Do you remember the scene in the Star Wars movie where young Anakin Skywalker first fired up his pod racer? He loudly announced the obvious to all who could hear over the engine noise, “It’s workinnnnggg!!!” Jim Avella and I had a moment a little like that this week. Several months ago, the radio station was blessed with three new computers. The old ones had been running 24 hours a day, seven days a week since May of 2001. We sure got our money’s worth out of them, but they were getting more than a little flaky.
The two production computers were simple to change, but the on-air computer was a little like the first open heart surgery. That computer plays all our music and programs over the air, it digitally records audio from our satellite receiver, it transfers files from another satellite receiver, it renames and processes some of the files, and a whole lot more that there just isn’t time to tell about. Each of those processes has a boat load of settings that need to be right before the computer can be put into service. And all the constantly changing data on the old computer has to have a match on the new one.
Peter and I had done some of the set-up work on the new computer before Jim Avella arrived and put his technical training to work for us. Thursday afternoon Jim put it on line, but we kept the old computer running and connected so we could jump back to it if necessary. Good thing!! We had to go back and forth between the two machines for about two days because we kept discovering little adjustments that were necessary, some of which could not be done while the computer was on the air. The nastiest surprise was Friday morning when I learned that all our audio from the satellite was dead silent. Ouch! I think that we now have all the kinks ironed out and, as a bonus, we will continue to have the old computer ready to go on line at a moment’s notice should anything go amiss with the new machine. Jim found a nifty little program to automatically keep the two computers’ files synchronized. God is good!
Travis and Emily Mitten are still getting things in order in their “new to them” home. The other day I took Travis to almost every hardware store on the island looking for a drinking water filter. We finally found a place where they could order an ultraviolet light system. It should be here Monday. I think Jim Avella is going to get an outlet installed for the Mittens so they can use their washing machine. So far, they have been hauling their laundry to our house and, with four kids, that’s quite a bit of hauling. So, it looks like it will be Wednesday before I can really put Travis to work around here.
On a totally different subject, I thought I would deal with a question that Mildred and I often hear when we speak in churches in the U.S. “What programs do you broadcast?” I made a partial list of our broadcasters and listed them here with links to their web sites. These are just our English programs. Many of them have Spanish counterparts and there are some other Spanish programs that do not have English versions.
- “A Word With You”
- Dr. Gary Chapman’s “Five Love Languages”
- “Free Indeed” and “Unshackled”
- “Grace to You”
- “Insight for Living”
- “Love Worth Finding”
- “Man in the Mirror”
- “Mission Network News”
- “Thru the Bible”
- “Today in the Word”
- “Keys for Kids” and “Down Gilead Lane”
- “Paws & Tales”
- “We Kids”
We have a few other English programs that do not have web addresses such as “The Islander’s Hour” which is produced in house from recordings sent to us by a few select pastors. And the programs are interspersed with lots of great Christ honoring music.
I’ll close with an amazing statistic. I’ve mentioned before that “Request and Dedication” has just seemed to explode. “R&D,” as we like to call it, is a one hour program Monday through Friday and one and a half hours on Saturday. Listeners call pretty much all day asking for various songs to be played for friends and family. Sometimes they just want to hear a particular song. So far this year, we are running away from the record set last year for the number of listener contacts for “R&D.” Our lowest month so far this year was April with 1,059 contacts for the English program. Other months ranged from just under 1,300 to well over 1,400 plus similar numbers for the Spanish program. But get a load of this! In September we had 2,103 calls, letters, and personal contacts just for the English “R&D” program. Today was the first time in well over a month that Mildred had fewer than 100 calls for the Saturday program. She “only” had 97 today. On weekdays we can generally play 12-13 songs and play 18-19 on Saturday, so each song usually has several requests associated with it. Our September total, including the Spanish program, was 3,328 requests.
Now let me put this in perspective. When we served here from 2001-2003 a typical English “R&D” program had 10-14 requests. If we had fifteen in that hour we felt over whelmed. I hope you’ll pray with us that, as these listeners enjoy the English music at noon and the Spanish music after work, they will get hooked on HRGS, tell their friends, and listen all day to the great preaching and teaching that goes on from five in the morning till eleven at night. Thanks.
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