(Feb. 13, 2014 - by Jean Muehlfelt)  Ever since he was 7 years old, “Joey” had wanted to be a missionary doctor to Africa. God used the exciting tales of wild animals, close calls, changed lives and other adventures in the jungle to capture this young boy’s heart.

Joey never lost his desire to serve the Lord overseas, and after graduating from college, he went on to medical school, becoming a doctor with a degree in public health and tropical medicine.

Studying at the same time as Joe was a young lady who was open to missions, but she didn’t sense that same special calling from God. That was until she met Joe. Becky graduated from college with a degree in English and psychology. They married in 1989, and Becky completed her registered nursing degree.

Dr. Joe and Becky Harvey moved to the Republic of the Congo in 1996 to serve as medical missionaries. They were learning French in the capital city of Brazzaville when civil war broke out in the country in the summer of 1997, forcing them to go back to the U.S. for the remainder of that year. It was during that time when God confirmed in Dr. Joe’s heart the vision of returning to the Congo to start the country’s first Christian hospital.

The Harvey family, now with children, moved back to Congo and continued seeking God’s will about starting a hospital. Dr. Joe knew the need was great. While working in a clinic in Impfondo, he and the staff saw 10,000 patients in its first two years of operation.

A turning point came when Dr. Joe was invited to a wedding reception that was held at an abandoned communist youth camp. The camp had been built about 15 years earlier by communists to indoctrinate the area’s youth in communism and Marxist philosophies. But the turbulent years of the 1990s brought violence and changes in Congo’s government. The camp was never opened, although 27 structurally sound buildings were erected.

Dr. Joe began making regular visits to this site, about three miles from his home. He would walk around the large perimeter fence, praying that God would remove the spiritual gates that Satan had established around it and that God would open the way for missionaries to build a hospital there.

One day, as Dr. Joe went to pray outside the camp, he found that the large steel gates in the wall around the camp had been removed. Apparently some fishermen had taken them off and used their long rods (with sharp spear-like tops) as new fishing spears. Encouraged by this rather tangible answer to prayer, he approached the government about using the camp.

A few months later when Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso.and his wife, Antoinette, came for a visit to Impfondo, Dr. Joe was able to have a meeting with his wife. As it turns out, she had personally overseen the construction of that camp 15 years earlier. She had since become a follower of Jesus Christ and was delighted at the idea of the camp becoming a Christian hospital.

A short time later, Dr. Joe was able to travel to Brazzaville to meet with the president who gladly gave the missionary doctor permission to use the camp and told his cabinet that they were to do everything they could to help Dr. Joe get the hospital started.

With grateful hearts, the Harvey family returned to the U.S. for a one-year furlough in 2001. They visited dozens of churches, sharing the news of what God had been doing in Congo, and asked people to pray, donate money and equipment, and even join them in working at the new hospital.

By mid-2002, 13 tons of donated equipment was loaded into a 40-foot shipping container and sent to the newly named Pioneer Christian Hospital in Impfondo.

In 2006 Reach Beyond, which had partnered with Dr. Joe in the hospital outreach, even supplying short-term medical staff to help fill the gaps, invited Dr. Joe to a consortium in Ghana.

According to Curt Cole, senior vice president of global ministries, “the summit was to bring together radio and potential healthcare partners to dream big about what could be done together with the ‘Voice and Hands’ ministry in Africa.” Dr. Joe walked away from that summit with the dream of having a radio station as part of the hospital ministry.

After almost eight years of prayer and planning, an FM station was birthed on the grounds of the former communist youth camp last month. Dr. Joe and his staff have added one more tool for their physical and spiritual care of the thousands of patients who pass through their remote hospital each year.

In January, missionaries Ed Muehlfelt from HCJB Global Technology Center in Elkhart, Ind., and Alex from the Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Office in Accra, Ghana, met Dr. Joe at the hospital. They had brought with them a compact version of this radio station.

Their suitcases were packed with portable equipment that was to begin broadcasting by week’s end from atop the hospital’s small water tower. Dr. Joe’s vision had finally come to fruition.

Although the FM radio station is considered “temporary,” a larger version is being packed into a 40-foot shipping container destined for Impfondo this spring. Missionary staff will then travel back to the temporary radio station to install a permanent station on hospital property.

Plans are to replace the small one-bay antenna on a 35-foot water tower with a much larger four-bay antenna to be erected on a new 300-foot tower on the grounds. Included in that shipping container are 160 SonSet^® radios that were designed by staff at the Technology Center. The solar-powered sets are fixed tuned to the new station’s frequency and will be distributed to people in the area.

The station’s name is Radio Sango Kitoko (Beautiful News Radio). It is technically a community radio station and will be used to reach the surrounding villages with music, public service announcements and inspirational messages in languages spoken locally.

In the future, volunteers will produce radio programs on topics such as preventing diseases (HIV/AIDS and malaria) and accidents—especially car crashes. Since the station is powered by the hospital generator, which is only allowed to run during surgical procedures, hours are limited for the station.

Alex added that the leaders of the local churches and the hospital felt burdened to make sure that they had to appoint exactly the right person to be the station manager, “a very crucial role.”

“A three-day training course was held by a Christian station manager from Point Noire, and more than 80 candidates attended to learn about radio,” Alex explained. “The leaders met and each one had privately concluded that the same guy should be the manager.  There was such joy, knowing that God had been leading the decision that these Congolese men jumped up and hugged the new manager. This is very significant since men really do not hug there.”

Source: Reach Beyond