(December 3, 2010 - by Harold Goerzen) Listenership to HCJB Global's local FM station in southern Spain has reached an all-time high, especially with the addition of a weekly program for prisoners started about a year ago.
"We don't have time to finish giving all the greetings in the 2½-hour program," said the director of HCJB Global's North Africa/Middle East Region who also serves as interim station manager. "In each program we try to invite someone who used to be a prisoner or who was involved with drugs and became a Christian. Often these people give their testimony, and then they play Christian flamenco music ? live, great!"
Produced with the help of a dozen volunteers, the program may be heard by inmates at a nearby prison. It gives them a way to communicate with family and friends outside. The station's signal covers about 15 cities and towns, or a population of more than 400,000.
"Since we started our prisoner program, more people are listening than at any time in the last 13 years," the director added. "We've never had a program before that was so attractive to the audience. One current issue in the region is that young people often didn't finish school, choosing instead to take construction jobs. But lately construction is down, so people don't have work and can't pay their bills. They think one 'solution' is to get involved in drug trafficking. But the police have arrested a lot of drug dealers; therefore, the prison is very full."
With the area's continuing financial crisis, the director also has a vision to add programs that improve listeners' skills in English and mathematics. "I have a lot of ideas to improve the broadcasts in the future," he said. "The volunteers are open to consider new ideas. It's fun to see what kind of ideas they come up with."
The director would also like to add a short Bible-teaching program to disciple believers in "easy-to-understand language, avoiding the Christian lingo that many listeners don't understand. We hope to include two-minute testimonies. What attracted them to Christianity and caused them to become a believer?"
One woman who came to Christ through the broadcasts said she had been listening for two years, but never called or sent an email message until recently. "She said that after listening to the programs for a year, she urged her three sons and daughter-in-law to listen as well," the director shared. "They all began listening very carefully to nearly all of the programs. As a result she, along with her sons and daughter-in-law, all came to Christ."
They realized they needed to grow in their faith, but didn't want to go to church, afraid of how the people might react when they heard their rough life stories. Finally, their desire to grow spiritually was so strong that they began looking for a church and found a pastor. At first he was skeptical about them, and he wanted to know if they had made a true decision for Christ. After hearing their testimonies, he said, "You're ready to be baptized!" A week later the five new believers got baptized.
"The encouraging thing about this story is knowing that we have well-balanced programming directed at those who know nothing about Jesus, but want to know more about Him-to the point of making a decision and getting baptized," the director related. "Everything they knew about Christianity came from listening to our broadcasts. The pastor said, 'There is nothing else we need to teach them in order to get baptized!'"
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