Judy's Testimony: Saved by Radio

Judy became a Christian through a Trans World Radio programme aired on a local radio station in Durban. Although it happened more than 10 years ago, hers is a powerful testimony that is worth repeating.

Judy was born in Durban, the fourth of seven children. "As I grew up, I diligently followed a life patterned by what my parents had taught me and had practised themselves," she says. Her parents had taught her be respectful to everyone around her and to follow all the rituals of their religion. "I learnt that we needed to do penance to help pay for our sins and to win merit or favour with God. As a teenager, I often lay awake at night terribly afraid. I tried hard to be a good person, but all that I said and did still troubled my conscience daily as I was never sure if 'good' was 'good enough'.

Association of Christian Media Conference Inspires Christians Media to Claim Culture

TWR's Anthony Barkhuizen, the Broadcast Centre Manager at the TWR Africa Regional Office, recently attended the annual Association of Christian Media (ACM) conference that was held in June in Cape Town. The conference seeks to inspire and encourage Christian media workers in South Africa and the broader African continent.

"We as Christian media should set the tone and culture of society through our programming and media activities so that the Christian culture is assimilated as the prevailing culture of our times," said Anthony Barkhuizen.

You Changed my Life!

"As the agent of Jesus, you changed my life!" says a listener to TWR from East Africa describing his life today. But things were very different 23 years ago.

In 1989 Wakshuma was a youth living in a communist-governed country. "Life was very difficult for me," says Wakshuma. "My mother was very poor and couldn't care for me. My father had died."

Into this setting he found comfort and encouragement from TWR radio broadcasts and the letters received by a TWR missionary in the listener response department. "The letters changed the course of my life. The letters encouraged me to follow Jesus," Wakshuma says as he found comfort reading the Bible and Bible study materials sent to him by TWR.

Waldo is one of those guys in the office who can speak "machine." While the rest of us bang our heads on our keyboards when things go wrong, he swoops in and negotiates a cease fire and gets everything back to "normal" for us. He says that the best part of his job at TWR is, "to see the relief on people's faces when things get fixed for them!" My face has been one of those faces!

One of the coolest places TWR has sent Waldo has to be Cape Verde, an island off the coast of West Africa. As a qualified international trainer, he went to teach a group of volunteers how to produce radio programmes. While he was there he heard about a listener in one of the remotest parts of Cape Verde, who gets up every morning to listen to TWR because his life has been changed through the programmes. That's the kind of stuff which keeps our spiritual batteries charged at TWR – knowing someone so isolated is being reached right in his home!

Waldo is a classic South African guy. He loves rugby and meat! His favourite rugby team is the Sharks (from the KwaZulu-Natal province) and of course, the Springboks, South Africa's national team. Waldo is also plugged into his church and is constantly involved. When he's not reading big thick text books on networking (paper weights for us non-technical types), he likes to play computer games, or go fishing.