(Sept. 26, 2014 - by Harold Goerzen)  Hundreds of people in an under-reached area of the West African country of Ghana will soon have access to Christian broadcasts—many for the first time—as the result of a day-long, on-air campaign in Colorado last month.

The event at the Reach Beyond Ministry Service Center in Colorado Springs Friday, Aug. 22, with partner station KPOF AM 91 in Denver raised enough funds to purchase 520 solar-powered, fixed-tuned SonSet^® radios.

They will be distributed by Theovision, a partner ministry of Reach Beyond (formerly HCJB Global) based in Accra, Ghana. Some 25 volunteers manned the phones at a temporary call center at the mission’s international headquarters.

“The day was a real blessing for all of us,” said KPOF General Manager Jack Pelon. “We were there with our entire staff (except for the receptionist), and we had a wonderful time. The project of providing radios for Ghana was great. Many of our listeners got involved with that, and we’re very thankful.”

KPOF’s staff did many live interviews throughout the day, including one via telephone with Lee Sonius, executive director of Reach Beyond’s Sub-Saharan Africa Region, who was visiting the U.S. at the time. “That firsthand report was an excellent eye-opener for our listeners, telling how the radios will have an impact on people and how they will be used,” Pelon related.

The radios will eventually go to people within the coverage area of Victory FM, a Christian station in a remote area of eastern Ghana that is steeped in animism with only a small percentage of believers.

“This is huge!” exclaimed Reach Beyond President Wayne Pederson. “The 520 radios will give the station an instant dedicated audience. And a radio doesn’t just reach one person. It reaches families, churches, schools, prisons, shops—wherever people gather. Many of the people in these villages can’t afford a radio, don’t have electricity and can’t buy good batteries. But they have plenty of sunshine. So they can listen day and night for many, many years on these little ‘missionaries.’”

“Our prayers go with those radios,” related Pelon. “Only the Lord knows exactly where they will land. Our prayer is that they will be effective with as many people as possible and have a long-term mission impact…. We know the radios will multiply the spread of the gospel message, reaching many, many people.”

In addition to the live campaign, the all-day event featured an open house at Reach Beyond’s offices. “We usually don’t have our partners come to us. We usually go to them. So to have KPOF broadcast live from our building was a special experience,” said Sarah Roche, director of U.S. broadcast media and producer of the daily “Reach Beyond” radio program hosted by Pederson.

“We invited local ministry leaders, partners, donor friends to visit our headquarters to observe the live broadcast, to take tours of the building and join us outside in the tent for burgers and hot dogs,” added Pederson. “Many people from the community came and were introduced to our ministry.” The group Sonflowerz, featuring sisters Elissa Leander Tipps and Becca Leander Nicholson, also provided live music during the meal.

Jon Fugler, vice president of advancement at Reach Beyond, said KPOF’s partnership with Reach Beyond “runs deep. The fact that they brought their whole team to our offices and set up a remote studio for the broadcast spoke volumes about their commitment to this project.”

A similar campaign was held five years ago when KPOF raised funds to send radios to Reach Beyond’s partner stations in Thailand. But the relationship between the two organizations goes back much further than that.

“My connection with Reach Beyond began in the 1990s when we partnered with some projects in Estonia, so I developed some really good relationships with Reach Beyond and Ron Cline,” Pelon explained. “That bond has stayed true throughout the years.”

KPOF has invited the staff from the Advancement Department at Reach Beyond to visit the station’s facilities in Denver on Monday, Oct. 20.

It costs $35 to manufacture, tune, test and ship a SonSet^® radio to its final destination. More than 45,000 of the sets have been distributed around the world in the last decade, and Reach Beyond has received requests for another 14,000 radios this year.

The radios were designed by engineers at the HCJB Global Technology Center in Elkhart, Ind. Recently the radios underwent a major redesign, adding AM and shortwave capabilities, with the first shipment from the manufacturer expected in January.

Source: Reach Beyond