Back home at HCJB

Three of us travelled to Darwin last week to start packing a 40ft container situated at CVC. We stayed on premesis for 5 days whilst dismantling shelving and equipment and playing what can only be described as live tetris. CVC are closing their doors and have been very generous with their equipment. In the future, some of the CVC programmes will be aired on HCJB.

It's just a short drive from Kununurra to Darwin - around 830km - so we tagged and only stopped for fuel. Lots of laughs in the car, hot and humid weather really faught any benefits from the air con though.

We picked up Stephen Sutherland from the Darwin airport whilst over there and Chris and I have been receiving a crash course in shortwave transmission. Really enjoying his company. Steve will be here for a few weeks instructing us on what we need to build for the new site.
Steve's whole family will be here in May. At that point, the kids will have a huge ammt of same-age friends to play with.

The first volunteers (apart from us) have started arriving today. Many will be in their 60s and above. Plenty to do like driving the tractor/slasher etc and picking bananas so the tasks that are harder physically will be left to us 'young-uns'.

I polished the database for admin today and loaded in receipts from Feb 2010 back to Jul 2009 to see how it would perform. Happy enough with the results, but a little bug-eyed from the process. This db has made it easy to double check all entries, keep an eye on supplier price increases and micro manage expenses on site.

Chris continued to prepare the ground in the new site so we can get on with building the tower sections very soon. Steve is currently calculating sizes, lengths, weights and materials for optimum performance and storm endurance. I am really excited about where things are about to head.

Daniel, Raquel, Sadoc and Nicholas will be heading down to Perth at the end of this week and will stay there for a few months whilst visiting different churches to ask for support. Daniel is a gifted technician and very handy when things break down on the transmitters. Like the rest of us, he does not like to ask for money, but they will need it to continue to work here. I am hoping to line up a spot for him at Kingsley church in about a month's time.

I am hoping to build a kind of mud map of all the areas covered by Christian Shortwave radio around the world so people can see what countries are currently reached. This along with any emails I can scrounge from listeners will hopefully paint a fuller picture of the value of this mission.