Change is constant but rarely easy!

(...many in the community here in Quito and literally all around the world are wrestling with an array of emotions these days. I had the privilege of working with Ken MacHarg as an announcer here in Quito at HCJB and he and his wife Polly returned almost ten years later to serve as our interim Pastor two summers ago. Ken did a fabulous job of capturing much of what is behind the "quaking" in the community and beyond)

From Ecuador to the World
Missionary Radio Station Broadcasts the Gospel for Nearly 6 Decades
By Kenneth D. MacHarg - Missionary Journalist

Just stepping on the property one knew that it was a special place.

Others declared that it was holy ground.

Whatever a person’s viewpoint, these 110 acres of rolling green fields with a spectacular view of the perfect snow-covered volcanic cone of Mount Cotopaxi to the south were a single point from which shortwave radio programs could be beamed to the four corners of the earth.

Pifo, as the transmitter site for international Christian radio station HCJB, the Voice of the Andes, was known, could only be described in superlatives: one of the largest radio stations in the world; the home of one of the largest broadcast antennas ever built; one of the few places in the world where radio broadcasts could reach around the globe; the place from which the gospel of Jesus Christ could be heard by listeners in each of the world’s countries.

Even before entering the property, a visitor approaching the transmitter site from Quito could see red-and-white towers poking up into the sky. Passing through the entry gate just east of the town of Pifo, one saw 31 arrays of steel towers and curtains of wire spread out. Clustered near the transmitter and maintenance buildings were the homes of resident engineers.

Each of those unique structures with their complex web of reflecting curtains was designed to throw a powerful signal to a specific target, be it North or South America, Europe, the South Pacific, East Asia or West Central Africa. Smaller antennas, configured in a different manner, served to send programs in the Quichua dialects straight up where they would bounce off electronically charged layers far beyond the reach of the highest-flying airliner and bounce back down like an umbrella over the Andes where those descendents of the Inca civilizations still live.

In the large transmitter building, 10 behemoths of electronic genius pumped out hundreds of thousands of watts of signal power, much of it generated in HCJB Global’s own hydroelectric plants even higher in those majestic mountains.

Some of those technological marvels were commercial brands known to radio engineers around the world: RCA, Harris, Siemens. Others, including the super-power, 500,000-watt HC500, were built by HCJB Global’s own engineers in Ecuador and Elkhart, Indiana, USA.

None of these were ordinary, run-of-the mill transmitters. No, they were specifically built for or adapted to Pifo’s extraordinary altitude of 8,600 feet where the air is thin and electrical arcing between components could quickly burn up precious parts and force an expensive and crucial piece of equipment off the air.

Hidden away in the roof of this fascinating building was a switcher unit, or to be more precise, dozens of switchers. These connected the appropriate transmitter to its scheduled antenna to beam the Christian message from Pifo in the morning to missionaries in the Brazilian Amazon or to German settlers in Paraguay and Argentina. In the afternoon they helped send programs to eager listeners in Europe, the Middle East and Africa; in the evening to enthusiastic listeners in the Americas and the Caribbean and in the wee hours of the morning to others in East Asia and the South Pacific.

While the transmitters were impressive, it was the antennas that were awe-inspiring. Whether seen against the backdrop of the setting sun or with Cotopaxi visible through their web-like patterns, these tall towers, reaching as high as 417 feet and holding two or three curtains of wires were fascinating as they invisibly bounced hundreds of thousands of watts of power, carrying the life-giving message of the gospel to people trapped behind the Iron Curtain, confined in the totalitarian state that was the Soviet Union. Also nurtured were those hidden behind the veil of Mideast nations or casually listening in their homes and offices in North America, Europe, Asia and the South Pacific.

It’s hard for those without engineering experience to understand how an array of thin wires can bounce an electric signal against another similar curtain and have that signal and its message arrive at a radio receiver 6,000 miles away.

But, the antennas and transmitters of Pifo, Ecuador, did just that, broadcasting at times in up to 18 languages a day, around the clock, around the world.

While the technology was fascinating, even more compelling were the people who made it happen—those men and women who relocated to the beautiful South American country of Ecuador over the years so that they could build a radio station that would carry a message of hope and life to listeners around the world. Those engineers and technicians gave up what could have been lucrative careers back home to make certain that people in Ecuador and El Salvador, Germany and Greece, Russia and Romania could hear the life-giving message of Jesus Christ in their own language on their own radios.

These people, from a multitude of nationalities, were innovators and geniuses in their own right. They designed the Cubical Quad antenna to prevent electrical arcing at the tips of antenna wires and made that model available for personal, military and commercial use around the world.

They built and operated the “steerable antenna,” said to be one of the largest broadcast antennas ever built and the only one of its design ever constructed. They fabricated transmitters, antennas and components almost out of barbed wire and tin cans when standard supplies were not available. They utilized propagation possibilities (characteristics that allowed the signal to span long distances) that were unknown to others at the time, yet allowed the signal of HCJB to reach the ends of the earth.

Why did they do this? Because they had learned that God, who created the world and everything in it, including the fascinating science of radio broadcasting, cares about His creation and wishes that each and every person, from every tongue and nation, will know His love for them. And, they discovered the truth of God as it is written in the Bible and the love, forgiveness and salvation of God which results in eternal life through God’s Son, Jesus Christ, who is the friend of sinners and the Savior of the world.

Today, those fields from which gospel programming was broadcast for almost 60 years are silent and almost empty. Gone are the huge towers and miles of wire that stretched across the green grass. Now gone silent are the transmitters* that labored day in and day out to transform the programs into a signal that would be carried around the world.

The site, which began broadcasting in 1953, signed off for good on Sept. 30, 2009. A changing world and changing methods of mass communication have challenged HCJB to move on to new ways of sharing that same message of hope. Today, satellite television and radio, the ability of local Christians to launch their own stations in communities where such broadcasters were forbidden or impossible in the past, the availability of other shortwave transmitting sites, the Internet, podcasts, social networking sites and Internet radio have become additional means of receiving information, entertainment and inspiration.

Pifo has become silent and the engineers and program producers have moved on. But today in every country of the world there are churches meeting, worshiping and serving because they practice what they heard on HCJB. There are entire communities and nations and people groups that proudly bear the name Christian because listeners heard the message emanating from Pifo. And, there are people, believers in Jesus Christ, who will attest to how their lives were transformed by Him and how today they are followers of Jesus because of what they heard from Pifo, Ecuador.

To God be the glory!

(*While the official closure date for the Pifo transmitter site was September 30, broadcasts in Portuguese were scheduled to continue for a few weeks.)

Note: Kenneth D. MacHarg served in Ecuador with HCJB Global from 1990 to 1998. He and his wife, Polly, retired from Latin America Mission in 2006 and now live in Carrollton, Ga. His website is www.missionaryjournalist.net .

Kenneth D. MacHarg
Missionary Journalist
Missionaryjournalist@gmail.com

Hammered by an exceptional "dead mentor."

"God is glorified not only by his glory being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart."
"Miscellanies" by Jonathan Edwards

one glaring reason EFC (this hilarious international church) amazes me...

...today at the service, we met and/or talked to:
- 2 ladies from Nigeria (who had not met before);
- a work team from Ohio;
- a lady born in Moscow who moved to Quito, built a family here before moving to Miami 11 years ago. She has just returned with her 2 daughters (ages 16 and 18). She shared that they are the only followers of Jesus in their entire extended family here!
- a very excited follower of Jesus who returns to his home in Indonesia this week;
- a work team from Arkansas;
- two "backpackers" from the U.S. who are volunteering around the country - and "just wanted to check (us) out."
- a young couple that has just moved back to Ecuador; he is from here, she is from Croatia;
- a work team from Pennsylvania;
- a dear, baby follower of Jesus who "found freedom in the prison" here and now that she has been released continues to seek to find "freedom from the prison." She is a mixture of German and South African and so is her 8 year-old son. They just received word that they will be deported to South Africa at the end of this month.
- a work team from Virginia;
- an Ecuadorian from the exploding "20-Somethings" group who is translating for many short-term mission teams this summer and says missions has him by the heart. (It has been about four years since he left "the Mormon church.")
- a dear MK grad from here (parents are both MK's; Mom is U.S. and Dad is Canadian) who is leaving with many tears, headed to college in Michigan.
- a dynamic young musical lady with a passionate heart for children who has been here for 4 months and is reluctantly returning to the states -- to search wherever she has to, to raise the support to return as early as January.

Just another summer Sunday at an international church!!!

Blown away yet immensely relieved!

Okay, if anyone is actually turning to this it may be because you recently received a note that mentioned I was going to blow the dust of this blog -- and do my best to keep the dust off it (if you are reading this you are automatically granted permission to lovingly nag me about sticking with it!).

By the way, the pic is Jenny and Kasey together with cousins Brady and Riley for the first time in four years -- on Grandma Gray's birthday, no less!

I figured I may as well start with one of the biggest "Wham!" and then "Wow!" mornings I have had in a long time. It came from my ongoing struggle to "get" the original Bible languages into me more deeply. I was in what Paul had written to some of the original followers of Jesus in the bustling city of Philippi. More than at any time in my life, I have been seeing that Paul's repeated use of the pronoun "you" and the verb forms he chose are plural.
The individual implications are immense and the potential collective result transforms almost everything I hear Paul saying and it has brought the letter to life as an impassioned plea for true unity and genuine community!
One instance in particular led to that "Wham!" and "Wow!" morning.
It came from chapter 4, verse 4 of Philippians. It is one of "those" verses that had made me squirm for as long as I can remember: "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say: Rejoice!" Early in my spiritual journey I was taught that writers back then would repeat words or phrases as their way of underlining, highlighting or putting them in big fonts -- to try to drive a point home. Through that one line (and a bunch of other things he wrote) I have always seen how seriously Paul took this whole matter of "rejoicing" for followers of Jesus.
But for the first several years that I tried to follow Jesus, the word "always" gnawed at me. Rejoice always? C'mon, Paul -- be realistic. At least be honest -- or give me the freedom to be. Are you saying I am supposed to fake a smile and give a cliché Christian, "I'm doing great; praise the Lord!" when something is really eating me up inside and the last thing I feel like doing is rejoicing?

So I did a little digging (not enough apparently, but I'll get to that), hoping that my embryonic grasp of the original Bible language would show that it really wasn't a command, the way it appears to be in English. Well, it was (and is) a command. My "inner gnawing" got worse -- although I tried to ignore it for the next couple of years. Whenever I came across the verse (unfortunately it seemed to come up a lot in church) I tried to slip past it as quickly as I could.
Then one day a little light went on. Note that: a little light. There was still more to come but not for a few more years. I heard a message where the Pastor explained that "rejoice" didn't mean "to dance a jig; to paste on a fake smile; to grit my teeth and try to will myrself to overcome how I really feel." He said it meant, "To return to the source of your joy." I heard him say that even when I could relate to "Alexander" and was having my own version of a "Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" I could at least be real with and honest about it -- as long as I took it to "the source of my joy." I had been following Jesus long enough at that point to know that he was "The Source." So the command was to go to him with "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly."
That helped. A lot. Until a couple of years ago. I began to notice that something about it still wasn't sitting right. I couldn't really build an argument against it theologically but the practical truth was, there were times when God was the last one I wanted to turn to. My battle with myself continued: "C'mon dude, that is why it is a command. Sometimes you gotta just suck it up and do it." And I tried; with varying degrees of "success." Still, the "drag myself there" approach sometimes left me feeling anything but joyful. (I learned to appease myself by telling myself that at least I may have been scoring points for obedience.)
Then came my "Wham/Wow!" morning last week. One teacher who had made his way onto my cheapo MP3 player was exploring the verse and hinted at something I had never heard or thought of before. It is just the kind of nugget/thought that I love so I pushed everything else aside and started digging into it with renewed passion. I began looking at that pesky word "rejoice" in a bunch of commentaries and dictionaries of the original language.
I didn't find a lot -- but I did find enough to trigger the "wham/wow!"
Yes, it is written as a command.
Yes, it does mean (at least in large part) to turn to The Source of joy (the God).
But the "you" it was addressed to wasn't singular; it was plural.
That means it wasn't addressed just to me; it was addressed to us.
The more I let that bounce around in my head and my heart I began to see that it has potential to be one of the most solid arguments in favor of true unity and genuine community in the whole Bible!
The command is for "us" collectively -- and we are to come together and to be together in pursuit of The Source of joy.
If there is a command in it for me personally it is to pursue being an active, honest, genuine part of an "us." God never intended me to try to return to the Source of my joy as a Lone Ranger -- at least not over the long haul. There will always be times when I am drawn there on my own...but I am not to set up a one-man tent there for very long and if anything of any value comes out of it, I am to pass it on. Which I am trying to do here.

This should be really obvious but at least based on personal experience it seems as though some (many?) of us twist a key part of it: The repeated plea (command?) for unity and community does not endorse corporate and/or long-simmering griping/whining. That is never part of God's design for true unity and genuine community. It is a call to intentionally seek and nurture "a place" where I can go and be real...knowing that I am going to find people (or at least one person) who is at a different spot in the journey and can lovingly (which at times includes firmly) point toward The Source -- even if I choose not to step that way right then.

"Rejoice in the Lord always" is not a personal guilt trip to "get my act together."
It is a call to active,
engaged
ongoing connection
with others
who want to live in pursuit of
The Source.