Thursday evening, 8 March, I was in Nasir with my colleague Kerry Henderson. One of our primary goals during our short stay was to get our satellite stream established. Although we have been broadcasting in Nasir for several months now, we have been doing so using CDs burned by our office here in Kampala. Although the CDs were a great temporary solution that allowed us to be on the air in Nasir since last fall, they had several limitations. Establishing the stream from Houston would greatly improve the quality of our programming and allow us to add new programming such as community announcements and national and international news. A few weeks earlier, Kerry had traveled to Nasir with a satellite expert, and they still were unable to get the stream established. So we knew we had a difficult task in front of us.
A beautiful full moon was also rising as we made the one-mile trek to the tower. Our staff in Nasir started the programming at 7 PM using the CD player, and we listened in on a hand-held radio. We decided to unhook everything and connect the equipment receiving the stream. Nothing but static. We knew the stream was being received by the transmitter; it just wasn’t sending it out from the tower. Not sure what the problem could be, we reconnected the CD player. But now it wouldn’t work either! This was extremely frustrating. Not only had we failed to get the stream going, but we had messed up the CD player as well. Now there would be no broadcasting unless we could figure out the problem. Discouraged, we shut down the whole system and turned off the generator. We got out the sat phone and made a few calls to relay the bad news. Then we decided to turn everything back on. When we did, the CD player worked! This was a good sign; at least we could continue broadcasting. Then it hit me- we needed to shut down the system, connect the streaming equipment and THEN start everything up again.
10 minutes later our stream was going out all over Nasir County! At that time, the stream coming from Houston was in Dinka. The people in Nasir are Nuer and speak a different language. As we celebrated, our compound manager looked confused. With his hand-held radio close to his ear, he said questioningly, “This is Dinka language.” I said, “Yes, I know, but tomorrow it will be Nuer!”
Praise the Lord that our Nasir tower is now fully functioning after over two years of struggle. Please pray that many people will be transformed as they listen to Good News Radio in Nasir!
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