(July 10, 2013 - by Ralph Kurtenbach) The long-distance call had come from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). When Curt Bender put his ear to the receiver, all he could hear was the sound of people wailing as if something tragic had happened.
 
"I never know what the Lord has in store for me when a call comes in, but this time I was completely taken aback," remembered Bender, an HCJB Global engineer. Even the explanation offered by missionary Jim Smith in Nkara, DRC, was of little help.
 
"Curt, do you hear it?" Smith said loudly. "The people are crying for their mother." When Bender responded that he didn't understand, Smith replied that "the people are crying because their mother has stopped speaking. We need your help; the transmitter quit working."
 
Radio Glory mother feeds her family," according to Smith, who heads Laban Ministries International (LMI). The station's silence had devastated them.
 
Smith's parents, Laban and Marcella Smith, began the work of LMI in 1938. Thirty-five years ago Jim Smith and his wife, Nancy, started  the Laban Bible Institute, whose students travelled each weekend throughout the region, visiting remote villages to share the gospel with others. No major roads connect Nkara to other African countries, or for that matter, the rest of the DRC, and this limited the students' efforts.

Smith then conceived of using radio in outreach and with some help from missionary engineers from HCJB Global's Technology Center, he put Radio Glory on the air in 2004. Even with limited electricity generated by a diesel generator and high fuel costs due to the village's lack of accessibility,  the villagers could tune to the station for two hours each morning and evening.
Within a day of Smith's urgent call, a special cable was on its way to help get the station back on the air at low power, according to Bender. The malfunctioning transmitter was shipped to Elkhart for repairs. After that, Alan Good, a Technology Center technician, traveled to Nkara to install it and help restore the voice of the mother, Radio Glory.
 
A s he worked over the course of three weeks in Nkara, Good listened to the stories that a local Christian, Pastor Boma, told about Radio Glory's impact on some of its listeners. One especially dramatic story chronicled how a man, feuding with a brother, had decided to lie in wait in the forest to kill the other man.
 
"This man took a radio with him and was listening in to Radio Glory," Good said, recounting the Congolese pastor's story. "The Lord convicted him right there as he lay in wait to commit murder, whereupon the man confessed his sin and gave his life to Christ."
 
Once the Radio Glory signal was restored, calls came in to the station from all over that they were hearing the station again. "We had no idea what kind of an impact the station would make on the surrounding villages and have been awed at how God has used this tool to glorify His name," Smith said. "We often hear of individuals, families, and villages that have come to Christ through the airwaves."

Then around 1 p.m. on Thursday June 2, workers with Ecuatronix contacted Ecu911 to say that the woman had been found on Rucu, a 15,400 foot peak just west of Quito. Rho was near a clearing behind a cluster of telecommunications antennas that faces the capital city in the valley below.


Source: HCJB Global


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