(June 2, 2015 - by Harold Goerzen)  Rosie Rabell had a lot of trouble sleeping in the early-morning hours of Monday, May 25, as lighting flashed, thunder crashed, winds blew and heavy rains soaked her home in the border city of Del Rio, Texas.

“I had never experienced anything like that. It was scary,” said Rabell. “I just knew something terrible would happen, but I never expected it would be as bad as it was.”

Waking up around 6:30 a.m., she first noticed that KVFE-FM, the Spanish-language Christian radio station that she manages, was off the air. “Then I began tuning in to every station that I could, especially the ones across the border in Mexico, and they started giving updates.”

She heard reports about a powerful tornado that had swept through nearby Ciudad Acuña at 6:01 a.m. “Then I started hearing from my friends asking, ‘Are you OK?’” Rabell related, “and they began sending me pictures of damage.”

According to the Mexican news website, zocalo.com, a twister packing winds estimated at 400 km/h (240 mph) devastated parts of the city of nearly 200,000, killing 14 people, injuring over 200 and leaving 6,000 homeless. The storm also flung cars like matchsticks, in some cases carrying them to the rooftops of local businesses.

It was a holiday (Memorial Day), but Rabell headed straight to KVFE which was off the air due to a power outage affecting 10,000 homes and businesses in Del Rio. The station is operated by Inspiracom (formerly World Radio Network, Inc.), one of Reach Beyond’s partner ministries.

While the station was off the air for about 10 hours, Rabell began organizing relief efforts, together with local churches and set up a collection depot where listeners could drop off donations for tornado victims in Acuña. Listeners have been dropping off items such as bottled water, rice, beans, canned food, dry goods, diapers and personal hygiene items.

After electrical power was restored later that day, Abe Limón, Inspiracom’s board chairman, suggested using the airwaves to “promote peace, comfort, love and the goodness of God,” and Rabell began inviting local pastors to come to the station to take live calls from listeners.

“Three different pastors were able to come and pray for the victims,” Rabell explained. “We’ve been having live broadcasts three or four times a day, each segment lasting 10 to 15 minutes.”

This isn’t the first time that Rabell has been involved in relief efforts. A 25-year employee of the network, she was working at KBNL-FM in Laredo two years ago when the station helped collect emergency items for flood victims in Piedras Negras, Mexico, across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas.

“One of our missionaries drove back and forth, delivering donated goods for a whole week,” she said. Inspiracom also helped in relief efforts such as in 2010 when an earthquake struck near KYRM in Yuma, Ariz., and flooding took place close to KBNR in Brownsville, Texas; and in 2011 when wildfires were spreading near KWRB in Sierra Vista, Ariz.

Inspiracom, which includes 14 border stations, several repeaters, Internet streaming and the Christian Academy of the Air (a Bible correspondence course) was started by Reach Beyond with a single English-language FM station, KVMV, in 1978. Between 1984 and 2000 another dozen (mostly Spanish-language) stations were added in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. KVFE in Del Rio went on the air in January 2014. The station can be heard by some 315,000 people on both sides of the border.

“Our work as a local ministry is especially important to the community at a time like this,” Limón added. “This is a key moment for the ministry and a key moment for allowing the love of God to be shared with the local community.”

Sources: Reach Beyond, Inspiracom, zocalo.com