Not being in charge is liberating. There are certain to be expectations others have, as to what the one in charge should be doing. Maybe they think you ought to be doing something that isn’t your responsibility at all. If one has been given no responsibilities, can’t one do whatever they please? Not if God is involved in your life.

We have been created in Christ Jesus to do good works and we do not belong to ourselves. We have been bought by him and are to help others see Him, in all that we do. Here, Ellen and I were, back in Congo. God would show us what He wanted us to do.

The CECA church leadership soon requested that I again accept the assignment of being the director of Editions CECA. I am only able to speculate how they came to that decision, but it was very likely that they wanted the literature work to operate as it had, just before the rebellion.

The situation in Zaire at that time had been vastly different. There was then a fairly large presence of missionaries placing orders for services at the printing press, which they paid for in US dollars. They requested Bible School materials, follow-up booklets, texts for Theological Education by Extension, Sunday School materials, and other similar projects. The completed books were often paid for by sponsors supporting the missionary’s ministry. They also ordered the printing of personal prayer letters, but that service had decreased with the possibility of using e-mail instead. Now all the missionaries had been evacuated. Some were now working in Kenya. They were exploring options of getting their printing done in Nairobi, and shipping the completed orders back to Congo.

The CECA church districts often ordered membership cards and so we printed them on card stock, keeping an inventory on hand. The church was a steady customer, but only bought in small amounts and paid in local currency. Songbooks, in various languages, were another item we printed and sold through the bookstore. Local churches and station bookstores would buy a few at a time and sell them to the people. The typical church member wanted to have a Bible and a songbook to carry with him each Sunday, so there was always a market for songbooks.

At the time we were forced to evacuate, Editions CECA was being audited. AIM had offered the service since the auditor had completed his work in Bunia and was available. He had collected all the data he needed and traced the required number of transactions through the system, giving us a very positive initial report. Placing a value on the bookstore inventory of printed items was not yet calculated. Some of the old inventory would never be sold, some was damp and moldy, and some items on the list just couldn’t be found. The bookstore inventory only helped keep the press solvent, if it could be sold. The paper inventory at the press had real value, since it could be used to satisfy any real order, if we could get one. That inventory was low. Ukumu had been buying paper for the press, a little at a time, and importing it from Uganda.

I think it was expected that I would make some money for the church with Editions CECA. I felt it was doubtful, since the press had been consuming inventory in order to pay the workmen. We would need to buy paper and printing supplies, then initiate some printing projects that had the potential of realizing income for the press. Reprinting the Bangala and Pazande hymnbooks might help keep the press solvent for a while. There were some Bangala follow-up booklets still in the works and I could contact Bill Stough to see what should be done to complete them. Reprinting the Zande Hymnbook was the option we choose.

The offset plates, saved from the last time we printed the book, were no longer useable, so we needed to start over again. The Zande hymnbook had originally been printed on the Heidelberg letterpress, and the metal slugs of type had been melted down years ago to use on other projects. For the last printing we had photographed every page of the book and assembled all the negatives into the flats to burn plates for the A3 offset press. The flats had also deteriorated, so making new plates from them would not give good results. We decided to scan all the pages of the book and, using optical character recognition, enter every song into PageMaker on the computer. It would be long and tedious work, every word needing to be checked. Of course the computer had no spell check in Pazande, until we built one, adding a word at a time.

Ellen found that she enjoyed the meticulous work and set up her office in our house so she could care for her other responsibilities at the same time. She and Mboligihe’s wife, Mbolifulani, became good friends and together started a ladies’ Bible study at Rethy.

The radio project had been in progress when we left. Cornerstone, the main sponsor of the project, replied to my letter. I had related the encouraging news that the four bay antenna, and the tower sections had not been lost during the looting. They were also praising the Lord with me that there was still the possibility of building the permanent studio for the FM radio station. They had donated $25,000 to AIM for the project. This I understood to be confirmation from the Lord that I now had another assignment, to build the radio studio.

I would need to get Banga, Sali, and Philipo to see if they were available to help get together a team to do the work. I could get Mugasa to help haul in the heavy materials. I would need to order rocks for the foundation and get the men in the valley to begin washing sand by the stream. The sawyers at the nearby cypress forest needed to begin sawing two-inch-thick lumber to build the trusses. I could have Ukumu buy glass and hardware for the project in Kampala. Some of the former dorm workmen could begin to sort out good bricks from the rubble of the burned dorm on the hill. I would need to get tires for the blue Toyota pick-up. It would be useful in hauling brick and sand to the site. I began working on the detailed plans for the permanent studio building, and started some men clearing the site for the installation at Puu.

Mboligihe was now directing the radio work. At the time of the evacuation, the studio equipment had been saved by carrying it all to Goikpa, a church in Alur territory north of Rethy. It was only accessible by footpath after crossing two marshy valleys, or by a much longer overgrown road, so there had been no looting there. The German technicians at the Bunia radio studio had replaced the lost microphones and helped get the radio back on the air.

Something was always happening at the shipping container behind the press. I was glad that Mboligihe was in charge. He offered a variety of programs in several languages and there were many faithful listeners. I found a line of people waiting, fairly quietly, outside the open container door. It would soon be their turn to greet friends on the radio and request that a song be played for them. Several multilingual speakers were at the microphone table inside, ready to help. Kilendu and Dho Alur were the local languages, but they welcomed any who came. Most of the greetings were given in Kingwana, the local trade language. The required RTK request forms had been printed at the press and were sold for a few cents apiece at the bookstore, at various cooperating shops, and in the market places. The money earned paid a small “Prime d’Encouragement” to the volunteer speakers serving the guests.

Back when I started broadcasting from that shipping container the only programming was a random selection of music from a six disk CD player, purchased at Best Buy in Indiana. Ken Cummings had selected a mix of different kinds of Christian music and included the CDs with the equipment order from HCJB. He came to help set everything up. Once the basic antenna was mounted at the top of the pine tree we wanted to put a signal on the air to establish the presence of Radio Tangazeni Kristo. There were no other FM radio signals available so it would take some time for people to discover the signal on the unused FM band of their radios. I turned on the broadcast for two hours in the morning and for two hours in the evening, praying that the signal would be discovered.

The news spread quickly. The FM signal was found and played only clear, high fidelity, Christian music from America. The missionaries said they loved the music! The reactions from the local people we sought to reach for the Lord, were mixed. Never had their radios given better sound, but the radio never talked in their languages.

Doug Armstrong, a Canadian missionary at Rethy was involved in a ministry that recorded, on cassette tapes, Bible stories in various languages. The Swahili set of tapes was readily available and I got a set for the radio. The cassette player worked, however each recording was rather short, so I just played a tape and then switched the input back to the CD changer, locked the container, and left to care for my other responsibilities.

Marko Chura, the young man who worked part time in our home, asked me why I only played one Swahili tape. Couldn’t I play more? Could I start the radio earlier in the morning? I replied, “Would you like to do it? I just can’t.” When he said, “Ndiyo,” (yes) he became my first trainee. We rode double on my motorcycle down to the press to get him acquainted with the broadcasting equipment in the shipping container.

Marko was a faithful dorm worker who had started working in the Dorm laundry service when he was very young, but had moved up to become one of Ellen’s cooks. He is the only one I know who learned to make pie crust as well as she does! He wanted to learn English too, so Ellen began to teach him. He came to our weekly Bible study and prayer in the evening.

He was always keen to learn, and asked me to teach him how to repair watches. It turned out that he was highly skilled with his hands and caught on quickly. Most of the watches brought in to me needed cleaning. Taking the watch completely apart, cleaning each wheel and pinion, each jewel or bushing, and then reassembling, was not too difficult for him. Oiling in the right places with the right amount of oil was also a skill. He understood how the escapement worked and could adjust the hairspring attachment point to obtain the correct beat. I ordered watch repair tools for him, gave him some watch cleaning fluids and watch oil. He went into business.

I was pleased to overhear him tell one of his clients that the problem turned out to be very small and that there was no charge. He was honest, not taking advantage of the one who knew nothing about regulating a watch. It was likely that the owner had used a small stick to try to move the regulating lever and had slipped, bending the hairspring down to touch the swinging balance wheel. Straightening it, using an eye loop and fine tweezers, was easy for Marko. We trusted him completely.

Marko soon became the first one to announce, “This, is Radio Tangazeni Kristo, broadcasting from CECA Rethy, at 90.1 FM.” I never heard him make the announcement because he greeted the unseen people at 5:00 AM, probably using Kinguana, maybe French. He then gave the title of the cassette tape to be played, and RTK was on the air. I had only shown him how to turn everything on, check the indicators and adjust the signal strength, load the cassettes and disks, and how to use the microphone. I had him start the equipment a number of times, even taking him outside with a small radio so he could hear it was actually being broadcast. We made a number of trial broadcasts, going through the shutdown procedure after each. I’m certain anybody listening would be wondering, what was going on? Marko was learning fast. He needed to sign off and close down all the equipment after two hours. I gave him the key to the container. I, was only the builder.

Mboligihe had also been trained in radio communications, so he was teaching Marco and other volunteers to work with him preparing and presenting the radio programs. In our absence, the radio was being used by God far more effectively then the way it had begun.

God had chosen and gifted those He wanted to use, increasing the radio outreach beyond anything I had imagined.

I was eager to start building the permanent studio and erecting the more powerful antenna.

We had our new assignment.