Ecuador

We've just returned from Ecuador after a whirlwind week of meetings, lunches, dinners, receptions and travel.

We visited Shell to see our hospital, our school and our missionaries who faithfully serve in the jungle. A highlight was standing in the radio room of Nate Saint's house and reliving the events surrounding the death of the 5 missionaries in 1955. That event triggered tens of thousands to commit their lives to cross-cultural ministry. It’s just like God to turn a terrible tragedy into a great expansion of His Kingdom

We visited the hydro-plants in Papallacta and Lorreto which furnish electrical power for the HCJB radio transmitters saving HCJB $500,000 a year in utility costs plus supplying power to the country of Ecuador which provides another $500,000 in annual revenue to the mission. Those facilities are a great tribute to the vision, ingenuity and perseverance of the HCJB Global team

We had meetings with Hospital Vozandes staff which is 90% Ecuadorian nationals. The hospitals in Quito and Shell provide valuable health care to thousands of Ecuadorians who would not have access to medical attention. They demonstrate the caring love of Jesus to many needy people who don’t know Christ.

We met with the water projects leadership and staff. These teams go into a needy community, provide clean, safe water to the people. Working with a local church, they point the community to the Living Water.

Our Corrientes project is working to train and mobilize believers in Ecuador to reach out to Ecuadorians in the proclamation of the Gospel and eventual cross-cultural ministry. The goal is to hire an Ecuadorian director of Corrientes and to work hand-in-hand with a coalition of other like-minded Ecuadorian ministries.

We spent a day with HCJB Radio personnel, viewing studios and strategizing on the most effective use of media in the midst of continual changes in the media world. It’s sad to see the antennas and transmitters on Pifo being dismantled. The new Quito airport is adjacent to our antenna farm. Plus the audience for short-wave is diminishing. One option we’re exploring is to repurpose the transmitters and antennas for a shortwave ministry to India and China, which represents 2/3's of the world population.

The CCC (Christian Communications Center) trains young Latin American students to use media to share the Gospel via radio, video and modern digital technology. One of the strategic goals of HCJB Global is to train the next generation of communicators to use the next generation of technology to reach the next generation of media users. Half the world’s population is under age 25, which may be the largest unreached people groups in the world.

We were joined Saturday night by a group of U.S. Christian broadcasters who are spending the week touring HCJB Global ministries in Ecuador. These stations represent potential ministry partners for some of our global media projects.

With the U.S. broadcasters, we attended a Spanish Church in Quito. The service was entirely in Spanish, music and sermon. But we were able to catch the drift of the content...and certainly caught up in the energy and spirit of the believers. God is alive in Latin America!

A highlight of our Sunday was to serve 280 adults and children at Pan de Vida, an outreach started by HCJB, which provides a teaching and worship experience for adults and children followed by a nice meal in the courtyard. We all dug in, cutting vegetables, serving the food, and intereacting with the poor, but beautiful people of Quito. We really felt it a privilege to be the "voice and hands" of Jesus.

Sunday night, our coordinator of International Health Care gave an inspiring report of how God is using our medical teams with our disaster response teams to show the love of Jesus in times of crisis. She described the powerful impact of working with our radio partners to provide basic health and hygiene information on radio, plus providing basic clinical and educational service in our radio areas.

God is expanding our vision as we see God working throughout Latin America and in the 5 global regions to provide media ministry, health care and leadership development. Though Latin America is a "reached" continent, there are still many who do not know the Lord. And there are many believers who can be motivated and trained to serve.

HCJB Global is using media, human care and leadership development to reach people who have never heard, to reach people groups with limited access to the Gospel and to mobilize those who can serve. But global evangelism is the "point of the arrow" for HCJB Global. When we provide emergency response, the goal is to introduce people to Jesus. When we provide clean water, it's to point to Jesus, the Living Water. When we provide healing help through our hospitals and clinics, it's to introduce people to the "Great Physician". In our broadcasting operations, we seek to communicate about the One who came to demonstrate the love of God and the gift of eternal life to our needy world.

I'm privileged we've been called to this unique and powerful ministry. We really appreciate your prayers as we take on this powerful challenge.

Thank God! Call out His Name!
Tell the whole world who he is and what he's done!
Sing to him! Play songs for him!
BROADCAST all His wonders!

I Chronicles 16:9 (The Message)