Engineering Service Team – The People

FEBC International’s Engineering Service Team (EST) is a small and focused group of Broadcast Engineering professionals who come along side FEBC’s member fields to assist them in solving technical problems, planning for the future, preparing project plans and working hand in hand with national staff to increase their engineering capacity. The current team members have a total of decades of engineering experience and broadcast savvy. In this post I would like to introduce two of the team members, Vaughan and Owen.

img_2840-1 — Vaughan on the Right with FEBC Philippines Short Wave Broadcast Staff

Vaughan, in the picture at left with technical staff from FEBC Philippines has years of training and experience in the core digital infrastructure and software required to support major broadcast ministry operations. He covers a broad area of IT expertise including switching, digital storage servers, firewalls, routers and playout automation software including all the various supporting bits and user software for recording and audio processing. He also assists fields in analyzing their ability to recover from major disasters like fire, earthquake, volcano events and typhoons. In this day and age, where everything about the business of broadcast is digitized, having a plan to backup and be able to restore key assets from program audio files to financial records after a disaster is important. The need is high for FEBC compared to many of you since a lot of our stations are deployed around the “ring of fire” in the pacific where earthquakes, tsunami, and volcanic disasters are much more common.

IMG_2462 (2) — Owen (L) works with Cambodia Chief Engineer Pagnan – inspecting a tower in need of some help

Owen, at left with Voice of Love Chief Engineer Pagnan, hails from New Zealand. He is approaching 30 years of service with FEBC and brings serious expertise in broadcast structures to FEBC. He worked many years as a rigger on our major shortwave site in Saipan and brings that experience with towers, guy systems and antennas to the team. He is also very capable as a broadcast technician and assists our fields who have difficulty finding engineering talent by evaluating their facilities and providing advice on steps to take to repair and maintain their broadcast facilities and equipment. He also spends a lot of time literally on the road measuring signal quality and coverage of FEBC’s many local FM stations. The equipment needed to do drive testing is something that individual stations can’t afford, but FEBC, as a virtual network, has network level engineering and equipment resources that our fields can use. These resources are found in and held by the Engineering Service Team so that all of our fields can take advantage of them.

June at – Voice of Love Cambodia

I had a very satisfying and encouraging visit with the leadership staff of Voice of Love (FEBC) Cambodia in mid- June. There were a number of action items as part of the visit. My main goal was to continue in person a review of their progress against strategic plan goals that I had been working on via email with Field Director Makara. The strategic plan is aggressive and calls for reaching each locality of Cambodia with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They have made significant progress over the last 18 months.

To reach all of Cambodia a combination of media channels including radio, player boxes, streaming audio, audio on demand, social media and staff visits will be needed. In the coming months pray as the team seeks to expand their listener base through upgrade of a translator station in Kampong Thom, expanded player box distribution and an experimental effort to recruit new listeners to our on line platforms in several provincial cities.

VOL_Counselling — A Listener Event Takes Place in the Province

In addition to the strategic plan review, I took the opportunity to train and work hand in hand with the management team on some basic project management skills in order to encourage deeper planning discipline and a more organized approach. This kind of short teaching combined with side by side work/coaching provides groundwork and practice in skills along with making progress in planning out areas of strategy that have not yet received a deep review.

Most organizations are able to execute project work and day to day operations but are challenged to do a good job of project definition. I encourage the question “what will this look like/include when it is done?” Training in the discipline of creating a work breakdown structure puts a tool for good definition in the hands of the staff. Teaching, coaching, encouraging and reinforcing all lead to slow steady uptake of business skills. This is one of the ways that I can add value to our project and strategic planning processes and the ability of our field staff to use them.

WBS_Training — Coaching/Practicing Work Breakdown Structure Development Methods

In addition to the work with strategic planning and coaching in planning methods I was able to work on the details of the Kampong Thom project and also did my part to hold another Amateur Radio Exam Session at National Polytechnic Institute of Cambodia. We had an NPIC teach pass the test as a new technician class ham.

Talas Station Hits the Airwaves

Talas, Kyrgyzstan is the location of FEBC’s newest FM station.

Thanks to the all our partners. Now your ministry reaches to the depth of Kyrgyzstan, TALAS. This region is very difficult and spiritually tense. There till now, there is shamanism, occultism, sacrifice for the spirits of dead people. Islam is spreading in the same place, and now the Truth of the Gospel will come there.

FEBC’s fourth station in Kyrgyzstan has officially been launched in the city of Talas, an important regional hub in the northwestern part of the country. The new station is set to reach a potential 250,000 people. This is the fourth station of six in a plan to spread the gospel via radio through all of Kyrgyzstan. The new station will be led by Rev. Ulanbek Karypov, a Talas local.

During a recent visit to Talas, Rev. Karypov met with some old friends to share the gospel and talk about FEBC’s goals for the new FM station.

“I could see a real hunger in their eyes for the Good News of salvation,” he said. “People need Jesus more than anything. We hope that our radio station will introduce Christ to these people who are drowning in darkness. They need to hear the Good News, believe in Jesus as their Savior and Lord, and follow Him.”

Guy and the rest of the Engineering Service Team have enjoyed their technical consulting role and their role in assisting with major purchases for the station expansion in Kyrgyzstan. The work they do, though vital to a well built station, isn’t something that regular people, even those who work in the studio will see. But the local engineer and the EST know what it takes to get a strong signal to people who need to hear about Jesus. As each person shares their faith, love for the Lord and God given skills the Kingdom grows.

More info on FEBC’s Impact in Kyrgyzstan.

Exciting Times at FEBC Thailand

With the retirement of the former director of FEBC Thailand your prayer support becomes critical. Transitions in leadership are always a challenge and give our enemy a chance to oppose the ministry. Please pray for new FEBC Thailand field director Noppakhun as he works to encourage the staff, stabilize funding and keep the many Transnational Ethnic Tribal Language broadcasts that he supervises going strong.

With your prayers and financial support behind me we are able to make a consistent effort to provide business advice, consulting, organizational help and especially friendship and encouragement to Noppakhun Prasobkiatkit the new Field Director of FEBC Thailand. It is an understatement to call this a bumpy transition and continued support including my presence physically and via today’s modern communication channels is making a difference. Nopp has a spectrum of problems to deal with urgently including encouraging the staff, growing the field’s financial support base, maintaining tribal language production in 16 different languages and meeting all the many partners of FEBC Thailand who he is expected to work with.

Nopp, a tribal ethnic language producer within FEBC Thailand for a number of years, is the best choice to ensure the ministry moves forward, but he faces a steep learning curve. FEBC International with your help has committed my help in providing business coaching, financial review and support, assistance with funding proposals and liaison with other funding partners that support the ministry.

In conjunction with Ed Cannon, FEBC USA President and FEBC International Chairman and Kevin Keegan, President of FEBC Australia and FEBC International Executive Committee point of contact for this work, I am spending a lot of time and travel making sure that this ministry continues strong. It is going to be a regular travel destination for me over the next few months.

Funny Stories about Toilets

Support the Wests Financially Sign up for our email newsletter

I had just started to walk into the men’s room (hopefully) near my departure gate at the airport in Yangon, Myanmar. After checking the signage and seeing fairly identifiable male/female outlines I turn to the men’s side and freeze in my tracks. There is a young woman coming out of what I thought was the men’s room! I back up, take a look towards the signage and realize that I am seeing her reflection in the newly cleaned mirror of my bathroom while she is walking out behind me from hers. Probably she is wondering why I am backing up and looking panicked.

As I head on in to what actually is my side it occurred to me that I have had or heard of a lot of funny things that have happened around the issue of bathrooms in other cultures and places over the last 20 years of international ministry. I won’t be delving into the ones involving TMI – too much information, and will keep in mind that there are things you cannot simply Un-see even in imagination.

My first though was of an evening outing about 8-10 years ago to see Carmen performed in Ulaanbator, Mongolia. I went with the able coaching and assistance of David and Jan Bayliss who were residing in the city while working with Field Director Batjargal and the staff of FEBC, Mongolia. I headed for the bathroom while David and Jan held onto our seats. I kept wondering if I was going the right way as I went down a hall and then down a couple of ramps, not unlike trying to get out of a major football stadium. I was the only one going down and one after another small groups of ladies kept streaming up the ramp towards me.

As I approached the sinks, I am still the only guy, till one finally walks out from the left row of “cubicles” and I realize its only those that are separated between the two half’s of the bathroom area and the sinks are shared. The opera was excellent, but it was my first time and I was confused. “It’s never over till the fat lady sings” is the old adage in the USA, but there weren’t any thin ladies singing at all. I had to depend on Jan to let me know when it was over.

Like every other aspect of life, those who don’t travel to foreign places think there is only one right way to build a bathroom, a toilet, to “clean up”, and then when you travel you find out that there are several broadly followed plans: the outhouse, the toilet, and the squatty potty. “Cleaning up” is TMI. Even the toilet itself, the ones embodying the phrase “porcelain throne” have different idiosyncrasies in different places. In Japan, they want everyone to be happy with the facilities and are sticklers for getting every detail right. That’s why we all love the cars they design. In Tokyo airport, you can pick between the squatty, the regular toilet and the one with all the bells and whistles.

The fancy electronic toilets have heated seats built in water sprays that are adjustable for pattern, angle and temperature to aid the cleanup process and come with somewhat elaborate buttons and controls on an arm to the side. One thing they almost never include, however, is english subtitles for the oriental language deemed proper at any particular location the toilet is installed. Chris saved me from failing with these new gadgets by having a troubling experience in the electronic toilet in the airport at Narita, Japan. She couldn’t figure out how to make it flush. She tried the controls, could spray water around and even get it to make incredibly loud, realistic flushing noises, but no flush.

When I had the same problem at FEBC Korea, I immediately assumed she had tried all the controls and after some thought took a look at the bigger picture. There, just as you might expect on a regular toilet was a flush lever, manual style, above all the fancy controls on the control arm on the toilet tank. So after messing with all the controls in your jet-lag induced state of mind, remember my blog post and look for the flush lever as usual. Or read the instructions.

In closing, and avoiding TMI, I can say that I have been forced by circumstances and travel destinations to try all of the approved methods of clean up and all of the different types of facilities. My advice is to pack toilet paper with you just like your water bottle when you travel. Yes, you can use the squatty potty, but I recommend you practice in the hotel room first, before you have to do it out in the public bathroom. Hint – with the squatty you want to get your pants in just the right spot……

When Guy is Away

What happens back home when I am away? My first hope is that all of you are praying for Chris, and if you are local friends, helping her out! My other hope when traveling in the spring is that the snow falls and then melts to get it out of the way before I come back. After over 15 years living in the tropics I say, “I am so done with snow!” The ICC trip in April kept to these “rules” with several snow events. Chris was not impressed.

Where is James when you need him to shovel? In Georgia or Tennessee. Much too far to call home for a little work.

Also, when “dad” is gone there is a lot of moping around by certain parties, no one to rough house with:

Of course when dad gets back those same parties take a while to forgive for the long absence.

Going on the trip is the easy part. With all the focused, intense work there isn’t much time or energy left to miss anything at the end of the day and the jet lag induced “fall asleep at 8pm whether you like it or not” state helps too. For Chris at home it’s very different. The routine of life makes the time pass slowly and the trip seem extra long. She is the one who really makes the sacrifice.

I have two sayings about marriage, “it’s best to marry a saint”, and “it’s better to be lucky than smart.” We didn’t get married almost 34 years ago because we wanted to spend time apart. For ordinary purposes the travel schedule would be too much, but for a season, for the Lord Jesus, its a sacrifice we can make.

And it’s very nice to be back home.

Tribal Folks Come to Jesus

Your prayer and financial support make you a significant partner in the ministry as FEBC broadcasts a number of languages into remote tribal areas using large transmitters and even larger antennas located in Iba and Bocuae, Philippines. Most of the programming broadcast is recorded secretly inside our creative access and closed countries by local pastors and programmers then sent to the Philippines by internet.

The pastors and programmers visit the remote areas where our listeners live, often traveling for days from village to village spreading the good news of the Gospel. On a recent visit the staff reported 2 new tribal language listeners received Jesus

“Yesterday. A new language listeners come to a small church in mountain. They want to see the radio programmer. Some of them requested to receive the Lord. The programmer said to me. There are many people listening a good news on radio. so he bought some radios to give.”

prayerupdate — Bible Study with an FEBC Programmer – somewhere out in the mountains of SE Asia

In this particular language and place our broadcaster’s life is in danger because he shares the Gospel in his own heart language to his own tribe. Pray for the safety of all our programmers and pastors working in dangerous areas and pray that FEBC will continue to see the harvest of fruit for the kingdom of God everywhere that listeners can hear our programming.

According to my records we are currently providing content to listeners in 109 languages reaching people in 49 different countries using AM, FM, Short Wave, audio on demand, mp3 player boxes, live streaming and via many social media channels all in order to communicate the Good News among the nations by media, to inspire people to follow Jesus Christ.

Mobile Apps Support Ethnic Languages

Your support of “Radio” ministry in the modern day is something much broader than AM, FM and ShortWave broadcasts. To quote a now somewhat dated commercial, “this isn’t your parent’s radio.” At FEBC most of our languages have a broadcast, a web stream, audio on demand download and increasingly an App for smartphone that lets listeners find the content they want and form relationships with our country/language ministries via social media. A good example of an on line web presence that will ask if you want to get the App for your phone is our new Cantonese local web radio offered by FEBC Hong Kong: SooRadio.net.

As of today, FEBC has more than 38 languages with streaming or audio on demand web services and at least 20 languages where the ministry has deployed a smart phone App. I use the word at least because this area of ministry development is happening so quickly and in so many countries that my information is always behind the times.

And it isn’t just the big languages with a web presence. With the ability to use templates provided by major app platforms even our tribal languages can mange to have Apps and a web presence. You know kids these days always have a smart phone in their hand and they can watch or listen to any content they want. We all work to promote professional content development by our fields and language teams so that they can compete with secular media for the clicks, likes and downloads that measure ministry effectiveness today.

FEBC is still committed to AM, FM and ShortWave radio too. Each of these different media channels is effective in its own right and when targeted to appropriate language and cultural groups. Even in the late 70’s, FEBC was focused on Short Wave radio as the only channel that was available in most of the areas where we work. Now the first step in planting a new radio/web/social media ministry is to do an on the ground survey to find out what where the target population goes in terms of media channels for their news, information and entertainment. Using that information we can target a mix of effective channels to use in reaching that group for the gospel. The goal is to be fruitful and efficient in ministry as we seek to reach people from every tribe and tongue and nation. Thank you for supporting Chris and I, and FEBC International, as we pursue that goal.

West Family News

There are times when God intervenes in our lives in interesting ways. Chris and I went to help work the FEBC Booth at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Nashville recently and in the process God spoke to James, and James wasn’t even along! Chris and I shared a row of seats in the plane with a nice young man (says grandpa!) who was returning to Chattanooga from a short ski vacation. After talking with him for a while he reminded us of some things we really already knew. The Denver area and the SE USA have very different situations in terms of the job availability, housing and the cost of living. We had some other conversations with Uber drivers and other local folks in Nashville and when we arrived home, we suggested to James that he might re-orient his job search to the SE.

James bug — James really filled up the VW Beetle

James and his girlfriend, Rebecca, both decided that trying to move South would be a good idea. James sent out his resume for a job in Chattanooga and heard back in one hour that the company wanted to interview him! So it was time to pack up his belongings into our VW bug and head out cross country. He got the job and is currently working laying IT cables in a variety of projects and locations in NW Georgia, Eastern Tennessee and Kentucky. He travels during the week and is staying with Georgia friends on the weekends. Please pray that he can find housing in Chattanooga soon and that he will continue to do well in his job. Rebecca is moving to Atlanta mid-May and will be living with her folks in Marietta and continuing to work at Music In Arts store. They are both looking forward to exploring the beautiful area of Tennessee and North Georgia.

Lauren’s temporary job with the State of Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Finance will be ending in July. She has gained some valuable skills in contract management and facilitating meetings. It is time to move to a permanent position – prayers appreciated as we support her in this next transition.

Lauren is becoming a baker due to “Great British Baking Show”

Chris has been working less at the math learning center, which is a praise! After running the center for four months when the last center director resigned because of family reasons, the center was sold and the new owner/manager is in place. Another transition, but one that is far less stressful! Chris has been able to attend BSF more faithfully and spend time catching up with friends in addition to helping James with his big adventure.

EMDC Conference Update

The EMDC Conference is a private event, so pictures and names are limited. This year over 700 people attended from 63 countries. Many of the countries represented would include closed and creative access countries. The conference is held in alternate years either in Netherlands or in Chiangmai Thailand. Ahead of the actual EMDC is a Pre-EMDC training event.

Pre-EMDC is a Training Opportunity

The Content, Audience Relations, and Research (CAR) Team of the IST uses this event as a focal point for getting FEBC’s content creators together when the venue is Chaingmai. It is much cheaper for our teams to come to Thailand than to go to Western Europe. The CAR Team encourages our national staff to attend the pre-EMDC Training which included 19 training tracks this year. Some of the many tracks offered were:

Video Production/Radio Production for Beginners
Creating Bible Comics for your Culture
Advanced Audio/Radio Production
Hands-On Orality Training with ‘Simply The Story’
Scripture Engagement: New Insights in Missiology
Social Media and Digital Engagement: Discipleship and Development
And many more

Working with our field leaders, the CAR Team helps the staff select training tracks that align with their field’s needs and their roles within FEBC. Our many field staff don’t get together regularly, so these opportunities are priceless in providing the kind of interactions that lead to innovation and creativity, both of which are needed to conceive, write and produce the kind of content that will draw an audience and lead them to Jesus.

The FEBC Contingent at our “FEBC Day” at EMDC

FEBC Field staff from Russia, Ukraine, Mongolia, Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia and India sent staff. The IST was represented by Bob, Jeff and Guy. Bob heads the CAR Team, Jeff is our newest CAR Team member and Guy was there to lend gravitas 🙂 ; Guy was also there for several other meetings with different mission organizations that were scheduled during Pre-EMDC training.

EMDC Conference

The four main goals of the EMDC are:

To provide a meeting place where those engaged in minority language work (whether in-country or displaced) can interact with communication and media specialists to develop media strategies, explore the use of ethno-arts, and assess and prioritize media products.
To network existing regional media organizations with minority language teams for present or future partnerships on actual, doable projects.
To help those with some material to be able to record, edit, mix, and finish their project in hands-on workshops (or at a minimum connect with those who will see them through to the end).
To provide a venue where minority language workers can express their media-related needs, learn from one another in areas of methodology and strategy, and explore ways in which they might share resources.

What takes place?
In addition to plenary sessions, workshops, and training, language-specific, country-specific, or ethnic group-specific working groups will be meeting. Specific ethnic groups will discuss language programs and language planning.

EMDC is a multi-agency consultation that meets alternately in Asia and Europe. Minority language workers in the greater Eurasia region meet with media specialists (radio, TV, Internet, mobile, social media), IT Technicians, recording specialists, graphic artists, digital publishers, and specialists in Orality and Ethno-Arts.

Guy’s Impressions

It was joy to be together, first, with so many of our creative and motivated content creation staff. I am humbled by how the Lord has blessed Chris and I through our obedience to his call to FEBC with opportunities to have so many friends from many countries who are passionate about Jesus. I love to give of my life in whatever way necessary to see them grow in their capacity to minister.

I came away from the EMDC Conference proper with some strong impressions:

FEBC should do more of the “lifting” to assist with this conference since it is very valuable to us and we bring a large contingent.
More of our fields and especially our minority language folks would be encouraged and their skills strengthened if they attended. I will be making a push to have these folks invited to attend in two years and possibly have a Transnational Ethnic Minority Language meeting of FEBC during the next conference in Chiangmai.
We have ministry partners who would benefit from attending. I will add them to the “secret” mailing list so they will be informed.
I appreciate Bob’s passion for coming along side our content teams and encouraging them to experiment and grow in their ability to be effective ministers to their audiences.