Clarence did not have to wait long to find out whether anyone had been listening. Half an hour after the broadcast ended, the hand-cranked telephone began to ring with people calling to thank the missionaries for the broadcast and wishing them well. Clarence was elated. The dream of using radio as a foreign missionary tool had finally come to pass.
After eating a Christmas feast together and celebrating their first successful broadcast, they all took their places again in the studio, control room, and transmitter room. It was time for the second broadcast of the day. This time it was a program in English. And, as after the first broadcast, when the show was over, the telephone began to ring with English-speaking listeners calling to say how much the broadcast meant to them.
Late that night an exuberant Clarence sat in his room and wrote a letter to Katherine. He hoped that she’d had a good Christmas with the three children and that she would soon be joining him in Quito. “It’s a peculiar thrill to stand back of the microphone here,” he wrote, “and realize that we are actually beginning the blessed work to which we have looked forward for so long.”
Indeed the work was just beginning, but Clarence knew that if they were to follow the blueprint God had given them, they had much hard work ahead of them.
Chapter 11
A Growing Schedule of Programs
There’s someone I want you to meet,” Stuart Clark said to Clarence. “I think she’s the answer to our prayers.”
“What do you mean?” Clarence asked, running over in his mind some of the prayer requests he made daily for Radio HCJB.
Just then a petite woman with dark hair entered the room. Her face radiated joy.
“Señora Carmela Ochoa, I would like to introduce you to our director, Clarence Jones.” The two shook hands as Stuart continued. “I met Señora Ochoa in a store yesterday. She had been lent a radio and was listening to our daily Bible program. We talked about the gospel, and as a result she has given her life to Christ.”
“Why, that’s wonderful,” Clarence said, enthusiastically pumping Carmela’s hand some more.
“And there is even more good news,” Stuart added. “Señora Ochoa’s first language is Spanish, but she is also fluent in Quechua. She learned it from her maid when she was a child. Now she wants to train to preach on the radio in Quechua.”
Clarence paused to take it all in. Was it possible that a Spanish-speaking woman had been converted and now wanted to preach on the radio, all in a couple of days? Why not? Hadn’t he and the others been praying for such a miracle?
Quechua was the language spoken by millions of South American Indians in Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador. A good Quechua speaker was a key that could open many doors of opportunity. Over the next several weeks, Clarence spent many hours training Carmela both in her new faith and in how to go about sharing the gospel over the radio. He was quickly astounded by the grasp she had of spiritual matters and her aptitude for radio preaching and teaching. By March 1932 Clarence felt confident enough in Carmela to launch a half-hour Bible program in Quechua. Carmela proved herself equal to the task.
Soon after launching the new program in Quechua, Clarence received a letter from Katherine. She was finally ready to make the journey to Quito with the three children. She explained that she would have come sooner, but daughters Marian and Marjorie had both had whooping cough. Clarence was overjoyed with their plans. After seven long months he was looking forward to finally being reunited with his wife and meeting his now three-month-old son. In mid-May Clarence hurriedly made his way to Guayaquil, where on May 22 he welcomed Katherine and the children to Ecuador.
It was a wonderful reunion, and the train trip back up the mountains to Quito was exciting as Clarence bounced baby Dick on his knee and watched as six-year-old Marian and four-year-old Marjorie peered happily out the window at the country that was to be their new home. Throughout the two-day trip, Clarence and Katherine caught each other up on all of their news.
Thankfully Katherine fell in love with Quinta Corston as soon as she saw the place, and the girls loved their new home as well. It was not long before the children had convinced Clarence to buy them a pet parrot and a tiny white poodle, which Marian named Rags.
With his wife and children at his side, Clarence fell into an enjoyable routine. Katherine took care of running the household and caring for the numerous guests who flowed through the house, leaving Clarence time to broaden the scope of programs offered by Radio HCJB.
When they were drawing up the proposal for the radio station back in Chicago, Clarence and the others had envisaged the station offering educational, cultural, and religious programs. They now had several daily religious programs up and running, and it was time to branch out. Clarence began The University of the Air, which featured broadcasts on health, hygiene, and practical agriculture. Two men, Carlos Andrade Marín, the secretary to the president, and Francisco Cruz, a university professor, worked tirelessly to promote these programs. Clarence was delighted to attract such high-caliber men to the station, even though they did not hold the same religious views.
Music had always played a big part in Clarence’s life, so it was only natural that it played a prominent part in the radio broadcasts. Despite his love for playing gospel tunes and rousing John Philip Sousa marches, Clarence was conscious that the music they broadcast over the radio should reflect national tastes, and so he brought together the HCJB Ecuadorian Orchestra. It was one of the first groups in the country to write down native songs and arrange them, and Clarence liked nothing better than to get out his trombone and lead the wind section. Katherine, who had once aspired to be a concert pianist, pumped out tunes on a wheezy old organ. And when she got tired from pumping the instrument with her feet, the gardener’s son Pedro would get down on his hands and knees and continue to pump it for her as she played. The girls also had a part to play. Both Marian and Marjorie had sweet voices and would sing duets or sometimes form a trio with Katherine.
It was not long before any missionary or Christian leader who came through Quito realized that he would not be leaving the city before he had sung, played an instrument, or preached on the radio. Clarence seemed to have a sixth sense for discovering who was visiting town at any particular time and for hunting him down and putting him on the radio.
News was also something that most people expected to hear on the radio, and Clarence made a modest start in this area. Each morning he read the first edition of the local newspaper and took notes on the important articles. He then wrote a summary of the articles, which he read on the air. It was a crude beginning, but many people soon came to rely on the Radio HCJB news broadcasts.
Clarence was also granted permission to broadcast the sessions of Congress when they were in progress. In this way many citizens of Ecuador heard for the first time how their government functioned.
During this time Clarence put in longer working hours than ever before. Because more and more regular programs were being broadcast, business and planning meetings were held late at night, often going on until 1:00 AM. And when he was not in the studio, Clarence was out and about in Quito, promoting the radio station and selling radio receivers. At first people were reluctant to invest their money in a receiver, but as they began to realize how helpful and informative a radio could be to their everyday lives, it was not long before there was a line of eager customers wanting to buy radio receivers.
All those who worked at the radio station were concerned about the number of poor people in the country who could not afford a radio. To help combat this situation, Clarence arranged for fifty HCJB listening posts to be set up around the country. These listening posts quickly became known as la cajita magica que canta (the little magic box that sings)!
Marion Krekler, an American who came to work with the radio station in Quito, also worked on the problem. In the evenings, in the dining room of his small home, Marion took out his soldering iron, and from parts he’d had shipped in from the United States, he began constructing small radio receivers. The receivers were permanently tuned to HCJB’s frequency and were given to Christians with the expectation that they would make the station’s programs available to their families and friends. Much to Clarence’s delight, this approach worked well. Soon positive reports were flowing back from the countryside to the HCJB studios in Quito. A tailor wrote that he and sixty-five neighbors crammed into his home to listen regularly to the radio broadcasts, and a cotton worker got word to Clarence that he gathered all of the children in his village to listen to the Sunday-school broadcast each week. This was the only Bible teaching or music that the children heard, and the children were now competing to see who could learn the most Bible verses each week.
Catholic priests were also coming to the studio at Quinta Corston, asking for radio receivers. One of them told Clarence, “I want a radio that speaks softly, so no one can hear that I am listening to la Voz de los Andes. All the other priests in my area have radios, and they listen too, though we do not talk to each other about it.”
Of course, new listeners meant new challenges and opportunities, which Clarence and his small team rose to meet. Sunday School of the Air was launched to reach out to the increasing number of children listening to Radio HCJB, and Grace Larson became a popular talk-show host for young mothers. In addition, University of the Air branched out into broadcasting basic English lessons, and Clarence enlisted his family in a crazy program called The Spanish Galleon. He wrote the scripts for the show himself, with the hope that the stories would inform the Ecuadorian people of their heritage. The program featured such things as tales of pirates, with Marjorie screaming in the background and Marian dragging chains across the floor to add sound effects, and songs that Clarence made up to go along with the stories.
In the meantime, Stuart Clark opened his home for an English fellowship on Sunday afternoons. It was a formal affair, attended by the British ambassador and other dignitaries from Quito’s English-speaking community. The fellowship afternoons provided a wonderful bridge between English-speaking Christians and the mainly Spanish-language radio station.
Things were moving fast, and there was never quite enough money to keep up with Clarence’s latest idea. The financial situation became serious at times, and Clarence was relieved when Carlos Andrade Marin, who had left his job as the president’s secretary to become the principal of a large boys’ school, invited Clarence to teach English there. The arrangement suited Clarence well. Clarence taught for two hours each day and had 150 students in his classes. The students were the sons of the most influential families in the capital, and Clarence realized that it was a golden opportunity to reach them with the gospel. Since no textbooks were available for his classes, he sought permission from Carlos Andrade Marin to use the Bible as a textbook for part of his English lessons. Permission was granted, and soon many boys were seeking Clarence out for discussions on spiritual matters.
Clarence decided to accept another paid position: the director of the Quito Municipal Band. The band performed every Sunday afternoon at El Ejido Plaza in town, and its music was broadcast once a week over the radio from the HCJB studio at Quinta Corston.
Around this time, Clarence met Dr. Manuel Garrido Aldama, a converted Roman Catholic priest from Spain. After attending Bible college in Scotland, Dr. Aldama had gone to Peru to serve as a missionary. At first, he told Clarence, he had been skeptical of using radio as a tool for spreading the gospel, but he had changed his mind when he learned how people were responding to the radio broadcasts. Dr. Aldama had such a deep knowledge of Roman Catholicism and Latin culture and spoke such wonderful Spanish that Clarence invited him to host a regular broadcast on HCJB. It was an inspired decision, because Dr. Aldama’s broadcast soon had a huge audience and people began writing to the studio. “We stay home from the movies to hear what Dr. Aldama has to say,” they remarked.
