March/April 2005

South America Region
Brian Utter, Regional Communications Coordinator

• We have seen an exposition of growth in radio in the Spanish-speaking world. We have grown beyond our regional boundaries and are assisting other regions to reach people through radio.

• Now in 24 countries, including all of South America, Central America, the Caribbean, Spain, the US, Canada and Equatorial Guinea in Africa, the average monthly audience is estimated to be over 30 million listeners.

• Hundreds of emails pour in each month seeking help. We have over 1,000 radio station affiliates and are adding more each week.

• In February of 2005, we will launch our first ever Children’s program, “Aventuras Con Buzy” (Adventures With Buzy), already signed up by more than 800 affiliates.

• Our Portuguese ministry will begin transmission this year with a contextualized version of our current Spanish programs. We anticipate offering them to the 10 world areas that speak Portuguese.

• Three new programs are in development: “Viviendo Sin Barreras” (Living Without Barriers); “Hombres de Honor” (Men of Honor); “Familia En Construcción” (Family Under Construction).

• An on-line chat is being added for our current teen program “Revolución Vida” (Life Revolution), as well as text messaging via cell phones.

• Our first regional television program will begin production, featuring Dr. L. Aguiar Valvassoura, Senior Pastor of the Central Church of the Nazarene in Campinas, Brazil. It will be available in both Spanish and Portuguese.

Eurasia Region
Jan Weisen, Regional Communications Coordinator

• Ayman Kafrouny accepted the new position of Arabic Broadcast and Communications Ministry after Jacob Ammari retired after 12 faithful years, on November 1, 2004.

• Currently we are working on developing an Arabic web site for the Nazarene Broadcasting and Communications Ministry. A prototype should be finished in about 8 to 10 weeks. Eventually we'd like to get the page in English as well, but we'll take one step at a time.

• Ayman is working to produce a youth oriented program, in Arabic, and has contacts to broadcast this program.

• We are exploring the possibility of producing a TV program to be broadcast on the Arabic Satellites. This would give us exposure not only in the Middle East but anywhere these satellites reach. In this modern era of communications we are looking at using all the mediums at our disposal and certainly TV is one that can be very useful to us.

Asia-Pacific Region
Doug Flemming, Regional Communications Coordinator

• Celebrating conversions of Buddhist young people through our Thai “Friend2Friend” program, and anticipating many new open doors for broadcasting across Thailand, as radio stations grant more airtime to religious organizations.

• Training & Development of a new broadcast team in PNG, to focus on new programming, specifically targeted towards women and youth. We anticipate airing our first “Cry of the Heart” women’s program this spring.

• Re-vamping & improvement of all radio programs in the Philippines, including a new family program called “Parental Guidance” and some new youth ventures.

• We have witnessed a tremendous improvement in our follow up strategy in the Philippines this year and continue to receive hundreds of contacts each week, many of whom are being personally followed up and discipled.

• The addition of new volunteer and hired staff people to handle the increased load.

• Partnerships with several ministries to produce church planting / discipleship video materials.

• Developing a solid team of Indonesian programmers to better handle our youth program, NZone, which has potential to connect with many in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

Today, we can share Jesus with someone around the world in 5 minutes thanks to communications and technology. It is only through communications and the technology of mass media that we can effectively evangelize this population. Technology has allowed us to produce more economically, but we still have so much more to do. Thank you for making it possible for our Regional Communications Centers to operate in their highest capacity. Your WMB offerings and contributions is a direct extension of God’s mighty hands as one by one, the world is hearing about Christ.