clayton decades ago. Click here.

A missionary teacher and broadcaster whose work with HCJB Global spanned more than four decades, Helen Howard, died Sunday, Jan. 3, 2010, at Go Ye Village in Tahlequah, Okla. She was 89.

Born into a Baptist minister’s family in Pontiac, Mich., on March 29, 1920, Helen was raised in the Midwest. Missionaries, including HCJB Global co-founder Clarence Jones, were often in her parents’ home. She went on to obtain a bachelor’s degree in Christian education from Wheaton College in Illinois in 1942. While there she met Clayton Howard whom she later agreed to marry.

In 1942 she sailed to Ecuador to serve with Radio Station HCJB in Quito, joining Clayton who had arrived in the South American country about a year earlier. Her voyage required travel in blackout conditions due to a threat of enemy attack on the Chilean ship during World War II. A year earlier, the Howards’ long-distance courtship had culminated
in an on-air engagement announcement on the live program, “The Back Home Hour.”

Helen and Clayton’s Sept. 12, 1942, wedding was also broadcast live on the international shortwave radio station. “They were probably the first couple to be married over shortwave radio so the folks back home could hear it,” said Chuck Howard, their son who serves with HCJB Global in Ecuador. Helen’s minister father in the U.S., along with Rev. Evan Welsh, pastor of Clayton’s home church, had sent a recording of the complete service to Ecuador with Helen, only leaving gaps for “I do” from both Helen and Clayton.

Helen Howard with her son, Chuck

During the next 42 years in Ecuador, Helen’s passion was in child evangelism. She began holding child evangelism classes in her backyard, and as others joined in these efforts led to the founding of Iñaquito Evangelical Church in Quito where she was a deaconess and teacher. She also did home visitation and counseled for the church’s Women’s Society.

“I would often come home from school to find her in the front living room, leading someone to the Lord,” said Chuck. “She won many people to the Lord.”

Helen assisted Clayton as host of the ever-popular shortwave radio listeners’ program, “DX Partyline,” as well as answering English-language letters from listeners worldwide. And she was involved in Andes DXers International, or ANDEX, a shortwave listeners’ club sponsored by Radio Station HCJB.

She also did secretarial work, helped in the record library and taught kindergarten. “We remember Helen as our neighbor in Quito for many years and the beloved teacher of the mission’s Humpty Dumpty Nursery School,” said HCJB Global’s Doug Peters, now retired in Florida.

Sources: HCJB Global, Samaritan’s Purse

Audio interview in English here.

HCJB Voz Global´s Betty Guerra interviews Sheila Leech. Click here.

A quick response by HCJB Global Hands has put an emergency medical response team from Ecuador en route to the devastation on the Caribbean nation of Haiti after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck on Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 12.

In response to Samaritan Purse’s request for a medical help, International Healthcare Director Sheila Leech immediately began assembling a medical team including surgeons, family physicians, nurses, an anesthesiologist and a water engineer.

A registered nurse, Leech is heading the group as she has done in previous disasters around the world such as in 2005 when a medical team from Ecuador helped in quake relief efforts on Nias Island, Indonesia.

Samaritan’s Purse is centering its relief efforts at a 100-bed hospital in Port-au-Prince operated by a local partner, Baptist Haiti Mission. The hospital, 20 miles from the quake’s epicenter, only suffered minor damage and has electricity from back-up generators.

The hospital’s director of operations, Kyrk Baker, called the situation “overwhelming” with patients lining the floor. “There are big box vans coming in with people to see a doctor,” he told Samaritan’s Purse. “It’s just unbelievable the amount of people that are lined up trying to get basic medical care.”

Samaritan’s Purse has chartered a DC-3 cargo plane from Missionary Flights International (MFI) to transport supplies such as water, shelter materials, medical supplies and other emergency needs to Port-au-Prince. The first flight departed from Fort Pierce, Fla., Wednesday afternoon. A second flight on Thursday will carry additional supplies and staff members from Samaritan’s Purse and HCJB Global.

Family physician Dr. Steve Nelson said search and rescue efforts will be essential during the first few days. “We expect we will be receiving patients with severe traumatic injuries,” he explained. “A lot of the early response will be surgical, yet we hope to be able to manage some of the other kinds of problems that will be seen early because of the lack of water and infectious disease.”

Sources: HCJB Global, Samaritan’s Purse, World Gospel Mission

As relief teams attempt to reach earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince, a multinational medical and water sanitation team from HCJB Global Hands in Ecuador is praising God for its arrival in the Haitian capital Friday, Jan. 15.

“The situation is really desperate, and safety is an increasing problem as people get more frantic for water, food and medical help,” said Martin Harrison, a British water engineer on the seven-member emergency medical response team in Florida, on Thursday. “We want to get on with the job, but we’re daunted by the very serious nature of the situation. Please pray for the team and that God would protect us and get us there in his perfect way and timing.”

“We are certain that the medical people we are slated to relieve are so very tired after this now 48-hour marathon in the hospital,” said family physician Steve Nelson on Thursday as the team waited to catch an emergency flight at the airport in West Palm Beach, Fla. The team arrived in Port-au-Prince Friday morning.

Another ministry, Samaritan’s Purse (SP), is sponsoring the HCJB Global team in Haiti and handling its logistics. SP is centering its medical relief efforts at a 100-bed hospital in Port-au-Prince operated by a local partner, Baptist Haiti Mission. The hospital, 20 miles from the quake’s epicenter, suffered only minor damage and has electricity from back-up generators.

Haitian patient with surgeon Eckehardt Woffe and anaesthesiologist Paul Barton.

Members of the HCJB Global team include Ecuadorian surgeon Leonardo Febres, German surgeon Eckehart Wolff, U.S. anesthesiologist Paul Barton, U.S. family physicians Steve Nelson and Marcos Nelson, Harrison and International Healthcare Director Sheila Leech, a British nurse who heads the group. Most have assisted after previous disasters elsewhere such as in quake zones of Indonesia and Pakistan, Lebanon after war, and flooded areas of Mexico and Ecuador.

The most recent news can be found at www.twitter.com/hcjbglobal. In order to donate to the relief efforts, please visit www.hcjbglobal.org.

Sources: HCJB Global, Baptist Haiti Mission, World Gospel Mission, Associated Press, BBC

A 5.9-strength aftershock early Wednesday, collapsing already-damaged buildings, but the HCJB Global Hands emergency medical team working at the Baptist Haiti Mission (BHM) hospital in Port-au-Prince reported they’re all fine.

The seven-member team continues working 12-hour surgical shifts, treating those injured in the Jan. 12 quake that devastated Haiti’s capital.

The powerful aftershock, centered about 35 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, sent Haitians screaming into the streets, collapsing buildings, cracking roads and adding to the trauma of a nation stunned by an apocalyptic quake eight days ago. At least one woman, traumatized by the aftershock, died of a heart attack in Port-au-Prince. The jolt matched the strongest of the tremors since the original 7.0-magnitude quake.

The multi-specialty team, working in conjunction with Samaritan’s Purse, a North Carolina-based Christian aid group, arrived Friday, Jan. 15, from Ecuador. While two surgeons, an anesthesiologist, a nurse and two family physicians have worked at the hospital with the BHM staff, water engineer Martin Harrison set up a Water Missions International (WMI) filtration plant that is now chlorinating pond water for use at the hospital compound.

Producing potable water from a pond. Martin Harrison with newly installed water treatment plant.

“Supplies are now improving as the WMI unit produces 10,000 gallons of drinking water per day at full output,” Harrison said. “We are taking water from a fishpond of all places, passing this through the WMI water filter and filling a cistern beneath the hospital.”

Family physician Steve Nelson said the team is giving priority to the most severe cases. “We non-surgical types were out on the floors trying to triage which cases were most likely to get complicated if left longer,” he explained. “Sepsis, infected compound fractures and little kids made up our priority list.” With more complicated cases, the surgical workers totaled 15 operations in one day, finishing after midnight.

“They are not seeing any simple breaks or fractures,” Kyrk Baker, the hospital administrator, said of the surgical teams. “Many bones are crushed, making surgeries very difficult. They are also seeing a lot of infections. Many people have waited to come to the hospital and as a result they are having to do amputations.” Infectious diseases have not shown up yet, according to a BBC report, but tetanus and gangrene are a threat to the injured.

Several days after HCJB Global’s team arrived, another 17 physicians and nurses arrived from Samaritan’s Purse. Upon staffing a second operating room, the 100-bed hospital can now treat more injured Haitians.

In spite of limitations on fuel, water and Internet connection, the team members’ contact with their families in Ecuador has been constant. Missionary Kim Barton said from Shell, Ecuador, that her husband, Paul, “mentioned the aftershock because it woke him up. He was calling to try to find more tetanus [vaccine].” The Bartons serve at HCJB Global’s jungle hospital in Shell where Paul is an anesthesiologist and his wife, Kim, is a pediatrician.

Alexis awaits donation of blood from her surgeon, Dr. Wolff

Also from the Shell hospital, German surgeon Eckehart Wolff lay on a surgery table to donate his own blood to a patient named Alexis who was suffering from severe internal abdominal bleeding. “The lady was stable this morning; however, sadly, she died this afternoon. She must have been crushed by something in the quake,” said Harrison.

Story by Ralph Kurtenbach
Photos by Martin Harrision


With each faint scent or sound of life beneath the rubble, rescue workers call for total silence, but their hope of hearing a tapped or shouted reply is fading with each day following the Jan. 12 quake that shook the Haitian capital.

Already, noisy earthmovers in northern Port-au-Prince have carved out mass graves on a hillside where the site manager said he had interred thousands of corpses—including many children’s bodies—in a single day.

Amid the stench of death, civil chaos looming, and heart-stopping aftershocks, an HCJB Global Hands medical team from Ecuador continues saving lives even as patients’ limbs are lost to amputation after crushing injuries.

Team leader Sheila Leech and Ecuadorian orthopedic surgeon Leonardo Febres have returned to Ecuador, but their five colleagues who also arrived at the Baptist Haiti Mission (BHM) hospital on Jan. 15 are staying on for a few more days. Working tiring days, they witness terrible tragedy at many turns. Nevertheless, they persist amid suffering and sorrows within this haven of hope—a hospital where patients and their relatives hear the gospel.

Dr. Febres (at right) and assistant at work on Haitian quake victim.

For a week now, the Ecuador team of HCJB Global Hands has assisted at BHM where local chaplains and those from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) circulate among the patients. The chaplains comfort those grieving and share the news that God is love, even in times of trial.

For the Haitians, many whose lives are marked by financial struggle, this love is palpable and within grasp, even if worldly wealth is not. Many embrace the biblical account of a Savior who, by Western standards, was born, lived and died poor. Amid the suffering, the Haitians smile; they sing; they busy themselves with alleviating the pain of others.

Observing the Haitians, physicians, chaplains and support staff blending to form an effective Christian body, water engineer Martin Harrison arrived at two summarizing words: resilience and improvisation.

“Many staff have lost family members and close friends,” he wrote in a quiet moment. “Yet they have not downed tools since the first day, as they seek to help others live. The surgeons, doctors, nurses, water engineers and caretakers each play their own vital part, tirelessly working from dawn until late into the night, improvising with whatever comes to hand as certain medical supplies run low.”

Sources: HCJB Global, Radio Lumière, World Gospel Mission (written by Ralph Kurtenbach)

Internet program streaming by HCJB Global Voice’s partner in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is offering online users the station’s French, Creole and English programming to help listeners keep abreast of developments after a 7.0-magnitude quake struck the Caribbean island on Jan. 12.

World Gospel Mission (WGM) engineer Paul Shingledecker resurrected Radio Lumière’s (Radio Light) streaming after working with a local Internet service provider and shifting to a different tower. Tim Rickel, WGM’s vice president of communication, said the new tower “is not as reliable as what they had, but you should be able to get the programming intermittently on the radiolumiere.org site.”

A Jan. 22 program, monitored in Ecuador, was hosted by a male announcer. It streamed consistently for 45 minutes with a strong signal.

With announcers using a makeshift tent studio beside Radio Lumière’s only slightly damaged AM station, ambient sound added local color to the morning show—a pastors’ discussion around the microphones. Planes landed nearby during the show as the host and his guests talked, prayed and laughed together.

Relief flights loaded with reporters, rescue crews, health workers, international aid staff and supplies have clogged the Haitian capital’s besieged airport for more than a week after the quake devastated Port-au-Prince.

The temblor struck while engineer Alan Good from the HCJB Global Technology Center in Elkhart, Ind., and three others were at the ministry’s FM station, Stereo 92, to make repairs and hold radio training. All four escaped injury, but three of Radio Lumière’s employees were killed by the quake elsewhere in the city.

Sources: HCJB Global, Samaritan’s Purse

Story by Ralph Kurtenbach
Photos by Martin Harrison

For the weary HCJB Global Hands team that returned home to Ecuador this week after quake relief work in Haiti, the hum of turbo jet engines replaced the steady drone of generators.

At the Baptist Haiti Mission (BHM) Hospital in Port-au-Prince, team members had grown accustomed to rationed electricity and shortages of diesel, water and surgical supplies. As well, they’d grown to rely on God during long hours of saving people’s lives by removing crushed and infected limbs.

Ecuadorian surgeon Leonardo Febres with patient.

The team’s return to a world in non-crisis mode followed 10 days of too little sleep, too much pain and too many deaths, tempered with the joy of being the hands of Jesus to many hurting Haitians.

Their two-day return trip carried the team through airports in Port-au-Prince, Turks and Caicos Islands, Fort Lauderdale and Miami before landing in Quito on Tuesday, Jan. 26. HCJB Global family physician Steve Nelson anticipated a culture shock while en route to Fort Lauderdale.

“People will be talking basketball and Super Bowl . . . or is that over already?” Nelson journaled as the team’s transition from ground zero to the outside world awaited them some 12 hours away.

Physicians Mark Nelson, Tom Woods, and Steve Nelson examine an x-ray.

Nelson’s description of both sorrows and joys reached thousands who upheld the team in prayer. His short missive described the emotional ties formed with the hospital’s overworked staff and the patients whose lives the team worked to save. Crossing language barriers, smiles, gestures and a shared faith in Jesus bonded the seven-member emergency medical response team with their Haitian hosts and patients.

Story by Rachel Baker
Photos: Dr. Dick Douce

With a record 800 people registered for a medical training conference in Ecuador and many more listening in 21 virtual classrooms nationwide, organizers called the event a “huge success.”

Registrations for the 23rd annual Jornadas Médicas, Jan. 25-29, were so high that the majority of the seminars had standing-room only. HCJB Global’s Hospital Vozandes-Quito again hosted the event, using it to train and equip healthcare personnel in different areas of the medical profession.

This year’s conference focused on emergency medicine, featuring speakers from Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina and the U.S.

During one of the seminars people had the opportunity to listen to stories about the speakers’ experiences after disasters, including earthquakes in Haiti and Pakistan, and volcanic eruptions in Ecuador.

by Ralph Kurtenbach

A thumb ripped open on a tuna can.

The injured youth was prompted to visit a family practice clinic operated by medical residents at HCJB Global’s Hospital Vozandes-Quito (HVQ) in Ecuador.

Stitches mended the wound, but it was the reconciliation in the waiting room that was the high point for Jesús Rosero—called to be a “fisher of men” by his own account.

He struck up a conversation, learning that a woman—awaiting a procedure—was battling with her siblings for her rightful inheritance. With that, he deftly turned her attention to an inheritance wasted, sharing the parable of the prodigal son.

“I asked God why He’d prompted me to tell her that story because it didn’t really relate to her situation,” Jesús recounted. His words to her were relevant indeed, for his injured hand and the young evangelist’s heart pointed the middle-aged woman to the most important inheritance of all—receiving the heavenly Father’s embrace and eternal life through Jesus Christ.

She prayed for Christ to enter her life and save her for eternity. In addition, as the young man’s thumb was being stitched, he implored the HVQ medical residents to finagle a reduced price for the woman’s procedure, an endoscopy.

In January, 2010, HCJB Global sent an emergency response team to Haiti to bring life-saving medical care and safe drinking water.

“In the midst of disaster,” wrote Martin Harrison, an HCJB Global Hands water engineer, “people are finding hope as they turn to the living God.”

Please watch Martin’s video and please continue to pray for Haiti.

Around a table are people from Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela and the U.S.

But it’s not for a conference. These are friends who’ve come to Quito, Ecuador. And they’re not sharing a meal together either. Laughter, stories and food will come later—after the work is done.

Instead, they’ve gathered around a young patient on the operating table, just as this team of surgical specialists did a year earlier, and the year before that.

“They do it because of their friendship and because it’s interesting,” said Dr. Eckehart Wolff of HCJB Global Hands.

In the operating room at Hospital Vozandes-Quito, he takes a few moments to answer this reporter’s questions before hustling off to assist with another surgery. “They’re all specialists,” he said, “teaching at universities in their countries.”

by Kay Burgi and Ralph Kurtenbach

Abandoning computer keyboards for shovels and picks, an HCJB Global Voice team is representing the hands of Jesus in Ecuador, providing manual labor and clean spring water for a rural Quichua community high in the Andes.

“This is a great opportunity for hands on mission experience for many of our people,” said Geoff Kooistra, who directs radio services at Radio Station HCJB in Quito.

Preparation for the project under way in Lirio San José, a community in Chimborazo province, began weeks ago with individual and group fundraising.

Reporter Cristian Zurita washed cars when not writing and voicing newscasts. Kooistra baked caramel rolls which fellow staffers snapped up for themselves and co-workers at their morning coffee break. Accountant Xavier Gallegos donated his earnings from tax preparation work. The team also staged a bake sale on the grounds of the radio station.

Others also gave cash to help cover the seven-person team’s living expenses for working a week in Lirio San José. At the dizzying altitudes more than 13,000 feet, they are digging trenches and cooking their own meals. They sleep in camping tents set up inside a building.

As concrete blocks are tossed and plumb lines are stretched, the values and strategies of HCJB Global played out in the nitty-gritty of manual labor, medical work and play while teams ministered in Africa and Ecuador the last three weeks.

Partnership—a mission core value—was most evident in Ghana with the confluence of a three-way partnership for construction and medical work. A 12-member team from Woodmen Valley Chapel in Colorado Springs, Colo., linked up in Ghana with physicians from Ecuador. Coordinated by HCJB Global’s Nate Dell, the combined teams were hosted by a national partner, Theovision, based in Accra.

When the medical team arrived last weekend as the Woodmen group finished its construction efforts at the Tree of Life Health Post with local Ghanaians. “We met our construction goal for the day [building the clinic’s exterior and interior walls four blocks high] shortly after lunch,” blogged a Woodmen team member, “just in time for a 30-minute flag football game that ended up a combination of football, soccer and rugby.”

Tasked with mobilizing Latin Americans into cross-cultural missions, Quito-based team leaders blended the Ecuadorians into the medical team. Tired but enthusiastic, they all arrived in Accra last weekend after a 28-hour trip.

At a Sunday church service, HCJB Global President Wayne Pederson preached on “Love God, Love Your Neighbor.” African dance accented the service, too, as a least two Woodmen team members—Deb Brown, the church’s global impact coordinator, and Mike Thiessen, co-offensive coordinator of the Air Force Academy football team—dared to join in. “Mike, especially, blended in remarkably well,” wrote a fellow team member.

In the ensuing days of 90-degree heat and high humidity where Ghanaians in dusty, remote settlements greeted the visitors with both smiles and symptoms, this ad hoc team of Ecuadorians, Ghanaians, and U.S. citizens staged mobile medical clinics. Team members saw more than 2,500 Ghanaians, treating many of them for a wide range of health disorders such as malaria, parasites, iron deficiency and skin problems.

One of HCJB Global’s many versatile missionaries, serving on four continents during a span of 41 years, Harry Yeoman died in New Zealand Tuesday, Feb. 23, following a lengthy illness. He was 90.

Born on Dec. 19, 1919, in Lower Hutt, New Zealand, he gave his heart to the Lord as a child and endeavored to serve Him throughout his life.

A World War II veteran, he served as a pilot in the Royal New Zealand Air Force (mostly in the U.K.) for five years. While in London he met May McAdam, and they married on July 17, 1943.

After the war, Harry returned to his home country to teach, including six years in special education, working with prisoners and delinquents. He later received a teaching diploma from Wellington Teacher’s College, graduating in 1953, and a bachelor’s degree in English, education and music from the University of Canterbury.

The Yeomans joined HCJB Global in 1969, fulfilling a vision dating back to 1958. As Harry put it in an earlier interview, “The Lord led us one step at a time, first into a gradually increasing part-time involvement in missionary radio in New Zealand, and then a challenge to full-time service at Radio Station HCJB in Quito, which we accepted.”

Angel Tapia tells of seeing God work in big ways and small since he decided to follow Christ while a patient at Hospital Vozandes-Quito.

There was the day he needed bus fare for the trip into Quito for a checkup. But Angel’s wife, Patricia, wanted to buy a chicken for lunch. Seemingly a small matter … and even smaller when you consider that Angel was near death when he came under the care of missionaries Dr. Dick Douce and nurse Rita Whaley.

“They treated me like I was the president’s son,” Angel said. “They received me with open arms.” Struck by this warmth and compassion, he received Christ as Savior during his treatment for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis about five years ago.

With ample references to the Word of God, Luciano Jaramillio declared the unique qualities, power and personality of the Bible as 150 pastors listened intently during a recent conference at HCJB Global in Quito, Ecuador.

Dr. Luciano Jaramillo

Dr. Jaramillo, the Latin America vice president for Biblica (formerly known as International Bible Society-Send the Light), had already held the crowd’s attention for more then a half hour before moving into his challenge to “live the Word.”

This was no short summary tacked on as a conclusion to his exhortation on Friday, Feb. 26. He launched into further illustrations of God inspiring Moses with a personal appearance in a burning bush, and then using the man Moses to bring about God’s divine will.

In a message that evidenced Jaramillo’s four decades of ministry, he showcased the Bible. He spoke of it as eternal yet always current, permanent yet relevant today, unchanging—confirmed by God, revealing Jesus Christ both in His humanity and His divinity.

by John Adams

He’s known for the resonance of his voice and his visionary leadership. But he’s also known for his humble spirit and servant leadership. So it came as no surprise to those who know him when a special recognition came his way in early March.

Ron Cline, former president of HCJB Global, was presented with the Bob Neff Award for “distinguished spiritual excellence in religious broadcasting.” Cline, also former chairman of the mission’s board of trustees, received the award at a reception sponsored by Moody Broadcasting at the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) convention in Nashville, Tenn.

The award, initiated by the David Gibbs family in cooperation with the Florida-based Christian Law Association, is given yearly in memory of Neff, Moody’s former vice president of broadcasting. Gibbs, an attorney, is the radio voice of the Christian Law Association.

Moody Bible Institute President Paul Nyquist and Miriam Neff, Bob’s widow, presented the award. She described Cline as a “worthy servant-hearted leader.”

Sources: HCJB Global, Mission Evangélique Baptiste du Sud d’Haïti, Radio Lumière, Samaritan’s Purse, Committee to Protect Journalists

Hermann Schirmacher

A second team of HCJB Global healthcare workers plans to travel from Ecuador to Haiti on March 20 to assist victims of the Jan. 12 devastating earthquake, even as team leader Hermann Schirmacher is exploring mission training possibilities there. The first team of physicians worked alongside Samaritan’s Purse Jan. 15-24 at the Baptist Haiti Mission (BHM) Hospital in Port-au Prince.

“When the first team came, there was a lot of chaos and trauma, especially during the first few days,” said Melissa Strickland, communications liaison at Samaritan’s Purse. “What we’re seeing now is mostly infections, diseases and things like that.”

Flying north from Quito, the nine-member team will again work with Samaritan’s Purse and BHM for two weeks. Team members include five medical doctors, two nurses and two engineers.

Story by R. Kurtenbach
Photos by H. Schirmacher

Packed with prayer and care at the HCJB Global Technology Center, 100 small solar-powered, fixed-tuned radios are now in Haitians’ hands, thanks to members of a medical emergency response team from Ecuador now seeing patients in the Caribbean nation.

The SonSet® radios, pre-tuned to local Christian radio outlets, are working well, said Hermann Schirmacher, a German engineer who is leading the nine-person team from HCJB Global Hands in Ecuador. “At least two of the four pre-tuned frequencies usually come in very well,” he explained.

The sets were brought from the U.S. by fellow engineer, New Zealander Alex Weir, even as the medical professionals had arrived with Schirmacher from Ecuador on Saturday, March 20.

Several days of working together, eating together, laughing together, planning together and living together in the high Andes of Ecuador produced tangible results.

Project results, yes, but more importantly, relational results.

The sacrifice of digging trenches for water pipes means clean water will soon be available 24 hours a day to the Quichua community of Lirio San José (Lily of St. Joseph). Additional reservoirs and the replacement of the pipe distribution system are needed to complete the project which will provide clean spring water to each home.

Story by Kay Burgi and Ralph Kurtenbach
Photos by: Kay Burgi


Representing the next generation of Quichua Indians, four children joined civil leaders, professionals and pastors in receiving copies of the newly revised Quichua New Testament in Ecuador’s Chimborazo province on Sunday, Feb. 28.

A few hundred people attended a ceremony at an evangelical church on the shores of Lake Colta. Nearby Mount Chimborazo may remind some Ecuadorian believers and missionaries that God’s Word came to Ecuador in the late 19th century against the wishes of a customs agent whose pledge was that as long as this mountain stands, shipments of Bibles would not enter the port city of Guayaquil.

A century later, translators Daniel Sigla—a major contributor to the translation work—along with Pablo Saenz, Gunther Schultz, David Strumbeck and Richard Aschmann, produced a revised translation in accurate, clear, contemporary Quichua. The team was assisted by various language technicians, Quichua leaders and pastors.

The New Testament was published by Biblica (formerly the International Bible Society-Send the Light) which is also making audio CDs of the text available for ease of use. Luciano Jaramillo, who directs Biblica’s Latin America and U.S. Hispanic ministries, gave an inspiring message illustrating how on the road to Emmaus, Jesus used Scripture to illustrate the path to the revelation of God.

A British nurse, Sheila Leech, was recently named vice president of international healthcare of HCJB Global in the U.S.-based mission’s first ever vice presidency of healthcare ministries.

The announcement by HCJB Global President Wayne Pederson carries with it some additional “firsts” as well: the mission’s first vice president who is at once female and European—with experience in various aspects of healthcare, primarily in Latin America but in recent years, elsewhere in the world.

“We are increasingly recognizing the strategic role that human care is playing in our global strategy to declare and demonstrate the love of Christ,” said Pederson.

Leech said she is “still very much an active, hands-on person, so my perception of what is needed to reach people for Christ through healthcare ministry is a result of firsthand experience.”

Photos: Steve & Diane Wilson

They survived the Shell road . . . and shot photos to boot!

A trendy tourism item for years at HCJB Global was the tee-shirt advertising “I Survived The Shell Road.” Several years back, many of the hairpin curves and certain-death drop-offs were removed. Much –but certainly not all — of the treacherous travel was removed by road reconstruction.

Landslides poured tons of earth on the road recently, but Shell travellers made it back home from Quito.

Admire the waterfall AFTERWARDS!

“I like challenges,” commented HCJB Global’s Hermann Schirmacher’s upon embarking on a recent trip to Haiti. Two weeks later his medical team from Ecuador recounted that their time in Port-au-Prince had handed them plenty of challenges.

Their experiences differed significantly from those of an earlier HCJB Global Hands team that helped in the earthquake zone in Haiti’s capital. “It was totally different,” said Eckehart Wolff, a surgeon who had returned to Haiti after several weeks. In January he had accompanied other physicians to the Baptist Haiti Mission (BHM) hospital near Port-au-Prince within 72 hours after the earthquake struck on Jan. 12.

After that team’s Jan. 24 return to Ecuador, eight weeks had passed. Wolff was pleasantly surprised by how few of the nearly 400 quake victims who had undergone surgeries (conducted by his team and subsequent teams that rotated in) had encountered post-surgery complications—just a dozen or so.

“We had expected many more complications and so we were prepared to operate on those patients,” Wolff said. The second team included Drs. Paul Barton, Mark Nelson, Jack Peña and José Luis Vivanco, and nurses Pat Dille and Kathy Jo Estes. Both Schirmacher and Alex Weir evaluated reconstruction projects in and around Port-au-Prince. Five nationalities united as the Hands of Jesus on this trip.

Renewing the bridges of friendship established in January, Barton, Nelson and Wolff were warmly received by staff and patients as were their companions from Ecuador.

Dr. Stephen Hawthorne

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Weaving together scientific fact, scriptural principles and experience as a physician to Bolivia, Dr. Steven Hawthorne, taught an intensive graduate-level course in Quito, Ecuador. Hawthorne is an adjunct professor with Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill.

About three dozen people from across Ecuador attended the March 15-19 course offered by HCJB Global Hands’ community development department. The course focused on the history of public health, its vocabulary and principles of epidemiology—the study of diseases that affect populations. It was the fourth consecutive year Hawthorne has taught a community development course in Quito.

“What made the course especially valuable was its focus on Christian ethics and a biblical view of what public health work should look like,” said Maria Slater, a class participant from North Carolina. She is assisting as a working visitor in community development for a few months.

photos by Doug Weber
See also HCJB Global German Producers Launch Vozandes Media in Quito

Positioning the forklift as pallets prop up one end of T8.

Lowering T8 to the pavement.

Geoff Kooistra and Steve Sutherland replace rollers en route.

T8 - quiet in the corner . . . for now.

Awaiting a Vozandes Media launch of a powerful message on a powerful transmitter - T8.

Laughter followed this exercise as the leader instructed hand to chin but demonstrated hand to cheek.

“Thank you so much for the successful training,” wrote a Ghanaian to HCJB Global Voice’s Joseph Kebbie after nearly a week of intensive learning together in Accra. “I am a better communicator today than I was yesterday,” the African continued. “May God Himself give back all that has been spent to train us.”

The April 6-11 event, the ministry’s first official media training in the Sub-Saharan Africa Region, drew 14 students from four local partners in the West African countries of Ghana and Sierra Leone.

A local partner, Theovision International, co-sponsored the event in Accra, also providing participants as did Word FM in Bolgatanga, Bishara Radio in Tamale (all in Ghana) and Believers Broadcasting Network in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Most of the participants were either on-air presenters or plan to become presenters.

“The people here are beyond sweet,” said HCJB Global’s Len Kinzel of his recent visit to Cap Haitien, Haiti, during the Easter season. “But beyond anything I ever would have imagined as ‘poor.’

According to the CIA World Factbook, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with 80 percent of the population living below the poverty line and 54 percent in “abject poverty.”

“For decades I’d heard stories about the situation in Haiti,” he continued. “But [visiting the region] jolted me about their reality and about how little the Western world really knows about it.”

“I honestly see why so many [Haitians] go to great lengths to get to Quito—and why they find it ‘luxurious’ in so many ways,” said Kinzel, who has pastored an international English-speaking congregation in Ecuador’s capital, Quito, since 2000. Ecuadorian authorities estimate that 500 to 800 Haitians live Quito.

It’s not very often that passengers have to weigh themselves along with their luggage before buying a ticket and boarding an airplane. However, it is common when trying to catch a plane ride into certain areas of the devastated land of Haiti.

The three-member technical team, comprised of Ed Muehlfelt and Dave Rhodes of the Indiana-based HCJB Global Technology Center and Nate Dell of Colorado, weighed in on Tuesday, April 13. They flew in a World War II-era DC-3 owned by Missionary Flights International.

The team, arriving after two HCJB Global medical teams from Quito had been in Haiti to treat and follow up more than 1,000 patients following the Jan. 12 earthquake—arrived in Cap Haitien loaded down with equipment and test gear. They were ready to help the mission’s radio ministry partners and gather information for future humanitarian trips.

For years Obispo carried out religious activities in rural Guatemala, yet he didn’t know God. “I performed all the duties of a devout Christian,” he recalled. “But in my heart, I knew something was missing. By God’s grace, I soon discovered that it was not something I was missing, but someone.” His life was transformed, shifting from duties to relationship with the Lord.

Now pastoring a church in the remote town of Quiacquix (pronounced kee-ah-KEESH), about 110 miles northwest of Guatemala City, Obispo’s passion is contagious as he shares his story with all those around him. His wife and children, who have followed in his footsteps, and many other residents of his community are eager to do the same.

Anyone visiting Obispo’s hometown may quickly suggest a long “to-do” list to improve the community’s well-being. “It’s a place to go if you love adventure and want to experience life as it really is without modern conveniences at your fingertips,” said HCJB Global’s Américo Saavedra.

To his credit, Obispo is hard at work, but Saavedra observed that the Guatemalan pastor has even higher aspirations. “He desires to have a maturing church—one that is fully committed to God and His Word with a vision to make a difference in the community,” said Saavedra, who has headed Apoyo, HCJB Global’s pastoral training ministry, since 1992.

“To get there,” Obispo shared with Saavedra, “requires the work of the Holy Spirit in and through us.” Upon hearing that Apoyo helps church leaders realize such dreams, Obispo shot back, “When do we start?”

Online chat messages blend with the on-air chatter of three young Latin American hosts on a popular ALAS-HCJB radio program, “La Telaraña” (The Spider Web), each afternoon in Quito, Ecuador.

New media applications such as Facebook play an integral part of the program which airs via satellite network affiliates throughout Latin America.

Fingertips on the sliders of the studio console, Ofelia Díaz steers the conversation with her co-hosts, Sofía Maldonado and Bryan Rubio, a student at HCJB Global’s Christian Center of Communications.

Brian Rubio

Rubio’s laptop computer screen displays who is writing on La Telaraña’s newly established Facebook account while another website collates all SMS (cell phone text) messages that listeners have sent to the program host.

“We are seeing an increase in activity with our fans on all of our pages, especially HCJB La Voz de los Andes, HCJB-2 and La Telaraña,” said Doug Weber, who is researching new media and dovetailing local radio with new Internet-related communications.

The board of HCJB Global’s World Office in Curitiba, Brazil, has named a pastor, Edson Bruno Zilse, as its new president.

“Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you,” proclaimed Bruno, preaching from Hosea 10:12 (English Standard Version) at HCJB Global-Brazil’s annual meeting on Monday, May 3.

Surrounded by her family, Helen Viola Savage Broach Swanson, an HCJB Global retiree, died of cancer on Tuesday, May 18, in Vista, Calif. She was 81. During decades of ministry in Ecuador, she worked at Radio Station HCJB, but her home became a ministry hub as well.

Helen’s smile, hospitality and commitment to her Savior opened doorways of opportunity to share the gospel with Ecuadorians of all social classes. Calling her the “original multitasker,” HCJB Global’s Ron Cline said Helen “could conduct a Bible study and minister to the street lady at her door.”

Born to Pastor Henry and Bessie Savage in Pontiac, Mich., on Nov. 28, 1928, Helen aspired early in life to work in missions. “I invited the Lord Jesus into my heart and life when I was only 5 years old,” she once said, “and ever since I was 6 my only desire in life was to be a missionary.”

By the time she reached her teens, Helen’s brothers were missionaries in Latin America. “As a senior in high school I was able to visit Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela with my parents,” she said, “and my desire to be a missionary was reconfirmed.”

An illiterate man, a food vendor and a businesswoman sit down to talk.

No, this isn’t the opening line of a popular joke. Instead, role playing served a valuable lesson at a microfinance workshop held May 3-7 at HCJB Global in Quito, Ecuador.

Led by facilitators Smita Donthamsetty, Mike McMahan and Robin McMahan, role-playing by 33 attendees helped them anticipate the realities that go with establishing small savings and loan groups.

The 30-hour class, “Microfinance as a Missionary Strategy,” was sponsored jointly by the Chalmers Center for Economic Development, Misión al Ecuador de la Iglesia Presbiteriana en America (MEIPA) and Corrientes, a newly launched coalition of mission agencies based at HCJB Global in Quito.

The person playing the role of the food vendor would save almost no money, possibly just meeting expenses for a family. Facing harsh deficits regularly, this person would have no financial safety net when emergencies strike. Unforeseen medical expenses could push the person and his or her family to financial ruin. On the other hand, the businessman’s character would be insulated by this.

“Latin American missionaries generally understand living with limitations and in a context of poverty, but they haven’t had the techniques or abilities to provoke or facilitate a transformational change so that the community may achieve its self-support,” said Carlos Pinto, a charter team member of Corrientes.

Many in the development world perceive microfinance as a silver bullet to diminish poverty. Controversies have swirled around it, however, as banks and financial institutions have entered the field.

Work begins with handshakes all around for the volunteer crew at HCJB Global-Australia’s international broadcast facility in Kununurra.
It was not always so, according to engineer Steve Sutherland who will move to the remote town in Western Australia after recently wrapping up nearly two decades as an engineer and manager at Radio Station HCJB’s former shortwave site at Pifo, Ecuador.

Except for his university years and career start in the U.S., Sutherland’s home since childhood has always been South America. While greetings there vary, most often they involve a personal touch—a kiss on the cheek, an embrace perhaps, and at minimum a handshake.

So it was that Sutherland’s six months of tower work at Kununurra in 2008 carried with it a social ritual many Westerners may consider genteel, effusive or even time-wasting. The blond, blue-eyed engineer’s spoken English reveals just a hint of a Southern lilt, but he brings to Australia as well a bit of Latin America in the form of a handshake.

File photo by D. Birkey

Ecuador’s Geophysics Institute reported that the Tungurahua volcano blasted a plume of ash six miles into the sky on Friday, May 28, with ash then drifting Guayaquil two provinces away.

The blast occurred at 8:47 a.m., prompting authorities to restrict travel from Ambato, just northwest of the mountain, to Baños, a town near the base of the mountain. The volcano is about 90 miles south of Quito.

Further east at HCJB Global’s Vozandes Hospital in the jungle town of Shell, Director Steve Wilson cited a telephone conversation in which an ambulance driver said officials granted him passage only because he drove an emergency vehicle. However, physician Steve Nelson traveled to Quito without incident on an alternate route back to the capital city.

Not yet 40 years old, Carlos Balseca faced chronic pain and a grim prognosis—life as a quadriplegic—upon arriving at HCJB Global’s Hospital Vozandes- Quito (HVQ) in Ecuador. Today he enjoys the hope of a better future.

A pastoral visit by chaplain Antonio Torres.

Badly burned on the face, chest, arms and hands, Balseca was admitted to another Quito hospital earlier this year. However, he signed himself out after two months because the staff refused to believe that he was suffering from severe neck pain. He then went to a private doctor who ordered an MRI of his neck and sent him to HVQ.

When he checked into HVQ, Balseca was suffering from hospital-acquired Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in his skin grafts, according to Dr. Dick Douce, medical director at HVQ. MRSA is a bacterium responsible for several difficult-to-treat infections in humans.

On top of that, a bone infection due to Pseudomonas, a second kind of hospital-acquired germ in his neck, threatened to paralyze him.

“I had hardly arrived in the emergency room at Hospital Vozandes,” Balseca said, “when they told me they needed to operate … that it (infection) was in my neck … and had entered my bones.”

Photos & story by R. Kurtenbach
Balancing a broomstick horizontally before the crowd, Russ Cline illustrated the equilibrium that Christian leaders need to maintain. With 75 communicators from across Latin America gathered at Radio Station HCJB’s Larson Conference Center in Quito, Ecuador, Cline interacted with those listening.

Cline’s history with HCJB Global goes back to his teen years when his father, Ron Cline, pastored in Ecuador and then led the mission as president for nearly two decades.

The younger Cline’s talk spelled out how daily spiritual disciplines help balance leaders and maintain stamina as well as integrity. Fielding questions along the way, he gave examples from his own years in leadership, most recently directing a ministry called Leader Mundial.

Equilibrium illustrated with a broom.

In closing, he balanced the broom vertically on his hand, directing his audience’s attention to his ever-upward look. Cline offered that the Christian worker looks up to God.

Barbara Baddeley Wilson

Barbara Baddeley Wilson of Melbourne, Australia, passed peacefully into the presence of the Lord the evening of Thursday, June 3, after a long battle with cancer. She was 73.

Born on April 25, 1937, she was known as a faithful servant of God with a brilliant mind. Barbara received numerous commendations as a nurse and gained the prestigious prize of a fellowship with the Australian College of Nursing. On her entry to the Melbourne Bible Institute (later to become the Bible College of Victoria), she quickly became a senior student.

After graduation, Barbara was accepted as a missionary with HCJB Global in Ecuador, serving as a nurse at Hospital Vozandes-Quito for more than 12 years (November 1963 to August 1976).

photos by Martin Harrison

story by Cherith Rydbeck & R. Kurtenbach

A cold steady April drizzle in Ecuador’s highlands didn’t prevent more than 200 people from gathering in the remote farming community of Pichan to dedicate a new clean water system. These hardy families commemorated the occasion with the Ecuadorian national anthem, followed by songs by schoolchildren.

Bladimir, pastor of the small evangelical church in Pichan, remarked how the water project united the community, whereas past community events sometimes served as an excuse for drunkenness and occasional fights.

Attributing the project’s success to God, Bladimir said previously it would not have been likely that God would be credited for such an advance.

The project has also prompted new energies in the church and in other areas of development. The evangelical church is grasping the power of Christ-centered community development in proclaiming God’s kingdom through words and actions to those skeptical of the gospel message,  according to Bruce Rydbeck. He directs water projects with Vozandes Community Development.

“We never thought we would see the day when clean water flowed in this community.”

No piercing trumpet triplets of the finale of the William Tell Overture or shout of “Hi-yo, Silver, away!” accompanied the HCJB Global Voice engineers´ exit from the coastal Ecuadorian city of Esmeraldas.

But they were heroes to one listener who stopped them to say thanks.

“We were heroes in a silver Toyota pickup,” recounted Tim Zook. “As we left to return to Quito, a taxi driver honked at us and when I rolled the window down he yelled ´thanks!´ for repairing the radio transmitter. He had seen HCJB Global Voice on the pickup door.”

Tim Zook and Milton Pumisacho

Training permeated the trip, as did mutual learning between Zook and his companions. “Milton Pumisacho is an engineer and teaches me what he knows as well,” Zook said.

The other, Luis Chila,  is a volunteer who cares for the transmitter site at Esmeraldas, several hours northwest of the capital. The city of 100,000 is provided a crystal clear FM signal of Christian programming, bringing listeners music and encouragement. Luis visits the transmitter site regularly to change filters and take meter readings.

“He calls when the signal sounds less than perfect,” said Zook.

“All we had to do was remove a lizard that shorted the 3000 volts in the transmitter and replace a fuse,” Zook concluded. “I wish it was always this easy.  It was easy to be a hero this week.”

Zook with Luis Chila

Converging passions for quality television and a desire to reach the Spanish-speaking world for Christ culminated with the June 2010 launch of a practical book from veteran HCJB Global missionary John Gowan.

Available in both English and Spanish, Christians, Let’s Make Good Television (Cristianos: Hagamos Buena Televisión), Gowan’s self-published book is available for “Christian groups that know they want to minister through television, but who have not had access to the professional broadcast world.”

“It’s written with Third World realities in mind, and frankly it’s inspired by the mistakes I’ve seen myself and others repeatedly make through the years just as much as it is by the professionals who have shared their expertise with me,” Gowan explains. “I’m convinced that Christians can and will produce some of the best programming on TV if we learn and respect these fundamental rules of professional television production and broadcasting.”

Gowan, 56, admits he’s part of the “first generation to grow up watching TV. Its influence both for good and bad is something I have lived first-hand since I was born.”

“Christian ministries were largely absent from this influential medium during its formative decades, for a wide variety of reasons,” he continued. “Now that so many ministries are finding their way onto the small screen, their lack of experience in the medium is often a barrier to being as effective as they might otherwise be.”

Gowan added that what is commonly known today as “Christian TV” is “unfortunately often not considered by mass audiences to be good enough to make them choose to watch it. But I’ve found that with even the most basic introduction to broadcasting theory and production techniques, their programs take a leap to a whole new level of audience impact. I love it when I get to have a part in making that transition happen.”

Dr. Morris Everett “Ev” Fuller, a physician who helped found HCJB Global’s jungle hospital in Ecuador more than 50 years ago, died in Spokane, Wash., on Tuesday, July 20. His wife, Elisabeth “Liz,” of 66 years was at his side when he passed away at the age of 92.

Born to Morris and Helen Fuller in Schenectady, N.Y., on Oct. 10, 1917, Ev graduated with a Bachelor of Science from Union College in Schenectady in 1939 and completed medical school at Syracuse University in New York in 1943.

He married Liz that same year, after which he joined the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II, serving in the Medical Corps until 1946. Citations included two Bronze Stars for military activity on the front lines, and he was promoted from first lieutenant to captain while in combat.

After leaving the Army, Ev returned to Schenectady for additional medical training from 1946 to 1949 in obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics and anesthesiology, completing his medical residency at Gorgas Hospital in Panama.

The Fullers then dedicated their lives to Christian medical work in Ecuador, serving with HCJB Global from 1950 until 1966. Ev worked as a physician while Liz helped as a registered nurse, initially both serving at the Indian Clinic in Quito.

How to spend an anniversary with your spouse? Soft jazz, lighted candles and a sumptuous meal? Or maybe even a Caribbean cruise?

Forgoing these cozy anniversary aspirations, Ian and Linda McFarland instead accompanied an HCJB Global Hands medical team to Haiti. Caribbean yes, but cruise not really!

Their 30^th anniversary was spent surrounded by physical and health needs of Haitians rebuilding from a 7.0-strength earthquake on January 12. Many Haitians are still living in dire need, as the team observed upon arriving from Ecuador at the invitation of Samaritan’s Purse (SP).

“The trip from the airport was eye opening,” wrote Linda. “Lots of acres of little tents jammed tightly together where Haitians are still living. I can’t imagine living in a tent in this heat without plumbing or water.” Writing from a tent, she dashed off a quick e-mail message to friends and family before heading off to a SP camp called Jax Beach.

“We split our team in half and four of us will be heading there to do medical work in that area,” Linda said. “It felt like about 95 degrees this morning at 7:30 so pray for our strength and energy which seems to slip away in this muggy heat.”

Linda is originally from Oregon and her husband, Ian, is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was raised in Northern Ireland. Both are nurses. As with earlier HCJB Global Hands teams this year, various nationalities united as the Hands of Jesus on this trip.
SP handled details for the team’s medical clinics to underserved Haitians. “Ian was able to learn the pharmacy in the afternoon. We are impressed by the organized way this mission works,” said Linda. “It makes it fun to be here with them and have the way paved in front of us.”

While logistics may be laid in place, traffic is treacherous and Linda has asked friends to pray for the team.

Written by R. Kurtenbach
Photos by A. Saavedra

Dr. Gabriela Jaramillo’s expectations of a trip on the Ucayali River in Peru were met in ways she didn’t expect.

Ecuadorian physician, Dr. Gabriela Jaramillo, with Peruvian patients.

A family practice resident at Hospital Vozandes in Quito, Ecuador, she’d expected to concentrate on just being a daughter of God. Jaramillo said she accepted an invitation to travel with Misión a Bordo (Mission On Board) “largely for the spiritual enrichment, not thinking that my (medical) profession would serve as an open door to reach out to the people.”

But the young Ecuadorian’s skill set didn’t go unnoticed. She later told Radio Station HCJB listeners: “I had the opportunity to help with my skills – to be a tool in treating people.”

“We came to realize that this is the benefit – not that we (in missions) carry forth all that is good,” Jaramillo told the radio host of Apuntes Pastorales (Tips for Pastors), “but that the exchange (with the local people) is mutual.”

Nearly 50 people traveled for five days on board the Evangelista. This riverboat is 90 feet by 24 feet and docks at Pucallpa, Peru, when not cruising the Ucayali with people learning via onboard lectures and on-shore practice how to share the Christian message in remote settings. [/caption]

A welcome by Shipibo children of the Ucayali River.

In tent cities around Caberet, Haiti, life-changing conversations accompany medical consultations as an eight-person HCJB Global Hands team helps some 200 Haitians per day.

Family physician Dr. Brad Quist was finishing his day when he noticed two women standing off to one side. When his interpreter asked in Creole whether they needed a physician’s attention, the reply was, “No, we want to see the pastor so we can accept Jesus as our Lord.”

“I was taken off guard by this unexpected response, but was more than happy to direct them to our Haitian chaplain who in turn prayed with these two ladies,” Quist said. The following day a patient’s cross-shaped pendant served to spur a spiritual conversation.

“I asked him through my interpreter if he knew what the cross meant, and he indicated that he did not,” Quist related. “Once again, I asked my spiritual colleague to step in and talk with this man about Jesus in a language that he could understand.”

Story by Ralph Kurtenbach
Photos by Chad Irwin, Mission Aviation Fellowship

A page from the Book of Genesis in the Bible's Old Testament.

Newly printed Bibles in the Shuar language were presented in the Ecuadorian
jungle community of Makuma, with pioneering missionaries Frank and Marie Drown attending a ceremony planned and carried out by the Shuar Association of Evangelical Churches.

In 1948, the Drowns assumed the work among the Shuar that was begun by Ernest and Jean Johnson a few years earlier. Both couples worked with Gospel Missionary Union (now Avant), providing spiritual guidance in Christian principles while living among the Shuar. A deadly rivalry then existed between the Shuar and their distant cousins, the
Achuar, as chronicled in the Drowns’ book, Mission to the Headhunters: How God’s Forgiveness Transformed Tribal Enemies.

“We were thrilled to hear the Shuar church leaders and the Bible translators
as they read and explained passages from God’s Word and then dramatically
presented the newly arrived Bibles,” wrote Marie Drown after she and Frank visited Ecuador.

“We often hear about Don Pancho (Frank),” wrote HCJB Global’s Alex
Leon in her family blog. “He had a vision of community development and has
left long-lasting influence in the areas where we work.” Alex Leon and her Ecuadorian
husband, Alfredo, are both engineers who’ve directed clean water projects in
Makuma in the last few years.

Sources: HCJB Global, El Comercio, BBC, Voice of America
Photos: El Comercio and Agencia Pública de Noticias del Ecuador y Suramérica
Story by R. Kurtenbach

The rescue of President Correa occurred at a police hospital in Quito.

With live radio news coverage, emergency room care, and prayer during recent violence in Ecuador, HCJB Global maintained its ministries in media and healthcare while safeguarding staff.

Media accounts claim that three died, including one policeman killed late Thursday when police exchanged gunfire with Army troops. Soldiers loyal to President Rafael Correa rescued him from a Quito hospital where striking police were holding him.

The confrontation culminated a day of tensions after police walked off their jobs in protest of legislation approved this week by Ecuador’s Constituent Assembly. The protestors denounced measures that would delay promotions and decrease benefits for police.

The gun battle televised by a Quito network concluded as Army vehicles breached the police security and spirited away the president amid of barrage of gunfire. One policeman fell wounded as tear gas filled the area. Within half a minute, others surrounded the downed man with riot shields, then carried him to an ambulance.

Reports vary on the number wounded, both in the rescue and throughout the day’s civic turbulence. Emergency rooms treated nearly 200 people in Quito alone, according to El Comercio newspaper.

As the 35-minute televised drama unfolded with shouting and bursts of gunfire, Teleamazonas journalists put the wounded at a dozen. The next morning, estimates by television crew members who remained overnight on the scene ranged from seven to 27.

(story and photos by Ralph Kurtenbach)

A less exciting day—that was Amy Dawson’s desire on Monday, Oct. 4, as she headed to a family practice clinic on the outskirts of Quito, Ecuador, on her second day as assistant clinic director.

Four days earlier the morning had begun with an all-too-common household challenge at home. “No water again today. Oh well,” described her Facebook status.

Later that morning the small South American country was rocked when a walkout by police spiraled out of control. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa spoke to protesting police at a Quito barracks, but tensions only escalated.

After being hit by tear gas he fled to a nearby police hospital. Later Correa stated that dissident officers detained him for several hours. That evening military soldiers stormed the hospital to free him from its confines.

Amy, a physician, and her radio producer husband, Tim, have lived in Ecuador with their three small children for more than two years. Thursday’s broken water pipe faded to just a minor irritant as the tragic events of Sept. 30 unfolded before their eyes and on televised images.

With roads and highways blocked, Amy’s trip back from the HCJB Global Hands clinic at Carapungo (north of Quito) was more complicated than usual, but turned out well. She followed a co-worker into the city and “he called friends to find out which roads weren’t blocked and they made it home fine,” the Dawsons wrote in their web log. She picked up their two small boys from school en route; Tim got their daughter from another school.

Police hospital in Quito. Mount Pichincha stands just west of the Ecuadorian capital.

Tucked inside the slick pages and glossy photos of the book, Zealous Love, are distressing details of dirty water, disease and unsettling accounts of human trafficking, refugees and other global challenges.
The book’s editors, Mike and Danae Yankoski, offer startling statistics of seemingly intractable problems, such as:

• 12.3 million people are still enslaved today.
• In the developing world, 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water.
• Over 14,000 child deaths per day due to hunger-related issues.

The Yankoskis have personally witnessed some of these unsettling realities. For example, they probed people’s water needs in Uganda. In Ecuador, they investigated water needs and observed solutions offered by HCJB Global Hands. Their book unstintingly urges faith-in-action answers, and casts aside guilt as an inadequate motivator.

“Like a college student surviving on too much caffeine and not enough sleep,” the Yankoskis write, “a guilty Christian will eventually crash. Instead, we’re after something healthier and more sustainable — something we can live.”

Cherith and Bruce Rydbeck

Bruce and Cherith Rydbeck have been doing exactly that –living it– by serving as missionaries on a variety of development projects in Ecuador, Colombia and Kenya since 1980. The Rydbecks wrote A Community Transformed as an upbeat, hope-filled section of the chapter, Unclean Water.

Their story is set in Ecuador, where the Rydbecks live. Bruce directs Clean Water Projects at HCJB Global’s Community Development, even as Cherith mentors Ecuadorians in leading Bible studies. She also volunteers in hospice care.

Their account begins in a Quito neighborhood called Rancho Alto (High Chaparral Ranch), where a carpenter named Cesar endured death threats from neighbors because of his faith in Christ.

by Marian Douce and Ralph Kurtenbach

As a taxi carried Dick and Marian Douce across town to visit a friend, their driver revealed to them his sadness and the hope he’d found recently via the radio.

The Douces serve as missionaries with HCJB Global in Quito, Ecuador. The driver, Pablo, opened the conversation with “Do you work at HCJB?” Then he told them about the life-changing turn he experienced while listening to the program, Al Oído (A Listening Ear), on Radio Station HCJB.

Pablo is caring for his four children after his wife (his second) left the family. A friend told him that if he listened for a while to Al Oído, he’d hear of somebody else’s life unraveling in the same way. “So he started listening, and sure enough he heard good advice for his situation,” wrote Marian in the Douces’ web log.

Al Oído’s hosts, Marco and Martha Claudia Mosquera, field many calls. People’s choices—or the choices of those near them—have brought pain and confusion. While on the air, the Mosqueras offer biblically based advice and then pray with callers.

The Al Oìdo Team (left to right): Martha Claudia, Tatiana, Marco.

With an intravenous drip attached to her arm, María* lay beneath a mosquito net in an unfamiliar situation. As a physician, she’s more accustomed to the caregiver role, but now she was on the receiving end of another’s care. Recuperating from malaria, she rejoiced, nonetheless, in what God was doing amid difficulties, oppression and illness.

She and her husband, Gerardo*, serve in a country of Sub-Saharan Africa just one year after their involvement with Corrientes (Spanish for “currents”), an initiative launched last year by HCJB Global in Ecuador.

Other agencies are involved too, some of them already well established before the October 2009 launch of Corrientes. The endeavor by Christian agencies and Ecuadorian churches seeks to equip Latin Americans for work in cross-cultural settings. María and Gerardo, for example, exchanged insights with various mentors before embarking on their African adventure.

This Latino couple is glad for the call upon their lives to serve God and share Christ’s love in a cross-cultural setting. “In June we held our first children’s club in the community,” they wrote. “And the numbers surprised us. We had invited 50, hoped for 80 or maybe 100. But 115 arrived, and next time there will be more!”

Sources: HCJB Global, Haiti Libre, Samaritan’s Purse, Everyday Christian, BBC

Photos by Hermann Schirmacher
Story by Ralph Kurtenbach and Harold Goerzen

HCJB Global physicians treated a patient on Wednesday, believed to be the first confirmed cholera case in the city Cité Soleil, Haiti.

“The diagnosis of cholera was established by a doctor experienced in tropical medicine,” reported the newspaper, Haiti Libre. The patient was ordered hospitalized, whereas rehydration was ordered for another patient who may have cholera.

Dr. Mark Nelson with patients

HCJB Global Hands physician Mark Nelson described cholera as producing a “quiet” diarrhea. He traveled from Texas to rendezvous with the team that had flown in from Ecuador. Nelson, who has served with HCJB Global in Ecuador’s Amazon region, said cholera “dehydrates patients to the point of shock quickly and without the usual associated abdominal discomfort and fever that most diarrheal illnesses produce.”

“It’s really sinister how quickly and quietly patients go down,” he said, “The volume of fluid lost is really fast.”

Unlike five cholera cases reported by Doctors Without Borders, in Haiti’s capital, the Cité Soleil victim is not from the Artibonite district and had not traveled to an infected area, reported Haiti Libre. Artibonite is the most affected area, with the disease believed to be carried by waters of the Artibonite River.

Photos by Felix Reyes, CCC student

Dr. Alan Cureton, president of Northwestern College (NWC), and an entourage from the school in Saint Paul, Minn., traveled to Quito, Ecuador, to participate in the Saturday, Oct. 16, graduation of eight students from HCJB Global’s Christian Center of Communications (CCC), an accredited branch campus of NWC. The three-year CCC, founded in 1984, offers an education integrating biblical and technical studies. It also offers a program that is both theoretical and practical.

This year’s CCC graduates include David Liberio, Catalina Medina, Carolina Casal, Daniela Baldeón, Grace Cuichán, Arturo Barreiro, Carolina Bermúdez and María Isabel Bajaña (the latter two unable to attend the graduation as they are studying at NWC).

HCJB Global’s Ralph Kurtenbach interviewed Dr. Cureton while he was in Quito. Here are some segments from that interview.

Q: As we continue to train communicators here in Latin America, how important do you see it for followers of Christ to work in media (both secular and Christian)?

Dr. Cureton: Well, it’s very important. In fact, it’s very important that we have salt and light across [a whole] spectrum of jobs … or positions within our culture. What’s really important is to always remember that the media shapes the message…. So it’s very important, I believe, that we have people who are God-honoring leaders who understand a biblical worldview—to be filtering, articulating and promoting the message they want to project whether it be in print or on the airwaves, across the Internet or even on TV.… And I would say that it’s vitally important that we have doctors and lawyers who possess a biblical worldview as well as teachers, social workers, counselors, etc. But the media is very important.

CCC Director Elsi Peñaranda with graduate, Catalina Medina. At right are Drs. Janet Sommers and Alan Cureton, as well as Mery de la Torre, and Rev. Graham Bulmer

Q: Your institution began more than a century ago with seven students when it was a Bible and missionary training institute. Do you see journalists and communicators—people in the media—as missionaries?

Dr. Cureton: Oh yes! I see us all as missionaries to be honest with you. No matter what we’re called to, no matter what path God leads us on, we’re all here to fulfill the Great Commission. And we’re all here to proclaim the name of Jesus Christ. And to be Christ with everyone we meet. So I would say that we are still producing missionaries—no different than in 1902 when we began. However, our missionaries are not necessarily connected with a church or denomination. They’re often connected in the marketplace, like in journalism or broadcast media. Or they’re connected in the fields of medicine or education. That’s where the great mission field is today.

Written by R. Kurtenbach & H. Goerzen
Photos: H. Schirmacher

Prayer with a patient.

As more than a million displaced Haitians endure Hurricane Tomas in tent cities, an HCJB Global Hands medical team hunkered down to ride out the storm after treating hundreds of patients in the last two weeks.

“We’re happy to be here at the Samaritan’s Purse base camp,” wrote Hermann Schirmacher in a message to co-workers in Ecuador on Nov 5. He and two medical professionals, Ian McFarland and Dr. Francisco Nina, had traveled to Haiti from Quito on Oct. 23. They linked up with another physician, Dr. Mark Nelson, who had come from the U.S.

“We believe the storm and rain will continue during the night, and then the weather should open up so we can fly [back to Ecuador] on Saturday (Nov 6) as planned,” Schirmacher said. “We’re all safe and sound, thanks to the Lord. We haven’t heard much about the full impact of the storm or how much damage it caused.”

McFarland added that the winds affected many of the 1.2 million people living in tent cities since the Jan. 12 quake. “Most of these are not designed for gale-force winds,” he said. “Actually, many of the tents are now just bits of canvass wrapped around four posts stuck in the ground.”

Dr. Francisco Nina with a Haitian patient.

The storm flooded earthquake-damaged remains of at least one Haitian town—a place where families had already lost homes earlier.

by Harold Goerzen

May Yeoman

Multitalented HCJB Global retiree Mary Colville “May” (McAdam) Yeoman died in her home in Haruru Falls, New Zealand, Sunday, Oct. 31, following complications suffered from a fall. She was 89.

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, on July 10, 1921, she graduated from Pitman’s College in London and had training as a marriage and family counselor. She did secretarial work, teaching and counseling, first in the U.K. and later in New Zealand.

She met her husband, Harry (who died just eight months ago), in England during World War II. He was serving as a pilot with the Royal New Zealand Air Force but was based in the U.K. during most of his five-year military career. They married in London on July 17, 1943.

“May Yeoman was a fascinating lady,” said Jim Allen, HCJB Global’s vice president of team development. “From her earliest days as a ‘war bride,’ she sought to stand with her Lord and her husband wherever God led them. She was always willing to take on any task, any move or any new ministry. She was a joy to be around and continually sought to be about her Father’s business.”

The Yeomans joined HCJB Global in 1969. After a year of Spanish language training in Costa Rica, they arrived in Quito, Ecuador, in April 1970 to work in the English Language Service, producing the daily radio program, “Shalom,” and later, “Passport.”

by R. Kurtenbach
In Colorado Springs, Colo., Beth Patton continues the HCJB Global drive to collect 640 crayons from staff members.

At a Colorado ranch, Nate Dell reviews his “tippy tap” instructions on turning a plastic bottle and string into a makeshift “faucet” to suspend from a baobab tree. The crayons will depart with Dell as he travels to the West African country of Burkina Faso.

Nate Dell with African friend, while on an earlier trip to Ghana

Dr. Steve Nelson and his wife, Dorothy, are part of the same medical team that leaves Quito, Ecuador, on Sunday, Nov. 14. In his Quito office, Steve is boning up on malaria. During his trip to Ghana earlier this year he wrote, “Almost every belly I felt had a large spleen, the telltale sign of living in a malaria zone and getting malaria over and over.” With some 10 episodes of malaria annually, the children are more prone to infections.

These little bared bellies, distended spleens and weakened immunities only begin to reveal the suffering in this region as yet a darker picture emerges. HCJB Global Hands nurse Jessica McMillan is bracing to confront an even tougher topic—female genital mutilation. The practice ties into what has been the fabric of traditional African culture, whereas Steve hones in on a pathogen that is merely biological.

A medical team from Ecuador is traveling to the besieged Caribbean country of Haiti amid a death toll from cholera careening ever higher.
Up to 200,000 Haitians could contract cholera, as the water-borne illness spreads, the United Nations said on November 12. Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health had put the death toll at more than 1,100 deaths earlier this week, with nearly 18,400 hospitalizations. But, UN aid agencies noted that these statistics are several days old. The true number of deaths and hospitalizations could be even higher.

Earl Hartwig, Team Leader

Earl Hartwig, a Canadian, is leading an HCJB Global Hands team that leaves Quito on Saturday, November 20. He asks that people pray the six-person team would flex to do whatever they’re assigned to by their host, Samaritan’s Purse (SP).

Hartwig also desires that “in whatever we do in the long hours and possibly in the disappointing moments when someone dies, that we will shine the light of Jesus to everyone who comes in contact with us.”
Two people have died in riots that erupted in the north, as protestors accused United Nations peacekeepers of bringing in the disease. The assertion has been denied by the UN, but Haiti’s health experts have requested an investigation into whether Nepalese peacekeepers introduced a strain of cholera to Haiti, which had documented no cases of cholera before October.

The team’s luggage was tightly packed with medicines, but even at nearly 500 pounds of pharmaceuticals they’re not able to transport everything requested by SP. They’ve packed some extra clothing or personal effects into a carry-on bag; medicines occupy the rest of their suitcases. Team members with Hartwig are: Juanita Buñay, Dr. Manuel Catani, Dr. Mauricio Coronel, Dr. Evelyn Hidalgo, and Ruth Telenchana.

Four previous HCJB Global Hands teams have traveled from Ecuador in 2010. This marks the first trip to Haiti for French-speaking, Ecuadorian nurse, Ruth Telenchana. Her prior mission trips to Impfondo, Congo for medical work saw her French put to good use. The team represents a cross-section of Ecuador’s society; nurse Juanita Buñay is Quichua and Manuel Catani, a physician in residency at Hospital Vozandes Quito (HVQ) is Shuar.

Another HVQ residency physician, Evelyn Hidalgo, will serve on the team, along with Mauricio Coronel. Additionally, Buñay is mentored through, Corrientes, a Latin American missions mobilization initiative currently directed by Hartwig.

Ralph writes: The photos from our van travels last summer have finally made it to the blog page. We visited several HCJB Global families who formerly served with us in the mission’s Latin America Region.

We were treated to Ecuador home videos that Dave and Mary had taken as we traveled together to Shell when their boys were small (and ours even smaller!) That was really a kick!

Life together for Dan and Rachel had its roots in Ecuador for Dan and Rachel, where both helped as working visitors in Radio Station HCJB’s English Language Service.

Anne & Dave still going strong

Lunch with Stan and Marian

A board game with David

Thanks to Alice and Joe for helping us sell the van

Lee has hosted Ecuador teams in Africa

Curt recalling his radio years in English Language Service

Clemente Pilco’s custodial work changed a bit this week as Radio Station HCJB spruced up, set up, and geared up for a visit from listeners during Misión Compartida this weekend in Quito, Ecuador.

With other co-workers, Pilco helped to erect tents, then string lights and bunting between palm trees. They also wired electricity to the campus outside of Larson Center, site of radio broadcasts before a live studio audience.

December 6 marked a national holiday in Ecuador, celebrating the founding of Quito in 1534. But after that, a crew of HCJB Global workers tackled the tear-down and hauling that followed six Coro Vozandes concerts in Quito. Then the set-up for Misión Compartida began in earnest; long days and extra work hours became the norm.

Translated from Spanish, the phrase means “Sharing the Mission.” For weeks already, on-air promotions have invited listeners to the annual three-day gala affair that offers something for people of all ages. Face-painting, a bouncy castle, clowns and cotton candy attract the toddlers and children, while grown-ups watch Candice Figueroa, Ofélia Díaz and other program hosts conduct the live share-a-thon.

“The listeners come during Misión Compartida to donate, but this is also a time when we can pray for and with them,” said Anabella Cabezas, Director of Media for HCJB Global’s Latin America Region.

Treating Haitian cholera patients during a 13-hour overnight shift was tiring enough, but several Ecuadorian physicians found their napping afterwards interrupted when the call came to get up and go.

Writing of the short “night” earlier this week, team leader, Hermann Schirmacher said some had just dozed off when their hosts charged into the room saying, “You have 10 minutes to get ready and leave immediately to go to Bercy to relieve a medical team. By tonight we think there’s a possibility of protests.” Such protests are often accompanied by blocked streets and highways in Haiti.

This HCJB Global Hands team represents the sixth medical team from Ecuador working in Haiti following the devastating January 2010 earthquake. Schirmacher, a Paraguayan of German heritage, has led half the teams. Challenges have arisen before. His October team’s return to Ecuador looked tenuous as Hurricane Tomas raged through the Caribbean.

Thankfully, this team’s flight out of Port-au-Prince occurred without incident. Team members had only seen a few cholera patients, but the subsequent team focused solely on cholera patient care as the disease spread. The teams’ host, Samaritan’s Purse (SP), has also shifted all of its response to cholera patient care.

Having missed supper before their overnight shift, team members didn’t like the prospect of eating military meals-ready-to-eat (MREs) once they arrived in Bercy. But team leader, Schirmacher met this challenge. “I told the chef to hurry up so I could take along a decent meal for them,” he recounted, adding with a smile. “If not, I was going to take him along with us! We managed to pack on ice a nice meal with salads and some canned drinks.”

“We arrived at Bercy and reviewed the patients of the other shift,” Schirmacher continued. “This was quick so as to get them on their way to the SP base before nightfall.” Then with all patients stabilized, Schirmacher and the team sat down for a meal.

Other team members included family practice medical residents Dr. Ruth Jimbo and Dr. Betsabe Tello, family physician Dr. Joe Martin Isabel Manguia and two nurses, María Isabel Manguia (head emergency room nurse) and Silvia Ilcachiat from Hospital Vozandes-Quito.

Haitian health officials claim the cholera epidemic has already claimed more than 2,120 lives, but U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon believes the actual number of cholera infections and deaths could be twice as high as reported numbers. The disease is concentrated in slums and rural areas where accurate reporting is difficult.

The U.N. leader also cited estimates by the Pan-American Health Organization and World Health Organization that the epidemic could affect as many as 650,000 people in the next six months.

More than 60 patients were treated at the SP cholera treatment center in Bercy with 70 patients treated in Cité Soleil. “Usually 20 to 25 people would leave each day with the same number coming in,” Schirmacher explained. “Patients usually stayed two to three days.”

Since the cholera outbreak began in late October, SP teams have treated more than 3,829 cholera patients. Additionally, 20 water filtration systems have been installed in Cabaret.

Late on Tuesday, Dec. 7, thousands of people took to the streets in Port-au-Prince after first-round results of recent presidential elections were released. Demonstrations also erupted in several other cities.

Sources: HCJB Global, BBC, Samaritan’s Purse

Story by R. Kurtenbach
Photos by Américo Saavedra and Barry Hamm

Accompanied by the dulcet tones of a violin, Tony Tamayo praised Jehovah Jireh—the God who provides—during a closing ceremony of a recent radio sharathon in Ecuador, Friday-Sunday, Dec. 10-12.

Using a metaphor, Tamayo spoke of the simplest of needs—a child’s pair of shoes—then thanked God for making this and much more available to Radio Station HCJB through the generosity of its listeners. Those praying with him opened their eyes afterwards, some wiping tears. At 7 p.m. Sunday they looked up to see that the display board had registered total giving at US$215,185.

“It was three days of intense work in addition to many days of preparation and subsequent follow-up,” said Anabella Cabezas, director of media for the mission’s Latin America Region. “But the Lord was glorified through it all and for that we are grateful—and also challenged—to continue working in this ministry that God has used and will continue to use to reach many with His message.” The Quito station entertained 5,766 visitors throughout the weekend.

Carlos Guamán Guilca

The manager of the first indigenous language radio station in Ecuador, José Carlos Guamán Guilca, died in a Riobamba hospital on Sunday, December 26. Three days earlier, Guamán had sustained serious injuries in a vehicle accident near that city in Ecuador’s highlands province of Chimborazo.

Mourners attended wake services for Guamán at Riobamba and at the village of San José de Tipin on Monday, December 27. A December 28 funeral service was held at the premises of Radio 950 AM in Colta, followed by burial in the nearby community of Guamote Tipin. Guamán is survived by his wife, Maria Lema, and their children.

Guamán, 31, had served as manager of the stations, Radio 101.7 FM “La Voz de AIIECH” (Asociación de Iglesias Indígenas Evangélicas de Chimborazo) in Riobamba and Radio 950 AM. He had also served on the board of the Confederation of Peoples, Communities, Organizations and Indigenous Evangelical Churches of Chimborazo, which announced news of his death on December 26.

Crunchy numbers

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 8,300 times in 2010. That’s about 20 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 63 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 113 posts. There were 224 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 53mb. That’s about 4 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was April 15th with 250 views. The most popular post that day was Landslides Removed on the Baños-Puyo Road.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, mail.yahoo.com, mail.live.com, hcjb.org, and en.wordpress.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for call of the andes, hcjb, waorani tribe, helen broach, and jorge zambrano.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Landslides Removed on the Baños-Puyo Road April 2010

2

Ministry Staff Safe Amid Chaotic Day in Ecuador October 2010
1 comment

3

Waorani Tribe Members Gather in Ecuador’s Jungle to Study Small Engines December 2009

4

HCJB Global, Samaritan’s Purse Join Efforts in Haiti After Massive Quake January 2010
2 comments

5

First Known Set of Triplets Born at Jungle Hospital in Ecuador October 2009
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A flu outbreak in Ecuador’s highlands and coastal region is taxing capacities at hospitals, including the HCJB Global Hands health facility in the nation’s capital, Quito. The Health Ministry’s National Director of Epidemiology, Juan Moreira, reported that of 900 tests of respiratory patients, 61 showed positive for H1N1 strain of influenza A. H1N1 is the influenza strain that reached global pandemic proportion in 2009.

“The first cases (in December) showed in a ‘rapid test’ as positive for Influenza A,” said Dr. Richard Douce, an infectious diseases specialist. Douce serves as the medical director at Hospital Vozandes Quito (HVQ).

Negative pressure isolation exam rooms. Surgical masks are also part of the Hospital Vozandes emergency room procedures.

He said that tests at Ecuador’s national laboratory, Izquieta Pérez, also revealed influenza A, but not H1N1. Then on Tuesday, January 11, HVQ received confirmation that HVQ had in fact treated one case of pandemic H1N1. Douce believes the predominant strain of influenza shifted to H1N1 in the third week of December.

“The hospital has been full, with no available beds for the last three weeks and lots of action in the intensive care unit,” Douce summarized, “I understand that for some weeks, beds have not been available in any intensive care units in Quito and we have had to turn patients away from our emergency room due to no available beds.”

Conversations in English are exchanged as a team of surgeons performs the language of love on a little Ecuadorian boy’s legs to transform his walking and running.

It’s a multinational team whose members on this particular day are from Chile, Ecuador, Germany and the U.S. These pediatric orthopedists around a Hospital Vozandes-Quito surgical table are equalizing the length of 8-year-old Erick Tandazo’s legs. Erick, along with 29 other Ecuadorian children, will get a decent shot at mobility due to operations performed beginning on Monday, Jan. 10, by surgeons volunteering their time. They plan to do the last surgery on Jan. 26.

Minnesota physicians Dr. Steven Sundberg and medical resident Dr. John Wechter worked with Chilean physician Dr. Leonardo Pavesi. They were assisted by Minnesotan surgeon Dr. Jim Gage and Dr. Eckehart Wolff, a German medical missionary to Ecuador for more than 20 years.

“All who come, including most of the South American physicians, are coming at their own expense to do this,” said Gage, who assembled a surgical team again this year. He has served as medical director at Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare, an independent, nonprofit hospital in St. Paul, Minn. The facility focuses on pediatric medical treatment and research.

Dr. Eckehart Wolff (left) and Dr. Jim Gage (right)

Gage’s counterpart in Ecuador is Wolff, whose surgical work at Hospital Vozandes-Shell brings him into contact with kids who walk with great difficulty or not at all. It all began in the mid-1990s at an invitation by HCJB Global’s Dr. Wally Swanson for Gage to do surgical work at Hospital Vozandes-Shell.

“The first year I came down I did bilateral hip surgery on a little child who had dislocated hips. Dr. Wolff ended up doing his aftercare, so he contacted me,” Gage remembered. The following year the physicians linked up for more pediatric orthopedic operations with Wolff compiling the initial work-up, then assisting Gage in surgeries and helping with the aftercare.

Clayton Howard

The longtime host of a popular shortwave radio listeners’ program, Clayton Howard, died on Thursday, Jan. 27, in Tahlequah, Okla. He was 92. He had served from 1941 to 1984 as an engineer with Radio Station HCJB, an international shortwave station in Quito, Ecuador.

For more than two decades he and his wife, Helen, hosted the “DX Partyline” program. (“DX” is a radio term for distance; DXers are listeners to distant radio stations.)

Clayton was born on Nov. 27, 1918, to missionary parents in Canton, China. His father, Charles Howard, an entomologist and college professor, and his mother, Anne, a biologist and teacher, served at a Christian university and conducted research for the Chinese government to develop a finer grade of silk. When Clayton was 9 years old the family returned to the U.S. where his father developed the biology department at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill.

At Wheaton Academy, Clayton loved learning about radio and electronics. In 1939 he graduated from Wheaton College with a physics degree followed by a year of graduate studies in physics at the University of Chicago.

“I heard HCJB on Easter Sunday of 1940 while [the station was] inaugurating a new 10-kilowatt transmitter,” Clayton once said in an interview. “I had known there was a missionary shortwave station in South America previously, but knew very little about it until 1940.”

Clayton contacted HCJB Global co-founder Reuben Larson who then recruited him to join the technical team at La Voz de Los Andes (the Voice of the Andes) in Quito. College Church in Wheaton later commissioned him as a missionary, and he arrived in Ecuador to begin serving at Radio Station HCJB in 1941.

Clayton’s marriage to Helen Marie Prestidge on Sept. 12, 1942, was broadcast live from Quito via shortwave “so the folks back home could hear it,” according to his son, Chuck Howard. The couple had met in Wheaton, and Helen went to Ecuador after she graduated. It was her father, a Baptist minister, and Rev. Evan Welsh, pastor of College Church, who together prepared the phonograph record with the marriage ceremony, leaving gaps for “I do” from the couple.

Many station employees remembered Clayton as a technician whose special knack was keeping the tape recorders, record turntables and mixing consoles going, according to Chuck, an HCJB Global missionary teacher in Quito. Clayton served primarily in audio work, but he was also involved in everything technical such as transmitters, antennas, studios, power and remote programs. He was also actively involved in the search for a new international transmitting site for the station, eventually selecting Pifo.

A career highlight for Clayton was helping a fellow engineer at the station, Clarence Moore, design and build the world’s first cubicle quad antenna. Also, in an era in which Ecuador’s communication resources were marginal, Clayton actively handled remote broadcasts for the Ecuadorian government. He contributed to the growth of HCJB from a small radio facility to a major international broadcaster, reaching out with the gospel message in many major languages.

Blessed with an excellent bass voice, Clayton loved his involvement with regular live music programs in English and Spanish. He took part in concerts each year to honor the station’s host city, Quito. In the mid-1960s, Clayton took over as host of “DX Partyline,” a semiweekly program for shortwave enthusiasts. He produced this program for 22 years.

Clayton and Helen Howard

Clayton and Helen also began Andes DX International (ANDEX), a club for shortwave radio listeners, and the ANDEX magazine. The Howards corresponded with people around the world. In addition to shortwave listening tips, they shared “Tips for Real Living,” focusing on a meaningful relationship with the Creator. It was their joy to lead many to the Lord Jesus through the programs and follow-up correspondence.

After their final DX Partyline program aired in June 1984, Clayton received what Chuck referred to as an unusual tribute from an unlikely source, Radio Moscow,which stated, “The living legend of the Andes has retired!”

Dr. Walt Larimore, an award-winning family physician, medical journalist, best-selling author, educator and HCJB Global board member, spoke at the Jornadas Médicas (medical conference) in Quito, Ecuador, Jan. 24-28. HCJB Global’s Ralph Kurtenbach interviewed him while he was in Quito. Here are some segments from that interview:

Q: You arrived here in Quito several days ago, Dr. Larimore. Could you summarize your time with us at HCJB Global in the Latin America Region?
Well, for me it’s been a time of learning about the history, the culture and the work of HCJB Global and to see in action how it’s being the Voice and Hands of Jesus—not just in Quito and not even just in Ecuador, but … beginning to reach across the world.

Q: You gave a seminar called “The Saline Solution,” in which you gave a basic explanation about saline representing the “saltiness” of the gospel … and that you don’t give it just as a general dispensation to every patient without first knowing the status of that patient. My question is, in the West, how widespread do you see the prescribing of medications for a patient’s problem that might actually have roots that are much more spiritual?
I think it’s very common, and not just in the West. I’ve lectured in China, India, Pakistan, Europe and even in portions of Africa, and there’s a tendency for practitioners—for healthcare professionals—to prescribe medicine very quickly for a whole variety of ailments that are spiritual in origin. I am part of a movement to teach healthcare professionals that it’s very appropriate to treat medically when indicated. But it’s equally appropriate to recognize patients’ spiritual needs, and then begin the process of starting to treat them or refer them to someone who can. That’s one of the things that I love about HCJB Global as it expands its healthcare ministry. It’s doing so not just by providing medicine, but by providing the gospel along with it to heal people both spiritually and physically—to give them a hope that medicine itself cannot give. I mean, we can give hope for disease treatment and sometimes cure, but we can give no hope for eternal life apart from the gospel.

Q: Do you find receptivity to the “Saline Solution” seminars better in some parts of the world than others? And how do you find it here in Latin America?
Great question. We’re in 67 countries now with the “Saline Solution,” and whether it’s China, the Philippines, Sub-Saharan Africa or South America (it’s the first time in Ecuador), receptivity seems to be the same. Physicians who’ve been practicing even a very short time realize they’ve never been trained to meet the spiritual needs [of patients who] come in their offices every day. And as you’ve seen in the crowd of physicians here, there’s a great deal of interest [in this topic] and receptivity. That’s common across the globe.

Much more than “Aaahh” can often be heard from a patient. In fact, many groans or sighs reveal spiritual needs and patients would give the gospel a hearing if only asked, according to Dr. Walt Larimore.

Healthcare professionals should treat medically when indicated, but it’s “equally appropriate to recognize patients’ spiritual needs and then begin the process of starting to treat them or refer to someone who can,” said Larimore. He is a U.S. family physician, author and board member who spoke at the 24th annual Jornadas Médicas (medical conference) in Quito, Ecuador, Jan. 24-28.

One of more than 60 physicians who gave presentations during the event, Larimore told attendees that in the last century, a physical/spiritual dichotomy has fostered physical treatment only. His book, The Saline Solution, outlines principles of uniting the exam room with evangelism.

With a theme of family practice medicine, the continuing education event was titled, “Updating Competencies in Family and Community Medicine.” More than 500 attended the conference in Quito with nearly 700 others participating in virtual classrooms across Ecuador via satellite.

Ecuador-based partner ministry Vozandes Media recently added two languages to its program schedule, airing from its shortwave transmitter on Mount Pichincha above Quito. Begun in mid-2009, Vozandes Media now airs 12 languages, the majority of those from South America.

Stefan Thiemert

Programs in the Cha´palaa (also known as Chachi and Cha´palaachi) and Shuar languages, both indigenous to Ecuador, began airing in mid-January, according to Stefan Thiemert, a German computer scientist volunteering his time in Ecuador.

Hymns with Shuar lyrics, for example, had already been recorded on tape, then later digitalized. “This music is used for broadcast a half-hour every day,” Thiemert said. The intended audience, members of the Shuar Indians of Ecuador’s Amazon region, was first evangelized by Protestant missionaries in the 1940s. Newly printed Shuar Bibles were presented last summer in jungle communities of Ecuador’s Amazon region.

Likewise, a half-hour each day is dedicated to a broadcast in Cha´palaa for the Chachi (Cayapa) people group living in Ecuador’s northwestern province of Esmeraldas. The Chachi, numbering about 15,000, live mainly by agriculture, fishing and hunting.

Américo Saavedra (across stage) and David Johnson (speaking) co-led a leadership workshop in Quito.

What does leading others mean? It means equipping others according to a three-day seminar at HCJB Global’s Latin America Region in Quito, Ecuador, earlier this month. David Johnson and Américo Saavedra (see editor’s note at end) led 30 people in Ser Líder: Capacitar a Otros para Ser Productivos (Being a Leader Means Equipping Others). Afterwards, Ralph Kurtenbach talked about leadership and specifically, this seminar.

Q: I have in my hand three modules that we’ve used this week. I understand that this is part of a master’s degree program that Development Associates International (DAI) uses to equip pastors throughout what some call the “global south” or the “majority world.”

Johnson: It actually started out as a non-formal program. Dr. James Engel [Wheaton College and then Eastern University] was the key person who really initiated this whole program after going to the Global Conference on World Evangelism in South Korea in 1995. A group of African pastors [at the conference] wanted to become part of the global Great Commission movement. They said it was time that Africa quit being a receiving area and actually started sending out people.

The pastors felt like one of the biggest needs that they had was leadership. Most leaders were focused in on their own churches, never mind their cities, their home countries or the world. And so they began to work together to write a curriculum to train pastors who hadn’t had an opportunity to go to university and to get much training in the practical areas of leadership.

Out of that was born the curriculum that originally was non-formal. Then the requests started coming in as DAI began to expand, and they needed something that would be recognized and given a little bit more credibility within the secular market and government, etc.

So a dual training program began about 12 years ago, and it has evolved to the point where there are close to 600 students in the master’s degree program that is done in agreement with universities throughout the world. But on the non-formal side—like what we did at HCJB this week—DAI will train somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 leaders in the next year.

Q. As the program has moved from informal to formal training, can leadership be taught? How much of it is caught? Where do you stand on that classic question about leadership training?

Johnson: Yes, it’s both. We both agree there are some people who are really naturally born leaders. The reality is, if you took a poll, I would say 90 percent of the people who are in leadership positions today are not there because they caught it but because they’ve been taught it. They’re not there because they want to be but because they have to be. So one of the crying needs out there is from people who find themselves in leadership positions but don’t feel adequate. They simply want to be obedient and do what is being asked of them. The reality is there’s a whole lot of leadership that you can learn. Probably the bigger challenge in leadership beyond skills … is character. You know w hen you look at the biblical criteria for leadership it seems to focus more on character than ability.

The lifeless muscles held just one result for Rosita, a 9-year-old snakebite victim from Ecuador’s Amazon region—she would lose her leg.

“She had come too late,” wrote HCJB Global Hands physician Eckehart Wolff. “The muscles of the leg had already died, and we had to amputate it to save her life.” A missionary surgeon, Wolff performed the operation at Hospital Vozandes-Shell about 18 months ago.

Rosita’s medical crisis changed her family’s lifestyle. They left their home and fields in the rainforest and began living in the custodian’s quarters at a school near Shell. The family has started a new life with Rosita using crutches to limp around on one leg in the schoolyard.

Somehow, Rosita was overlooked by a comprehensive campaign by Ecuador’s government to help the nation’s disabled. (Her home province, Pastaza, was not among the first eight provinces helped.)

Ecuadorian Vice President Lenín Moreno (who is wheelchair bound) announced in February that a governmental effort called Manuela Espejo Solidarity Mission would continue identifying the disabled with a view of helping 290,000 people with disabilities.

In addition, the government has announced monthly disability payments for 14,479 Ecuadorians who qualify with plans to construct up to 3,000 homes for the neediest of these. When attempts to get a prosthesis for Rosita failed, however, she and her family returned to talk with Wolff who referred them to help in Quito.

“We found them a hostel where they could stay and put her brother in touch with a foundation that agreed to make a prosthesis for Rosita,” said Wolff. “After three weeks everything was adjusted. The physical therapist showed Rosita how to walk.” Soon enough, the crutches were stored at home, only for emergency use.

“Two weeks later, she is running about with other children in the schoolyard,” said Wolff.

Sources: HCJB Global, El Comercio, El Ciudadano

by Harold Goerzen and Erica Simone

A growing number of volunteer teams are contributing their time at the HCJB Global Technology Center in Elkhart, Ind., preparing thousands of fixed-tuned, solar-powered radios and helping speed their delivery to needy people around the world, especially in Africa. Since February at least one volunteer team per week has been participating at the center.

The SonSet® radios, designed by HCJB Global engineers, are checked by volunteers for reliable operation. Engineers also program the receivers’ digital tuners to pick up community stations where the radios will be deployed.

The sets are then placed in protective packaging along with a small wordless instruction booklet that is placed with each unit. A full day of processing radios results in 500 of the radios being ready to ship to ministries overseas.

When the receivers arrive at their final destinations, the local ministry partners distribute them throughout their communities. This is especially effective for new stations that are trying to build their audiences. By simply turning the radios on, listeners are able to hear the gospel in their own languages—many for the first time.

Two days before World Water Day (Tuesday, March 22) festivities and food accompanied an inauguration celebrating access to clean water at Carabuela in Ecuador’s Andean corridor.

Communities around joined in, as they too are among 500 families serviced by the water system. Around midday on Sunday, March 20, local residents gathered outdoors under an overcast sky for the ceremony, attended by members of HCJB Global Hands’ Clean Water Projects team from the Vozandes Community Development department. Rain drizzled down but the crowd was unfazed, holding large sheets of black plastic to serve as a group umbrella over them.

In the municipal building nearby, others tended huge cooking pots of boiled potatoes, soup and meat to serve afterwards to the 300 attendees at the event just off the Pan-American Highway two hours north of the capital, Quito.

As with most of the mission’s water endeavors, the Carabuela project serves rural communities where fewer than half of Ecuadorian families have water piped to their homes. In addition, towns and villages are often served by intermittent water systems providing low-quality water, according to Bruce Rydbeck.

Cherith Rydbeck, Segundo Cachihuango, Allie McDonnell(hidden) and Bruce Rydbeck

Rydbeck is an HCJB Global engineer who helped design and oversee the community effort to rehabilitate the Carabuela system. He said Ecuadorian government studies indicate that only 13 percent of all rural water systems are considered to be in good condition.

“Each project is a journey of faith in which all of us learn to trust the Lord for guidance,” said Rydbeck, who heads the clean water effort for HCJB Global Hands. Any given day will have members of his team communicating with some 10 communities about plans and designs. On in-the-field days, they participate as community members show up with picks and shovels in a tour-de-force that cuts through miles of mountainside for tubing to be laid.

Kazuo Ozaki

Televised images of Japan’s tsunami devastation and radiation threat after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Friday, March 11, transported Kazuo Ozaki back as he watched in horror from his home in Tucson, Ariz.

“I am experiencing this feeling of desperation like I did when I was a 13-year-old boy and B-29 planes dropped bombs on my home city” said Ozaki, an HCJB Global radio producer who continues to do programming at age 78.

The March 11 triple catastrophe half a world away prompted Ozaki to ask if his son, Yuji, 45, and daughter-in-law were OK in Tokyo. Just hours later they made contact to say they were alright. Yuji, who was on the 26th floor of a skyscraper when the quake hit, made a hasty exit as the building swayed. His wife then battled massive traffic jams to pick him up and take him back home.

Interviewed on Wednesday on Moody Radio’s “Chris Fabry Live!”, Ozaki reminisced of both sorrows and hope decades ago that shaped his character and led him to personal faith in Christ. His childhood on Japan’s Honshu Island was forever changed in 1945 with American planes overhead. (The full interview can be heard at chrisfabrylive.org.)

“When the bombs were dropped, they destroyed two-thirds of my city,” Ozaki told Fabry. He and his little brother, Yoshiaki, fled to a shelter, only to discover the next day their house was destroyed.

“That’s how I started my new life,” Ozaki said, telling of his enlistment in Japan’s defense forces. He worked as a translator in the information section, putting U.S. military newspaper articles into the Japanese language. A U.S. missionary in Sapporo who hosted the Japanese in his home asked Ozaki to interpret for him, and the more Ozaki interpreted the gospel messages, the more he wanted its truth. As he put it, “I became a Christian by preaching to myself!”

“I gave my life to the One who knows everything and created everything, including me,” added Ozaki, whose programs throughout the years have celebrated the Ecuadorian and Japanese cultures alike. “I began a new life trusting Him and following Him.”

The joy of meeting face to face
A sermon series on God’s grace,
Or greetings from a distant place,

Everyone brought something as they returned to HCJB Global’s Latin America Region. Jim Allen preached a sermon series to staff on God’s grace. Norm Emery helped throw a birthday party for a little Ecuadorian girl, her very first!

Frank Schmidt and his son, Jonathan, helped keep us connected yet again by updating servers for the phone system. Ron Cline preached on stepping out from our comforts into missions, with examples of those who did. Here are several photos of visitors who returned to Ecuador.

Tim Broach greets friends at staff meeting.

Norm Emery and Santiago Arteaga (front right) worked on a project. And celebrated a birthday.

Enjoying father/son time during a trip to Shell. Jonathan and Frank Schmidt.

Roommates as students of the Christian Center for Communications. Cristian Constante and Duval Rueda.

Joy Solheim visits with former co-workers, Ralph & Allen, of English Language Service.

Jim & Trish Allen. Jim preached a sermon series on grace.

In an instant age, nobody wants to be placed on hold for 45 minutes. Nobody that is, except the person whose message to a loved one in a penitentiary is communicated via the airwaves of a Christian FM radio station in Spain. With dozens of family members eager to leave messages for inmates, the wait for callers can become lengthy.

The local pastor who hosted the program, along with other panel members, is well known to those on both sides of the equation as he visits the inmates on a regular basis.

John Adams

John Adams, a veteran missionary with decades of broadcasting experience, was impressed not only by the prison outreach programming but by the significant contribution of the radio station´s volunteers. His month in Spain earlier this year gave Adams a glimpse of the station’s mission before returning to his work at HCJB Global’s Ministry Service Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.

A message of grace and hope continues airing on HCJB Global partner station Fréquence Vie (Life Frequency) in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) even after its repeater transmitter north of Abidjan was destroyed by fighters from warring factions in a civil conflict, and stray shrapnel from rocket fire also pierced the studio building.

Violence in the West African country has pitted supporters of the incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, against the internationally recognized president, Alassane Ouattara, following November 2010 elections.

Pushing toward the coastal city of Abidjan, Ouattara’s supporters early this week joined those already engaging in street battles with Gbagbo backers in Abidjan, which is home to 5 million people. Fighting elsewhere in Côte d’Ivoire resulted in deaths reported to be in the hundreds. Gbagbo maintains that he won a Nov. 10 runoff vote, but election officials have concluded that Ouattara was victorious.

Former missionaries to Ecuador and Côte d’Ivoire Françoise and Daniel Dossmann

By the evening of Tuesday April 5, HCJB Global Sub Saharan Africa Director Lee Sonius wrote from neighboring Ghana, “I am hearing that fighting has died down in the last few hours and that people are venturing out of their houses to look for food and water.” For some, including families connected with Fréquence Vie, it was the first time out in several days.

The Fréquence Vie studios are 1,500 to 3,000 feet from the Ivorian national radio and television network, Radio-Télévision Ivoirienne, and so collateral damage came with the fighting. Earlier in March at a government-owned transmitter site, Fréquence Vie’s primary transmitter was also destroyed.

Tim Welch

On March 31 the radio station was struck by some shrapnel from a rocket, putting a gaping hole in the roof, breaking many windows and also a door,” wrote SIM’s Tim Welch from Abidjan once electricity was restored. He directs the missionary and national staff of the U.S.-based mission. Launched with HCJB Global’s help nearly 12 years ago, Fréquence Vie is operated by SIM in partnership with local churches to share the gospel in various West African languages.

“The [station] director’s apartment about 50 meters (160 feet) away also had some minor damage from shrapnel,” Welch continued. “So now the director and two other families are living in the recording studios.”

Photo by María Isabel Valarezo of El Comercio

Heavy rain mixed with hail flooded streets, homes and ministry buildings in the immediate neighborhood around Radio Station HCJB in Quito, Ecuador, on Saturday, April 16.

No deaths or injuries were reported in a leading Quito daily, El Comercio, which published photographs of police transporting in inflatable rafts passengers from one of two trolley cars. The public transport vehicles, as well as cars, stalled in in three to four feet of water in a viaduct just blocks from the radio station.

Traffic was halted on major thoroughfares through Quito, including Avenida 10 de Agosto, which connects to the Pan-American Highway, as flooding caused major congestion throughout the city’s northern sector.

After decades of hand delivering radio shows recorded on cassette to Radio Station HCJB in Quito, Ecuador, Quichua Indians who have faithfully produced the program are venturing into the digital realm with their program, El Amor que Transforma (Love that Transforms).

The program participants are evangelicals who continue to produce half-hour programs on behalf of their church at Lago San Pablo just off the Pan-American Highway near Otavalo. Many from this large congregation make artisan wares available at the indigenous market at Otavalo, a favorite stop for tourists in Ecuador.

“I think the new program embraces everything—the new life that Christ brings as well as a cultural transformation that improves things in every sense,” said Luis Santillan who oversees Quichua programming on HCJB-AM in Quito. Interviews, cultural segments and a community calendar complement a message that Jesus can change people’s lives.

María Potosí, Mercedes Castañeda and David Caluqui

In traditional Otavalo Indian dress of white embroidered blouses and long dark skirts, María Potosí and Mercedes Castañeda represented others (including Castañeda’s sister, Juana) in a recent visit to HCJB. They and David Caluqui talked to the engineering staff about recording equipment they plan to install at Divine Master of Galilee Church. The congregation is raising funds to complete this digital transition.

Caluqui, who speaks Cayambe Quichua, interpreted for Potosí and Castañeda, both native speakers of Otavalo Quichua. The two ladies described their program content during the last decades as “looking at women’s situations.”

They have encouraged harmonious relationships between spouses, and the programs have given Quichua women a voice, according to Caluqui. They also cover topics such as sound economic practices, health concerns and childcare.

File transfer protocol (FTP) does away with a required trip into Quito each week for program delivery. “They log on to the Internet, load it up on the FTP site and we download it,” said Santillan with a chuckle.

Curt Cole (at back, center right) with students at ABC University at Yekepa, Liberia

by Beth Patton

Liberia’s first online filing for a radio license demonstrated to students at ABC University in Yekepa just how rapid, responsive and efficient communications can be in the digital age.

The Liberian government granted the license request just three weeks after the university had filed it, assisted by Joseph Kebbie from HCJB Global’s Sub-Saharan Africa Region Office in Acrra, Ghana. The licensing process can take months, or even years, in some African countries.

File photo (1999) shows Curt interviewing Dr. Minard Hall of Ecuador's Geophysical Institute

“One advantage is that ABC has a great reputation with the Liberian government,” said Curt Cole, one of HCJB Global’s vice presidents of international ministries. The mission’s normal procedure leaves license requests up to local partners hoping to establish Christian stations. But he and Kebbie were at Yekepa, six hours northeast of Monrovia, teaching a course, “New and Emerging Media.” They focused their talks on the practical aspects of using social networking and cell phones for ministry and kingdom impact.

“University-level courses are strenuous for some of these students,” Cole said. “But these younger guys are passionate about using new media, even with Liberia’s very limited resources and information technology infrastructure.”

Acknowledging the devastation of Liberia’s 14-year civil war, Cole said that the West African nation now “seems to be coming out of that shadow.” In November 2005 Liberians elected Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as president. Upon taking office she became the first female elected head of state in Africa.

Joseph Kebbie teaching communications students

Kebbie was among the refugees who fled Liberia as a refugee during the country’s civil war. Cole, and his wife, Karen, both grew up in neighboring Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) where their parents served as missionaries.

Vapor and/or ash from Mount Tungurahua, which is behind the mountain pictured. Photo by Steve Wilson, HCJB Global, Shell, Ecuador

Steve Wilson comments: Pictures of Tungurahua this morning a little after 6 a.m. from our front yard. The dead volcano Altar (los Altares) on the left. According to Google Earth, Tungurahua is about 27 miles from Shell.

Mount Tungurahua in Ecuador’s Andean corridor rocketed an ash or vapor plume into the Ecuadorian sky early on Thursday, April 28, having already emitted a series of large explosions and ash emissions for several days. The Thursday blast (pictured) was estimated at five miles high.

Ecuadorian authorities have ordered evacuations of communities in the area surrounding the volcano. Flights have been suspended between the highlands cities of Quito and Cuenca. Ashfalls have damaged area crops.

Tungurahua is about 90 miles south of Ecuador’s capital city of Quito. The Instituto Geofísico (Geophysical Institute) in Ecuador reported that at 9:20 a.m. Tuesday, April 26, Tungurahua emitted six moderate to large explosions. The volcano sent up a column of ash 4.3 miles above the mouth of the crater. On Tuesday evening westerly winds carried the ash to nearby communities.

In addition, ash reached the towns of Baños and Riobamba as well as several smaller communities, including Bilbao, Cusu, Cotal, Chacauco, Runtún Juive, Pelileo and others.

The institute’s Tungurahua Volcano Observatory received reports of ground vibrations in those communities with windows and doors rattling in the tourism town of Baños.

Tungurahua reactivated in 1999 after 79 years of dormancy, and has been closely monitored since then by the Geophysical Institute. The most recent spate of emissions began on Wednesday, April 20.

Archive: Short video by Martin Harrison of a visit by HCJB Global to areas of Ecuador affected by the eruption of Tungurahua Volcano in August 2006.

The “dah-di-dit” code tapping that opens the DX Partyline (DXPL) radio program for shortwave hobbyists will fall silent this month, moving the popular program to history’s pages.

Allen Graham

The program will end with broadcasts the weekend of May 28-29, exactly 50 years after it first aired on Radio Station HCJB in Quito, Ecuador, on May 28, 1961. Program host Allen Graham’s surprise announcement came near the end of his April 30-May 1 show. He cited as one reason HCJB Global’s change of emphasis regarding direct shortwave broadcasts from Pifo, Ecuador, where in 2009 HCJB terminated shortwave broadcasting after nearly 58 years. Three years earlier the station had ceased English-language broadcasts.

Also contributing to the decision was the “global change in our ministry priorities as a mission and my increased involvement and work responsibilities in areas very different to those from when I arrived in Quito as a producer in English Language Service in August 1993,” Graham said.

Ken MacHarg

A former host now retired in Carrollton, Ga., Ken MacHarg referred to DXPL as offering a “beginner’s guide to DXing while at the same time maintaining a loyal audience among hobbyists with years of experience.”

Just after DXPL’s Morse code opening, the booming voice of the late Bob Beukema begins teaching basic principles with, “DX . . . a telegraph term meaning ‘distance.’” Former host Rich McVicar of Navarino, N.Y., considers “getting Bob Beukema to intro the program probably the smartest production thing I’ve ever done! What a voice, eh!”

As humble-start-to-wildly successful goes, DXPL’s beginnings started more humbly than most. The program was conceived to fill a calendar anomaly. At the time, the Party Line show kept missionaries in Ecuador in touch with kin back home in a way that former DXPL host Clayton Howard once characterized as “much like the old-fashioned party-line telephones which used to be popular in rural areas.”

Party Line, aired on Mondays, and when a fifth Monday periodically occurred, it gave Hardy Hayes an opportunity to fill that slot. “His solution was to start a program for DXers,” continued Howard. “There were not many such programs on the air in 1961.”

Recorded in Singapore, Houston and Phoenix, a dozen worship songs are aimed at an audience of young Christians in the isolated Asian country of Myanmar (Burma).

This ambitious, trans-continent music project was sparked when HCJB Global’s Ty Stakes, director of the Asia Pacific Region, met a Burmese youth pastor in Singapore and invited him for a visit. “Do you want to do an album?” Stakes asked the man after hearing his songs.

Such projects had materialized between Stakes and musician Michio Ozaki when they worked together at Radio Station HCJB in Quito, Ecuador. Creative ideas were shared just by walking across the hall. However, that was before Stakes moved to Asia and Ozaki left for North America. This newest project became a reality through the cyberspace transport of large audio files.

Stakes provided Ozaki in Houston with the demo audio tracks, which facilitated Ozaki’s writing arrangements for the 12 songs. Then the process of laying down additional tracks began. Ozaki sent back guitar and keyboard tracks as audio files while Stakes supplied bass guitar and drum tracks.

Stakes with vocalists for Burmese and Chin recordings

In Singapore, Stakes recorded vocals by the pastor, his wife and the pastor’s friend, none of whom Ozaki had met other than via Skype calls on the Internet. By the same token, Stakes never set foot into the Phoenix, Ariz., studio where their mutual friend, Bladimir González, did the final mix.

Song titles (translated to English) include You Alone Are Savior, Jesus Speak to Me, Praise Him Forever and Holy Is the Lord. “Are there any Burmese music instruments you’d like to incorporate?” was Ozaki’s question to the pastor. “How do you want your album to sound? What style?” The Burmese pastor’s e-mail response simply stated, “I like Hillsong music.” (Hillsong is a popular Australian worship band.)

by Miriam Gebb and Harold Goerzen
Photos by Winn Madsen

For years the Guaymí people, living on a string of remote islands off Panama’s Caribbean coast, have put up with an unreliable, sometimes dangerous water supply. Most of the year they collect rainwater from their roofs, but during the three-month dry season they resort to drinking filthy, brackish water that they find by digging into the dark, spongy soil.

“One of the major hurdles [for residents] is finding fresh water to drink, bathe and wash clothes,” said Miriam Gebb, an HCJB Global Hands community development nurse based in Ecuador. She joined a church work team from Washington state that visited Panama for 12 days in late March and early April. “We soon found out firsthand what it was like to have to ration fresh water and only take 35-second showers!”

But all that could change because the team—coordinated by Dr. Ron Guderian, a former HCJB Global clinical pathologist, and organized by his son-in-law, Aleph Fackenthall—showed how drilling clean water wells could be the solution to their water problems.

“We never thought about drilling wells there before because the islands are so shallow,” said Guderian who has led annual work teams to Panama for the last eight years. “Then we read about this organization from North Carolina that would drill for water on coral islands. We called them up, and they agreed to help us.”

Using simple well-drilling equipment from the U.S., team members located areas that were at least 40 feet above sea level. Using only manual labor, they drilled down about 20 feet through the dirt and sand before hitting solid rock—and fresh, potable water.

Photos by M. Harrison
Story by R.V. Kurtenbach

What were Enrique Romero’s qualifications for technical work at Radio Station HCJB in the early 1940s? He could drive a car … and he could bray like a donkey.

As a guest in April at the station’s campus in Quito, Ecuador, Romero was introduced by Anabella Cabezas who began working at the station two decades ago as a bilingual secretary. Presently the executive director of media in Latin America, Cabezas serves on the mission’s regional leadership council.

Wayne Pederson, left, with Enrique Romero

Romero was then asked by HCJB Global President Wayne Pederson if any interesting stories came to mind about the mission’s co-founder and longtime leader, Clarence W. Jones.

“Oh yes!” Romero replied mischievously, to the delight of his audience. “And about everybody else! But he (Dr. Jones) is not here to defend himself.”

An international team of medical professionals is set to leave Ecuador on Saturday, June 4, to spend two weeks responding to an urgent need to care for cholera patients in Haiti.

In Ecuador, physicians Dr. Mark Nelson and Dr. Mattias Egberth, along with nurses Kim Kirk and Sandra Paredes, moved quickly. They will travel to a rehydration center at Cité Soleil where cholera patients are already receiving intensive oral and intravenous rehydration at a facility operated by Samaritan’s Purse (SP).

HCJB Global’s Hermann Schirmacher received an urgent appeal earlier this week to help out at SP’s tent medical facility that is full of cholera patients. “They (SP’s staff) know us—that we’re very flexible,” Schirmacher said. “We’re agile, we can quickly put together a team, and we’re close by. We don’t have to travel across half the continent to get to the Caribbean.”

Dr. Mark Nelson urged prayer “that our team would work well together and for strength and wisdom in dealing with patients with complex cases.”

Mark Nelson (left) is returning to Haiti again. File photo shows him and Steve Nelson in January 2010 in Haiti.

SP established the Cité Soleil rehydration center near Haiti’s capital to confront a cholera outbreak that began in late 2010. At that time HCJB Global Hands responded with two medical teams, one of which Schirmacher led in mid-December.

By Tuesday, May 31, the SP triage tent was completely full, according to the North Carolina-based mission’s website. “Our volunteer work crew came out to help hang intravenous boards and build another triage tent to handle the load,” the site reported. In just one day last week, nearly 100 patients were treated in the tent.

Sandra Paredes, a nurse who works with HCJB Global Hands in Shell, Ecuador

A medical team from HCJB Global Hands in Ecuador has kept busy treating cholera patients since arriving in Haiti Saturday, June 4, to assist a partner at a tent hospital in Cité Soleil.

Upon arrival last weekend, the four-member team braced for the 12-hour shifts necessary to care for cholera victims at a Samaritan’s Purse (SP) cholera treatment center. Team members include nurses Kim Kirk and Sandra Paredes and physicians Mattias Egberth and Mark Nelson. They will be in Haiti for another week.

by Alysia Kinney and R. Kurtenbach

Heaps and heaps of concrete rubble still dot the urban landscape of Haiti’s capital along with tent cities of those displaced by a January 2010 earthquake, but hope for Haitian orphans springs forth from a construction project in Cap-Haitien.

Dale Sark, who works for a Millersburg, Indiana concrete manufacturer, in May accompanied a work team from the HCJB Global Technology Center in Elkhart, Ind., to Haiti. They launched construction of the Haiti Children’s Village, a group of family-style homes for orphans that will be operated by Kids Alive International.

Karen Zeck with Haitian children under the care of Kids Alive

Sark and HCJB Global missionary David Rhodes, serving as construction supervisor of the project, accompanied six other team members, including Karen Zeck from the Technology Center, to work long hours with Haitians to lay a 30-by-56-foot concrete slab as the foundation for a family-style home for Haitian orphans. They mixed and poured the concrete by hand.

Kids Alive International is a Christian ministry dedicated to rescuing orphaned and endangered children around the world, and one of its sites under construction is on the northern coast of Haiti in the city of Cap-Haitien.

A thousand emergency staff were at work to control the Monument Fire that began June 12 the Coronado National Monument at the southern tip of the Huachuca Mountains in Arizona

Photos by Dwight Lind and Arron Daniels
Story by Harold Goerzen

With Arizona’s second major brush fire in three weeks blazing out of control near the southern city of Sierra Vista, Radio Station KWRB, “The Spark,” is bringing physical and spiritual relief to thousands of imperiled residents and firefighters. The station is part of the World Radio Network (WRN) one of HCJB Global’s cooperating ministries.

“It’s pretty crazy around here,” said Arron Daniels, who heads the community outreach of the network’s Western Regional Office, which is in the same building as the station. “About 600 people have been evacuated, and 60 to 70 homes have been destroyed. More than 18,000 acres have burned, and we have 1,000 emergency personnel—800 of these from out of state—who are part of the level 1 team that is fighting the fire.”

Called the Monument Fire because it started in the Coronado National Monument at the southern tip of the Huachuca Mountains near the Mexican border on Sunday, June 12, the blaze has been gaining momentum ever since. “Our winds are just off the charts—30 to 40 mph—and the air is extremely dry with relative humidity around 4 percent. It’s not very conducive to fire dousing!” Daniels said. “Thankfully, no one has been hurt or killed.”

Youtube upload shows CCC/NWC student’s video project

HCJB Global’s communications school in Quito, Ecuador, has ceased enrolling new students, but young Latin Americans already studying at the Christian Center of Communications/Northwestern College (CCC/NWC) will be able to finish the three-year program.

“In light of financial pressures on the CCC,” HCJB Global President Wayne Pederson, told missionaries in Quito in April, “we are moving to a new, nontraditional model of training and education with a focus on distance education, online programs and lifelong learning.” The school’s director, Elsi Peñaranda, later shared the news with the 27 current students.

Pederson added that HCJB Global will continue equipping Christians, not only in Latin America but worldwide. “We will train men and women who are called to ministry—those who know the language, the culture and are already there,” he said.

Meanwhile, HCJB Global will work in conjunction with NWC to adapt its “successful and accredited FOCUS degree program, allowing adult learners to continue their careers while earning their degree,” Pederson said. FOCUS involves attending one four-hour evening class per week along with extensive reading, writing, studying online and documenting real-life experiences.

Known as the Tupari, a tribal group in Brazil’s Amazon region told an indigenous evangelist, Mario, his limits in no uncertain terms.

“We don’t want you to stop at our community and talk to us about the gospel,” was the Tupari chief’s demand in his village of Colorado on the Río Blanco (White River).

During an April trip to Brazil, Martin Harrison and Earl Hartwig, both HCJB Global engineers, met with Mario as they explored possibilities of helping indigenous missionaries such as Mario.

Martin Harrison

Did the demand prompt him to stop evangelizing?

Harrison said while the tribe rejected any preaching, Mario was told, “We like those songs, and you’re free to keep going up and down the river.”

Water makes up a great percentage of the human body.

That biological fact pressed itself upon Dr. Mark Nelson after working with a cholera patient who had received his 90th liter of intravenous liquid. “He is still dehydrated! Must be very difficult to lose and receive that much liquid [but] he should recover well,” Nelson wrote after a 12-hour shift.

Under the care of fellow HCJB Global Hands physician Mattias Egberth, the patient “still looked very dehydrated after liter No. 98,” recalled Nelson. With another 10 liters—reaching a total of 108 liters (28½ gallons)—the patient recovered.

The physicians, along with nurses Kim Kirk and Sandra Paredes, finished a two-week stint helping at the Samaritan’s Purse (SP) cholera treatment center in Cité Soleil, Haiti. They returned to Ecuador on Sunday, June 19.

Dr. Mattias Egberth in the ward of the Samaritan's Purse Cholera Treatment Center

The average patient stayed one to five days, according to Nelson. A loss of body fluids equal to 10 percent of body weight is severe; greater than 15 percent is life-threatening. If an average person weighs 70 kg (154 lb.), then a loss of greater than 10 liters is life-threatening.

“That puts the need to replace even just 20 to 30 liters into perspective, and 108 quite astounding,” he said. “Of course at the cholera treatment center we were constantly replacing the fluid that is lost.”

Right back into ministry … that’s where a diagnosis of cancer put Jesús Montero. Montero served from 1977 to 2010 as a chaplain at Hospital Vozandes-Shell, an HCJB Global Hands facility on the edge of the Ecuadorian jungle. Enjoying retirement, he went for what was expected to be a relatively simple prostate surgery.

Jesús Montero

But Dr. Eckehart Wolff gave Montero the news afterwards. Not only did he have cancer; prospects for recovery were dim. “Chaplain Montero” returned to the hospital as “patient Montero.”

“When he (Dr. Wolff) told me the news, I received it peacefully, without worrying,” Montero recounted. “I said to God, ‘You are the physician of all physicians. You know what is happening.’ I’m not going to be as one without hope.”

Decades earlier, however, Montero indeed had lived without hope, without the promise of a joyful eternity. Visits from the students at a Bible institute in Shell got him thinking. After years of consideration, he committed his life to Christ just prior to an extended assignment working with a petroleum firm deep in Ecuador’s rainforest.

File photo shows Jesús Montero with patient and visitor

Crediting radio broadcasts of Bible courses with nurturing his faith, Montero told Wolff, “I am made by HCJB!” Upon returning to Shell, he came to know Christ more intimately, learning Christian doctrine by attending classes at a local Bible school. In his off hours from work as a tailor, he came to the hospital, offering to visit patients.

“We noticed that he had results; people responded to his simple presentation of the gospel,” said Chuck Howard who formerly served as the hospital administrator. People’s disposition to talk of spiritual things opens a bit wider during the vulnerability of illness. Howard recruited Montero to fill in at the chaplaincy after a younger, seminary-trained man had left the position.

“I thought this work was for someone who had a degree in Bible, whereas I only had a certificate,” Montero recalled.

When no replacement was found, Howard convinced Montero to stay on longer, citing the example of a reluctant prophet, Jonah. In the Old Testament, Jonah’s obedience to God, albeit delayed, brought outstanding results in an enemy city, Nineveh.

“I said, ‘Alright, three more months. No more,’” responded Montero, but it turned into a 33-year chaplaincy career at the hospital. “I’m thankful to God [for those years],” he related. “It has been a great privilege to be able to work at the hospital and see many people and to see how many accepted Jesus Christ and were reconciled with Him. It’s been a wonderful time.”

Gilber Gaibor was always alert at the window where the medicines are supplied, according to a co-worker

An HCJB Global Hands employee, Gilber Gaibor, died following an incident on Thursday, June 9, in Puyo on the edge of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest. His death occurred in an ambulance en route to a hospital. Burial was the next day in the Puyo cemetery.

For the last two years, Gaibor, 32, worked full time at HCJB Global Hands’ Hospital Vozandes-Shell (known in Ecuador as Hospital Vozandes del Oriente or HVO), serving in the pharmacy, medical records and information.

A hospital co-worker referred to Gaibor as “a great friend and partner in the pharmacy´s activities” calling him “very cooperative.

Gaibor was stabbed during an apparent fight with his wife’s ex-companion in Puyo. An Ecuadorian news source reported that authorities are searching for Gaibor’s widow, having already detained her former companion following the early-morning altercation.

Photo by Arron Daniels
Story by Harold Goerzen

Fanned by 60 mph winds, last weekend’s raging wildfire near Sierra Vista, Ariz., caused some anxious moments for residents before firefighters finally started getting a handle on the blaze on June 23.

“I’ve never known fear quite like the day [late] last week when we were between two fires and the sky was a ball of orange,” wrote Susie Lind on her Facebook page on Wednesday. “It’s lots calmer now, for which we thank God.”

She and her husband, Dwight, were evacuated from their home south of Sierra Vista on Sunday, June 19. Dwight coordinates the Western Region of the World Radio Network (WRN), one of HCJB Global’s cooperating ministries. After spending the night in an apartment adjoining the office building of WRN station KWRB “The Spark,” the Linds were allowed to return home. Their house was undamaged.

Volunteering his engineering skills this summer in Ecuador, Michael Stück is cognizant of the legacy his relatives have left to him in this small South American country.

For decades Ecuador has witnessed a persistent presence of the Stücks, serving as evangelical missionaries with Avant Ministries (formerly Gospel Missionary Union). Introducing himself, Michael surely prompts further inquiries on his ties to the Stück family lineage.

Michael Stück

Stück is among the 25 college student interns serving at six sites in five countries (Ghana, U.K., Ecuador, Spain and U.S.) with HCJB Global, including six in the Latin America Region. None are salaried. Instead, they have raised the funds needed to go. Churches and individuals have funded the interns’ travel and living expenses.

When another student intern, Brandon Cole, stepped onto the tarmac, he set foot onto Africa, a continent where his late grandfather, Dr. John Slater, and his great uncle, had served through medical missions.

Balloons and smiles were part of nurse Clara Chuma's care of Haitian infants. She also worked in the women's and men's wards at the Samaritan's Purse Cholera Treatment Center

The seven members of the second medical team from Ecuador this year are treating patients at a cholera treatment center in Cité Soleil, Haiti, after their arrival Tuesday, July 5. This is the eighth HCJB Global Hands team to travel to Haiti from Ecuador since a devastating earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12, 2010.

The healthcare workers are physicians and nurses from a Quito hospital and a clinic operated by HCJB Global Hands, helping in Haiti for two weeks.

Above a cacophony of noises, a siren punctuates the drone of a nearby bulldozer and the steady flapping of the plastic tarp walls of a cholera treatment center (CTC).

Three male patients have been brought from a Port au Prince hospital to the CTC operated by Samaritan’s Purse at Cité Soliel, Haiti. Tall, underweight, severely dehydrated and with sunken eyes, the trio is laid in the triage tent. Immediately IV’s are started in both arms for one already near death. All three receive large infusions, called boluses, of saline solution.

It was not entirely clear why they’ve been transferred, other than perhaps to die. “I thought that the patient was dying of AIDS,” recounted Dr. Paulyna Orellana, singling out the patient most gravely ill. “But after a short time he began responding well to the IV’s,” continued Orellana, an Ecuadorian family physician and surgeon. She was one of five female Ecuadorians who traveled to Haiti with an HCJB Global Hands team led by Dr. Richard Douce, an infectious diseases specialist and medical director at Hospital Vozandes-Quito.

Perhaps a more likely explanation for the transfer to the SP facility was due to its reputation for turning death to life through prayer and an IV line, along with an attitude that every Haitian’s life matters.

If Jesús Montero had applied to for a position as a chaplain at HCJB Global Hands’ jungle hospital in Ecuador, he likely would have been turned down. After all, he had limited education and little ministry experience.

Pastor Jesús Montero

Besides that, the mission’s facility where Pastor Montero indeed was hired already had a seminary-trained chaplain on the payroll. “I thought this work was for someone who had a degree in Bible, whereas I only had a certificate,” Montero shared in a May 2011 interview.

Originally from Cuenca, Ecuador, Jesús Agustín Montero Bermeo worked for a tailor in Shell as a young man. Around 1975 he started showing up at the hospital to offer spiritual counsel, said Chuck Howard, a former administrator at Hospital Vozandes-Shell, known in Ecuador as Hospital Vozandes del Oriente (HVO).

“He would come to the hospital on off hours and ask if he might be allowed to visit with the patients,” wrote Howard. “We noticed that he had results; people responded to his simple presentation of the gospel.”

by Ralph Kurtenbach and Hannah Larsen-Sorterup

Germán Carvajal

Germán Carvajal’s passion for radio burned so strongly that he once declared, “My life is for and through the radio.” The outreach in Quito, Ecuador, on which he lavished this passion was Radio Station HCJB, his employer for 25 years.

Carvajal came to refer to his co-workers as family, sharing joys and sorrows, tears and laughter. “My life with HCJB has been wonderful,” he wrote, adding that it included all the elements of a documentary or perhaps a radio drama. He felt that those at HCJB Global were like a large family that supported him through tragedies that occurred later in his life.

Carvajal began with the radio station in 1970, working nights and weekends. “In 1972 the station increased live reports from different areas of the city,” Carvajal wrote, listing the government palace and the congressional chamber as just two places where he reported. There were many more, and Carvajal added, “This kind of work provided me with valuable training, and so we later began doing live segments from other areas of Ecuador.”

In 1973 he developed a program of Ecuadorian music. He later recalled that “in 1977 I was on the streets in search of news. I covered an area of Quito that offered important sources of information. I reported the news as it happened.”

Talking about radio training, Allen Graham doesn’t just describe, he demonstrates. Graham encounters a persistent myth among seminar participants. He demonstrates by imitating a golden-throated, super-cool deejay. Newly arrived seminar trainees aspire to create such a persona, but he steers them to a different approach, a modern era of radio announcing. “Those days are gone,” he says of the hyped-up, top-40 format sound. “Unfortunately, they didn’t go fast enough!”

Allen Graham helps HCJB2 in Guayaquil with a Misión Compartida share-a-thon.

“Usually the best stations and the highest-rated stations … have [announcers] who are ‘normal’ … they talk the same way in front of the microphone as they do when they’re off mike,” he said. Speak as though talking with a friend, Graham instructs. After all, radio builds a bond between listener and announcer. A voice can become a trusted companion to many.

Graham, Larry Castro and Tim Dawson, along with other colleagues, conduct radio training and development throughout HCJB Global’s Latin America Region. Volunteers staff many of the partner stations, so training sessions often begin with fundamentals of announcing and putting together a radio show. Lectures only account for about 40 percent of the class time. Interaction, including group evaluations of exercises and projects, complements the instruction.

The sound of the cough alone tells of the ailing lungs of Manuel Jesús Arévalo as he quietly tosses the bloodied tissue into his hospital wastebasket. Then he returns to studying the Bible that lies open before him.

Manuel Jesús Arévalo

It was the World Day of the Fight Against Tuberculosis, and this is the scene that greeted Dr. Richard Douce, medical director of HCJB Global Hands’ Hospital Vozandes-Quito (HVQ), in Ecuador’s capital.

Years earlier, Douce successfully treated Arévalo for multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis. The disease’s advance was halted, but its effects were irreversible. Arévalo’s damaged lungs carried limited oxygen to his body. His vulnerability to illness was acute. Even this newest malady of pneumonia could have proven fatal, and he had no guarantees of living past his 61st year.

His spirits, however, were high as he told of God’s grace in his life (see sidebar on page 4). Arévalo’s physical health and spiritual well-being had taken divergent paths years before. He had contracted TB while he was an inmate in a penitentiary. During this time Arévalo entered into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. A biblical passage seems appropriate: “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16).

When Arévalo later fell ill again, he returned to HVQ and to Douce’s care, arriving in Quito with an oxygen level that was dangerously low. His hospital bill ran upwards of US$1,000. Money is tight for the former farm laborer, so after his family paid a portion, the hospital’s Charity Fund picked up the rest of Arévalo’s costs.

The Castug Tungurahuilla clean water project received funding from the Safe Water in Ecuador foundation. Volunteers from a Peoria, Ill., church helped with the work.

More than 86 families in an isolated community high in the Ecuadorian Andes are enjoying a constant supply of clean water at their homes for the first time.

Residents of Castug Tungurahuilla are delighted that they no longer have to haul water in bulky containers up steep mountainsides from a solitary well. In addition, water from this undependable, hand-pumped well wasn’t safe as it drew from an unprotected water source.

Through a joint effort of local believers and the HCJB Global Hands Clean Water Projects team in Quito, the project was completed in the hometown of an engineer of the water projects team, Roberto Guapi. Local Quichua Indians did most of the work, spending nearly a year to install the well and distribution system in the community near Mount Chimborazo some four hours from Quito.

These hard-working Quichua Indians, descendants of the Incas who controlled much of Ecuador in the 1400s, dug pipe trenches extending more than six miles and built numerous reservoirs. After digging the well, the people of Castug Tungurahuilla laid the pipe and covered it, then installed metered spigots on a concrete pedestal at each home.

Engineers from the mission designed the system and reviewed progress on the project, which received funding from a Michigan-based foundation, Safe Water in Ecuador. Volunteers from Bethany Baptist Church in Peoria, Ill., also helped with the project.

HCJB Global retirees Pat and Kay Talbot managed the Clark Guesthouse for several weeks during the summer.

Though it’s hard to let you go
In the Father’s hands we know
That a lifetime’s not too long
To live as friends
-Deborah D. Smith

Visitors to HCJB Global’s Latin America Region have helped us out. We’ve caught up with each other and enjoyed laughing together. Friends, we appreciate your hearts to serve God by serving Ecuadorians and others of this region. -Ralph

Alex Diaz, Carmen Reinoso and Candice Figueroa

Mike and Carol Hardin returned to Shell where they served with Hospital Vozandes. Here they are with their kids at Casa del Suizo overlooking the Napo River.

Carmen Reinoso returned to her homeland of Ecuador to visit. Meeting with Radio Station HCJB staff, she told of her early work with La Ventana de Los Andes- the HCJB television station. She also worked in radio. Carmen and her husband, Chema, live in Atlanta where Chema voices En Contacto, the Spanish-language In Touch program.

Juan Cabrera and Marlin Brubaker came to Ecuador for a migration . . . but not a human migration. Systems engineers at HCJB Global’s Ministry Service Center in Colorado, they came to migrate computers to a new Windows domain.

“The Accounting and Hospital Records department move went pretty smoothly and the users were able to start working when they came to work on Monday with minimal issues,” said Marlin.

Juan Cabrera, Marlin Brubaker and Barry Hamm at 5 p.m. - about halfway through a long workday.

In Teresa Nina's hands, trash becomes treasures like these.

A sheep died, and some villagers suspected witchcraft.

In Yawisla, Bolivia, however, a young doctor offered an alternative—a scientific approach. Dr. Francisco Nina, a member of the Aymara people group, performed an autopsy, revealing the actual cause of the animal’s death.

A large wad the size of a softball was blocking the sheep’s digestive tract. The wad was comprised of castoff plastic bags that had littered the countryside around Yawisla.

Today Nina and his wife, Teresa, offer advice on environmental concerns as part of their health messages. As Christians they believe God has called them to reach out in love to both the Aymara and Quechua peoples of Bolivia. Teresa also holds popular classes, teaching women to make pencil holders, jewelry boxes and other home decorations that she crochets out of recycled plastic bags.

Francisco and Teresa Nina in Quito, just before returning to Bolivia.

The Ninas recently completed training in Ecuador that they took to better prepare themselves for this ministry. Their journey to Ecuador began nearly a decade ago when Nina was assigned by Bolivia’s rural health service to work in Yawisla with a medical missionary, Dr. Stephen Hawthorne of SIM (Serving In Mission). Yawisla is a Quechua community 10,000 feet high in the Andes, 70 miles southeast of Potosí.

Two mission hospital physicians have published the results of a major investigation into different viruses that sickened Ecuadorian patients with flu or flu-like illnesses.

Dr. Richard Douce

Dr. Wilson Chicaiza, an Ecuadorian physician, and Dr. Richard Douce, a U.S. citizen, provided the medical community with the most extensive documentation of the viral causes of influenza-like illnesses (ILI) in Ecuador. Highlighting the study’s significance, the pair of doctors posited that “tropical countries are thought to play an important role in the global behavior of respiratory infections such as influenza.”

Central to the study was whether Ecuador was a source of epidemics or if the Andean country, as Douce asked, “was simply a stopping-off place as the wave of epidemic flu circulates through the world?”

“Our data suggests the latter,” he concluded.

Related to this, the study also discounted the term “flu season” to describe periodic flu outbreaks. “Influenza comes from the Italian phrase describing the influence of the moon and stars upon health (influenza della luna e le stelle sulla salute),” Douce explained. “Even now people state that it’s been a cold month, and that’s why we have more influenza. I don’t think that is the truth.”

Dr. Wilson Chicaiza

The results of the Chicaiza and Douce investigation were published by PLoS ONE which is offered online by the Public Library of Science (hence the acronym PLoS). The online publication issues reports of scientific studies that are reviewed by peers and then made available as open-access resources.

Chicaiza directs medical education at HCJB Global Hands’ Hospital Vozandes-Quito (HVQ) while Douce, an infectious diseases specialist, serves as medical director of the 76-bed facility. The hospital serves as a sentinel site in Ecuador for the detection of the H1N1 virus and other emerging strains of influenza, providing data to the U.S. Navy Tropical Disease Research Laboratory in Lima, Peru. HVQ also facilitated a reporting site at Hospital de la Beneficencia (the nation’s largest hospital) in Guayaquil by providing Navy doctors with appropriate contacts there.

Pastor German Rhon gets some help from Carmen Roman as he twists and ties a balloon. Photo by Morgan Wieland

The grand opening of Hospital Vozandes-Quito’s newest satellite clinic saw 134 people receive treatment at an inaugural health fair Aug. 6. The Centro de Medicina Familiar Vozandes El Inca (Vozandes Family Medicine Center El Inca) was inaugurated in northeastern Quito’s El Inca neighborhood. It’s a ministry of HCJB Global Hands, the mission’s healthcare ministry.

A primary care facility, the El Inca clinic offers family medicine, dentistry and psychological and nutritional counseling along with a clinical laboratory, vaccinations, sonograms and upper gastrointestinal endoscopies.

It is generally thought that primary care meets the health needs of 90 percent of its clients. At the clinic, referrals can be made to Hospital Vozandes-Quito, a tertiary care facility.

At the Aug. 6 health fair, also in El Inca, people received medical attention ranging from pediatrics to dental care to cardiovascular screening. They could also receive pastoral counseling.

Haiti’s reconstruction needs loom large after damages inflicted by the devastating January 2010 earthquake. But in the country’s north, Ecuadorian civil engineers César Cortez and Alfredo León anticipate going deep with one specific community by helping reconstruct its water system.

Cortez, who has worked with HCJB Global Hands for many years, is surveying the area about six miles south of Cap-Haitien. He is being accompanied by León who joined the team a few years ago. They are collaborating with Lifewater of Canada and One Mission Society.

“The water projects team we have sent is on the ground with two purposes,” said Martin Harrison, director of community development for the Latin American Region, who has had satellite phone contact with the engineers who are in Haiti for 10 days.

Alfredo León

“Firstly, they want to build relationships and confidence with the communities that have expressed interest in a water project,” he explained. “Secondly, they will be collecting information and conducting topographic surveys with a view to producing a long-term solution to the community’s water and sanitation needs.”

The Sept. 12-23 trip objectives are similar to those of Cortez in January 2011 when he surveyed the Cap-Haitien area’s wells and documented his findings. “There are about 100 wells in that area,” he said. “Really, the first option is to rebuild one of the water projects that, maybe 50 years ago … the Red Cross had built.”

“Right now it is completely destroyed,” Cortez added. Reestablishing Cortez’s ties to the community is key to the Ecuadorian duo’s visit. Just as the Vozandes Community Development team’s efforts emphasize community involvement and empowerment in Ecuador, so too Cortez and León are seeking to guide a Haitian effort, not eclipse it with foreign intervention.

File photo of the Evangelista

Several days on a river in the Peruvian rainforest gave Latin Americans the opportunity to combine theory with practice while learning missions firsthand.

Nearly 70 people set out on the Ucayali River aboard the Evangelista, a 12-by30-meter (39-by-98-foot) riverboat. The craft serves as floating missions conference for the annual Misión a Bordo (Mission Aboard) outreach to river communities. It brought together missions students, local churches and missiologists on the Sept. 26-30 learning adventure.

“This is on-the-job experience,” said HCJB Global’s Américo Saavedra, a Peruvian missionary in Ecuador who directs a pastoral/leadership development program known as Apoyo (Spanish for “support”). He has coordinated the trip for the last three years and was on board the Evangelista this week.

“You’re listening all day long to these [seminar leaders], and then you get to a community,” Saavedra described. “Our leader will say, ‘OK, now it’s time to stop listening to the speakers. Now we’re going to serve. We’re going to practice what we heard.’”

Carl Elving was never one to draw attention to himself.

Carl Elving

An accomplished mechanical and electrical engineer, he never batted an eye when given a menial job as a retiree volunteering at Hospital Vozandes-Shell in 1984. His job was to install hundreds of faceplates on electrical outlets and rewire various devices throughout HCJB Global Hands’ new jungle hospital in Shell, Ecuador.

“At the end of the two weeks Carl came back up to Quito, visited my office and said, ‘I’ve really been impressed with the ministry and I’d like to get more involved,’” recounted Roger Reimer who then directed the mission’s Healthcare Division.

“I tried to be diplomatic about how he could help us out and asked where he could help,” Reimer said of the man before him, an “old, white-haired, mild-mannered man.” Elving had been recruited by electrician Johan Otterlei, and his wife, Jenny, retirees already acquainted with the ministry in Ecuador.

“Then he reached down, pulled out a portfolio, laid it on my desk and opened it up,” continued Reimer. Before him lay the designs of Elving, longtime co-owner of Horty Elving and Associates, a Minneapolis design firm specializing in healthcare projects.

“Here was a company that had built more than 150 hospitals across the northern U.S.! Then he told me, ‘I am the co-owner of this business,’” said Reimer, remembering his dumbfounded state and the question within him, “Why were we having him put on faceplates when he could have done so much more for us?”

HCJB Global's Brent Weeks explains the DRM digital standard.

Ecuador’s telecommunications authorities have agreed to explore and test the Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) international digital radio standard with help from two organizations based in the small South American country.

Radio Station HCJB and the Unión Nacional de Periodistas (UNP or National Journalists’ Union) representatives agreed with the Superintendencia de Telecomunicaciones (SUPERTEL) to offer training and assist in testing the DRM standard that Ecuador is considering. SUPERTEL will also evaluate other digital radio standards.

After a short signing ceremony in Ecuador’s capital city of Quito on Friday, Oct. 7, training sessions with SUPERTEL technicians began four days later on the campus of Radio Station HCJB.

Fabian Jaramillo of Ecuador's Superintendencia de Telecomunicaciones and Guillermo Bossano of HCJB Global.

Audio: What is DRM? Why digital shortwave tests from Ecuador? Conversation with Andy, a researcher with an international shortwave broadcast station. Curt Cole

Audio: Un reportaje grabado en Santa Rosa Guanan, Ecuador durante la inaguración de un sistema de agua. La comunidad construyó el sistema con asesoría de los ingenieros de HCJB Manos Globales. C. Zurita

Story by Cristian Zurita

Living and practicing community, the people of Ecuador’s Andean region often combine their efforts, tackling tasks too big for individual efforts. In highland communities commonly inhabited by the Quichua-speaking people, such a collective effort is known as a minga.

Through mingas, rural dwellers complete everything from planting and harvesting crops to digging irrigation canals.

Some communities take on other work projects as well. For residents of Santa Rosa de Gauñan, the efforts culminated on Sept. 23-24 with the dedication of a clean water system. Just an hour south of Riobamba in Chimborazo province, community members worked together with consultation from HCJB Global Hands’ Clean Water Projects team.

After a year of hard work, laboring at altitudes of up to 10,500 feet in this community and eight surrounding villages of the Moste Chico sector, the joy of the children, young adults and older adults was characterized as “indescribable.”

“We’ve not only received this water, but also the water of life; we have received the gospel,” said Carlos, a pastor from Santa Rosa. “Indeed, some are now preaching the gospel. For us, for me personally, I say thank you. We’ve worked hard to construct this Moste Chico piped water system.”

By digging miles of four-foot deep trenches for PVC distribution pipe, constructing spring protection structures and building reservoirs for storage, the community built a system that serves some 40 families.

Expressing his delight at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, HCJB Global Hands missionary Bruce Rydbeck called it “a pleasure to be present and dedicate the water system to serve all and this community, and to the glory of God.”

Having served in international churches on three different continents, retired missionary Kenneth D. MacHarg has released a new book about the spiritual challenges and joys often experienced by expatriates.

Singing the Lord’s Songs in a Foreign Land: Biblical Reflections for Expatriates offers readers a collection of biblical reflections and insight into the feelings and questions of those living in a foreign land.

Based on biblical principles, the book is intended to encourage expatriates and help them live full lives overseas, according to MacHarg, who has pastored seven English-language international congregations in five countries.

He and his wife, Polly, lived in Latin America (including Ecuador, Costa Rica and Honduras) for about 12 years followed by five years in Miami, Fla. Then they served as missionaries in Costa Rica for 2½ years before retiring in Carrollton, Ga.

Although officially retired, the MacHargs continue to be active in ministry around the world. Recently they pastored an international congregation in Central Asia.

Flinging their mortar boards high, five Ecuadorians rejoiced at a small graduation ceremony in Quito after completing a communications program.

Angie Egüez receives a congratulatory kiss from her husband after the graduation ceremony.

Angie Egüez, Carolina Córdova, David Ruiz, Estefanía Salguero and Mathías Saltos graduated in 2011, but the latter two were unable to attend as Salguero is studying at Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minn., and Saltos is studying in France. Two graduates of the class of 2010, Valeria Fillaos and Gabriela Yépez, also participated in this year’s ceremony.

All completed course work at the three-year Christian Center of Communications/Northwestern College (CCC/NWC) which is based on the campus of Radio Station HCJB in Quito.

Among the 20 pastors sitting before him at an early-September leadership seminar in Arequipa, Peru, Américo Saavedra sensed two things: determination to complete the course followed by a desire for further instruction.

Saavedra saw a desire to keep learning in the pastors, primarily from southern Peru, many of them bi-vocational, and some ministering to Quechua-language congregations.

“You could sense it. People are really hungry to learn how to lead—how to lead congregations, how to lead groups, how to lead Bible studies,” he said. While no promises had been made to the Arequipa group, all 20 of the pastors received a certificate after completion of a portion of the course, Ser Líder: Capacitar a Otros para Ser Productivos (Being a Leader: Training Others to Be Productive).

Saavedra said training began last April with a weeklong intensive session going from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day. Participants finished five modules, and then completed another five in September to receive their certificates.

Oscar Aguirre with children at Pan de Vida (Bread of Life) in Quito

For Oscar Aguirre, a 10-minute transaction on a Quito street meant freshly shined shoes after a Sunday-morning church service. But to this young businessman, the December 2000 encounter meant so much more. Juan Alpapucho, the boy working on Aguirre’s shoes, needed more than enough pay to buy a few pieces of bread.

Work as a shoeshine boy provided little for Alpapucho who hadn’t had a decent meal in days. “I invited him for breakfast,” Aguirre related. As Alpapucho ate bread and yogurt, the two talked, and the young boy accepted Aguirre’s invitation to attend a Spanish-language church that same morning.

At first Aguirre felt shame. Until then he’d done nothing for Ecuador’s poor, but decisive action followed. Soon he had the ear of the board members at English Fellowship Church, and from the pulpit he had the ear of the church’s international congregation in Ecuador’s capital city. Among those who volunteered time, money and other resources was HCJB Global missionary David Tippett.

David Tippett

In February 2001 Tippett, Aguirre and others shared a message from the Bible, then served the first Pan de Vida breakfast to 20 people in the Tippetts’ carport. Hence the ministry, Pan de Vida (Bread of Life), was birthed, with help from various ministries: Alliance Academy International, English Fellowship Church, Extreme Response, Hospital Vozandes-Quito, Samaritan’s Purse and HCJB Global.

What began with plates of scrambled eggs with ham, rice, a banana, a piece of bread and glasses of milk and fruit juice has grown, Aguirre recounted at a special event in October to commemorate the ministry’s 10th anniversary.

Photos show Juan Alpapucho as a boy and shortly before his death following an assault in his taxicab.

At its facilities near Radio Station HCJB, Pan de Vida recently built two new bathrooms. Additionally, the cooking area was enlarged into an industrial kitchen used to prepare thousands of meals every year. The new kitchen was expected to be ready in October.

Education has become a big part of Pan de Vida, helping participants break out of a cycle of poverty. While Ecuador’s government provides textbooks to schoolchildren, costs of school supplies must be met by the students’ families. This year Pan de Vida distributed 124 vouchers each worth US$25 to school-aged children of the ministry’s beneficiaries.

Healthcare needs were met in part at the HCJB Global Hands’ satellite clinic, Clínica La Y, which conducted school physicals, vision screening and dental exams as well as laboratory work.

An Achuar man is vaccinated in Wampuik, Morona Santiago province. (photo compliments of El Comercio)

Ecuador’s Ministry of Health is getting assistance from physicians at HCJB Global Hands’ Hospital Vozandes-Quito (HVQ) to help quell an outbreak of rabies in a remote area of the country’s Amazon region.

On Wednesday, Dec. 7, Dr. Mark Nelson, together with personnel from the Ministry of Health, traveled from Ecuador’s capital to Morona Santiago province where the virus recently claimed its 12th victim.

The following day from Taisha he called his wife, Dr. Laurie Nelson, to say that he and others were coordinating radio promotions and a vaccination campaign. Some 240 health workers have arrived in Taisha to attend to more than 50,000 people in a 12-mile area around the canton.