Nyankunde is a small town near the Ugandan border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, which I visited in 1989 on my very first trip to Africa.
In March I was responding to a request for training and technical help from a young man who has started a radio station to bring a ‘message of reconciliation’ to this war-torn area.
Jean-Luc had been receiving French radio programmes from Grace Baptist Mission (GBM) for some time and had then found the website of ‘Radios Ebène’, the association with which I have been working for over ten years. His request was backed up by his testimony, which had been picked up by Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), who had come to know him well.
Suffered severely
I flew from London direct to Entebbe and then made the much shorter trip into the Congo with a MAF flight, similar to the one I used in 1989. It was soon evident that this town had suffered severely in the intervening years and is only now trying to recover… but the unseen hurt runs much deeper. Into this town have come a number of mission agencies seeking to bring healing and hope to repair peoples’ lives and hearts.
The radio station is set at the top of a very steep hill – good for the signal to reach outlying villages – and I struggled to make the climb, wondering how many times it would be necessary over the coming week. However, the training of the team was to take place in a hall near the town centre and on Monday afternoon over 40 people gathered, drawn perhaps by the offer of a meal before the first session. A number of other radio stations were represented but no one had ever received any training about radio broadcasting!
I quickly realised that any ‘practical exercises’ would be very difficult to handle on my own but I wanted at least to get them doing one basic task: preparing a three-minute talk, which is at the heart of many radio programme formats. I suggested this on Tuesday, asking them to come prepared on Wednesday to deliver their talks before all of us. Some were concerned that they were not fluent enough in French, but I encouraged them to work in their local language instead, adding that their peers would then assess their efforts. They gratefully agreed to this challenge!
Why not before?
However, as you can probably imagine, over 40 x three minutes plus feedback would take longer than an afternoon’s teaching session – not just for them, but even more so for me! So we carried this exercise over to Thursday and then added the other main programme building block, the interview.
As we finished up on Friday there was plenty of positive comment and the regular refrain, ‘Why didn’t we have this training before now?’, reminded me that there are so many other radio stations with a similar need if their message is to be clearly heard. This is one reason why I continue this ministry despite all the practical obstacles involved. But the main reason is Paul’s question in Romans 10: ‘How shall they hear… and believe and call on the Lord to be saved?’
Lost in a storm
Sadly, after I returned to the UK, an email from Jean-Luc informed me that a severe storm with gale-force winds had seriously damaged the pylon and the antenna, meaning that they will be off-air for some weeks while repairs are carried out. Please pray for these friends at this difficult time.
