The Seventh-day Adventist Church on the small island nation of Kiribati has big plans to win souls for Jesus.
The Trans-Pacific Union Mission is building a 500 watt FM radio station on Tarawa Island in the Kiribati Mission, one of the poorest missions in the South Pacific Division.
Volunteer project manager Pastor Colin Dunn said Hope Radio FM Kiribati will be able to reach 60 per cent of the 103,500 citizens of Kiribati, where the Church has historically struggled to find a voice.
“Once we had primary schools but they were nationalised by the government, leaving the Church with one junior level high school, Kauma, which moved on to become a senior level high school when the government nationalised the lower high school level,” Pastor Dunn said.
“Kauma has had a good influence on thousands of i-Kiribati [indigenous] young people, both academically and spiritually. Many young people accept Jesus while students there but on returning home return to the faith of their family.
“This dynamic, combined with another radio station that is not friendly towards Adventists and which is deliberately opposing our Church, has made kingdom growth in Adventism difficult.”
Radio is an ideal vehicle to nurture the ex-students and present biblical truth in the local language to people in their homes, according to Pastor Dunn. Hope Radio will be run from the Mission office by “a very experienced and well-known radio presenter”, he said.
“As always in mission, finance is a struggle, so please pray that from under the somewhat derelict mission roof, the local Kiribati Mission will be able to get the three angels’ messages out.”
