Today’s Headlines:

MOODY BROADCASTING CELEBRATES WMBI’S 80TH ANNIVERSARY

HORN OF AFRICA INDICATORS POINT TO TERRITORIAL, RELIGIOUS WAR

OFFICIALS IN ANOTHER CHINESE PROVINCE STEP UP THREATS ON BELIEVERS

INNOVATIVE WYCLIFFE PROGRAM HELPS FUND BIBLE TRANSLATIONS

* TRANSMITTER STOLEN FROM CONGO STATION RETURNED 10 YEARS LATER

Today’s Top Stories:

MOODY BROADCASTING CELEBRATES WMBI’S 80th ANNIVERSARY

In 1926 Chicago became the birthplace of Moody Bible Institute’s WMBI, the first non-commercial Christian radio station in the U.S. Despite changes in technology and formats, WMBI upholds a familiar presence as the oldest and most renowned Christian radio station in the country. Moody Radio is hosting a concert today to celebrate 80 years of radio ministry, featuring artists such as First Call and Larnelle Harris who have been encouraging WMBI listeners for more than 20 years. “Few radio stations have been around 80 years, and even fewer have been owned by the same company for that entire time,” said Marketing and Promotions Director Colin Lambert. WMBI is one of 35 commercial-free radio stations owned and operated by Moody Bible Institute under its Moody Broadcasting Network. (Evangelical News)

HORN OF AFRICA INDICATORS POINT TO TERRITORIAL, RELIGIOUS WAR

Multiple indicators are pointing toward inevitable territorial and religious war centered among the Horn of Africa nations of Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea. The Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which recently took control of Somalia’s capital city Mogadishu, is now threatening a jihad against Ethiopian military in Somalia to aid in defending Somalia’s U.N.-backed Transitional Federal Government. Ethiopia, a mostly Christian nation, is fearful that Islamic groups such as the ICU might increase unrest in Ethiopia’s southern region that contains about 4 million ethnic Somalis who have already tried to gain their independence from Ethiopia. Large arms shipments of offensive weaponry and strong ties with extreme foreign jihadists, including Arabs, Afghans, Pakistanis, Kashmiris, Palestinians and Syrians, have led to rallies like one on Monday, July 24, in a Somali soccer stadium where Islamic protesters burned Ethiopian flags to chants of “God is great!” (Assist News Service)

OFFICIALS IN ANOTHER CHINESE PROVINCE STEP UP THREATS ON BELIEVERS

China Aid Association reports have surfaced recently that Chinese officials in the Religious Ministry’s office have been persecuting house church Christians in eastern China’s Shandong province since last spring. Six officials raided a family church and then later threatened to confiscate the house where the church meets. In another incident on June 11, 60 Christians were barricaded in their house church building while each person, some as old as 72, who protested with cries of “Free religion!” were detained and placed in police wagons for later individual interrogation. Police threatened some with multi-year sentences at “re-education camps,” all the while not showing official papers or identification. The department director questioned the members why they did not attend the officially sanctioned Three-Self Patriotic Movement, China’s government-recognized Protestant organization, which many house church Christians consider corrupt and heretical. (China Aid Association)

* HCJB World Radio-Australia’s shortwave station in Kununurra broadcasts 16.5 hours of Mandarin and 14 hours of Cantonese programming each week.

INNOVATIVE WYCLIFFE PROGRAM HELPS FUND BIBLE TRANSLATIONS

A new donor program for Wycliffe Bible Translators in partnership with the Charity Group allows items sitting around in people’s attics, garages or offices to help provide funds for Bible translation projects around the globe. “We’ve received collections of fine art, coin collections, stamp collections, tools, timeshares — even golf clubs — things that people used to use, but aren’t using anymore,” explains Wycliffe’s Ron Yaddow. “We’ve come up with a way of receiving those assets and converting them into cash, and the funds flow into strategic translation projects worldwide.” The Charity Group manages all the logistics involved with receiving, marketing and selling people’s donations of unused, non-cash assets and then gives the funds to Wycliffe which then applies them directly to strategic projects worldwide. “[The campaign] has already generated a couple hundred thousand dollars,” says Yaddow. (Mission Network News)

* Transmitter Stolen from Congo Station Returned 10 Years Later

An FM transmitter stolen by marauding soldiers from Radio Kahuzi, HCJB World Radio’s partner station in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo, 10 years ago, was returned to its rightful owners in time for the ministry’s 15th anniversary.

Richard McDonald, a missionary with Believer’s Express Service, Inc., who operates Radio Kahuzi with his wife, Kathy, said the 200-watt transmitter was returned on Tuesday, July 4, exactly 15 years after the station received a broadcasting license from the country’s former president, Mobutu Sese Seko.

“Praise the Lord!” McDonald exclaimed. “Another answer to years of prayer and waiting. What an anniversary present for the Radio Kahuzi team and all our prayer warriors!”

Radio Kahuzi, the country’s first non-governmental radio station, went on the air in 1992, making it one of the first stations in the “radio planting” outreach of HCJB World Radio that has resulted in more than 300 Christian stations going on the air in more than 100 countries. The transmitter was provided by the mission’s Engineering Center in Elkhart, Ind.

The story of the stolen transmitter began in 1996 during the country’s eight-year-long war. The king of the Bashi tribe of 2 million wanted his people to hear the “good moral teaching” that he was hearing on Radio Kahuzi, so he invited McDonald to bring the FM relay to his mountain home. Together they placed the antenna on his rooftop so the signal from the station could be picked up and aired to his people on the other side of the mountain.

“Shortly after they completed installing the equipment, there was a surprise attack and invasion by foreign forces,” McDonald explained. “There was much pressure placed on the Bashi king to involve his people in the ongoing fighting, but he refused.”

The soldiers then began using the king’s home as their headquarters, forcing the king to go into hiding. When the soldiers decided to leave his home, they took the radio equipment with them.

As they were marching through the remote village of Walungu, the soldier carrying the transmitter and coax cable was tired and offered to trade it for an old man’s goat. “The old man feared that the equipment had been stolen from the Bashi king, so even though he had no desire to have the equipment, he exchanged it for the goat, considering it an offering for his king,” McDonald said.

Fearing the marauders would return, the old man abandoned his home and village and fled to a distant, isolated location to wait out the war. He carefully buried the transmitter in the ground beneath his hut.

During the long years of war, the old man’s wife died. The king remained in hiding, but the old man stayed faithful to his king, carefully guarding the transmitter during the entire time.

Now 80 years old, the man recently contacted the king, saying he was waiting for him to return to his home so the equipment could be returned to him. But the king had not come back to his mountain home. Instead, after years of hiding, he had gone to serve in the senate in Kinshasa and was preparing for federal elections July 28-31. He will continue to be an automatic member of parliament along with other tribal kings.

The king has offered part of his home near Bukavu to set up and test the transmitter. A new tower for the antenna has been erected outside his home.

Years of being buried beneath the hut had ruined the carton containing the transmitter, but the equipment itself only suffered minor damage, McDonald added. “With some external cleaning, we hope the transmitter will soon be back on the air, broadcasting [in Walungu] at 102.1 MHz!”

Mike Axman, the engineer in Elkhart who designed HCJB World Radio’s FM transmitters and helped install a shortwave transmitter at Radio Kahuzi in 2001, said he’s amazed the equipment was returned after being missing for so long.

“We’re just happy that after all these years in can be put to good use again,” he said. “We thought perhaps it had fallen into the hands of non-Christians and was being used in Tanzania. We’ve considered keying our transmitters with a password to keep them from being used in cases like this. There was a similar situation in Liberia where some of our transmitters were stolen.” (HCJB World Radio/Radio Kahuzi)