One of the last things Clarence purchased for the journey before setting sail from New York City was a 16-millimeter movie camera. Clarence had decided that with so many questions about the notion of using radio as a missionary tool, it might be a good idea to film some of the opportunities that existed for using Christian radio in Ecuador. Everywhere he went throughout Guayaquil and the surrounding countryside, Clarence had the movie camera at the ready to catch any interesting or unusual footage that might offer people back home some insight into the life and culture of Ecuador.
One humid evening in Guayaquil, as Clarence sat in a small, open-air café, he heard the sound of American voices floating through the air. He looked around. The voices belonged to two men sitting in a far corner of the café. Clarence walked over to the men and introduced himself. The men invited him to join them, and they struck up a conversation. To Clarence’s amazement the two men were radio engineers. They had been sent to Ecuador by the manufacturer of radio receivers to research the possibility of setting up a radio broadcasting station in Ecuador. It seemed to Clarence as though God had set up the meeting between them. “And what have you discovered?” he eagerly asked them.
“There’s no way it can be done here,” they told him. “Ecuador has too many mountains. And the high mineral content of the rock, with its strong magnetic force, will seriously weaken, absorb, or hopelessly scramble any signal. Whatever you do, stay away from the mountains!”
Clarence’s heart began to sink. This was not what he had hoped to hear. He thought back to Washington, D.C., and the State Department official’s telling him that radio reception in Ecuador was just about nil. “I would definitely not put up a radio station in Ecuador at all. You must get as far away from the equator as you can,” the official had said. And now here were two radio engineers telling him the same thing. But Clarence and the others now had a contract with the government to set up a radio station in Ecuador.
Later that night as Clarence strolled along the Guayas River, he pondered the situation. The plan was to establish the radio station in Quito. But Quito was situated 9,300 feet above sea level in the Andes Mountains. And as if that were not enough, it lay just ten miles south of the equator. These were the two things the two radio engineers at the café and the official in Washington had warned him to stay away from. Perhaps, Clarence wondered, they should situate the radio station here in Guayaquil. After all, the city was sited away from the mountains at sea level, it was Ecuador’s main port and commercial center, and it had a number of thriving Protestant churches. Situating the radio station in Guayaquil certainly made a lot of sense.
Even as he thought these things, Clarence was aware of another voice in his head saying, “Come up to the top of the mountain.” He recognized the words as those that God had spoken to Moses in the Old Testament.
“Come up to the top of the mountain? When all the engineers are telling us we’re crazy to even be in Ecuador, let alone in Quito. Is this what You are really saying, Lord?” Clarence questioned.
“Come up to the top of the mountain. Call unto Me, and I will show you great and mighty things,” the voice echoed in his head. Clarence recognized the words of the last sentence. They were from Jeremiah 33:3, one of the verses Reuben Larson had referenced when he sent the telegram informing Clarence that a twenty-five-year contract to run a radio station had been approved by the government. And hadn’t the other verse Reuben referenced, Zechariah 4:6, said, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.”
It might seem crazy and illogical, given what the radio engineers and State Department official had told him, but Clarence was certain that they were supposed to establish the radio station in Quito, high in the mountains. No matter what people thought, he, Clarence Jones, was going up to the top of the mountain in obedience to God’s command. Of course the other men involved in the project would have to agree. But for Clarence the matter was settled.
Convinced that God was going to bless their venture, Clarence pressed ahead with his plan. Before leaving Guayaquil he met with the Reed brothers. John and Alan Reed were the sons of William Reed, one of the first Protestant missionaries to arrive in Ecuador, in 1898. The brothers ran a stationery business in Guayaquil, and they agreed that if a radio station were established that broadcast to the nation, they would import and sell radio receivers throughout Ecuador.
With the agreement made, Clarence headed for the railway station and the train to Quito.
Chapter 8
Up to the Mountains
To Clarence’s surprise the train for the two-day journey to Quito departed almost on time. As it chugged away from Guayaquil, Clarence was able to get a good look at the country that he was planning to make home. For the first few hours of the journey, palm trees and a tropical forest grew up to the edge of the railway line. But slowly, as the narrow-gauge train began to climb up from sea level, the tropical forest gave way to mountain vistas with waterfalls cascading from bare, rocky heights, filling the air with a rainbow of spray. As usual, Clarence had his movie camera at the ready to capture the beauty of the landscape. When the train began its ascent of the Andes Mountains, he found himself leaning out the window with the camera.
The climb up the Andes was an amazing experience. The ledge on which the train tracks rested had been chiseled from the rock face. The train inched its way along the track, climbing steeply as it did so. Then it came to a stop on a siding. A guard climbed off the train, pulled a lever, and switched the points. The train then began moving again, this time backing up along the next stretch of track until coming to rest on another siding. The points were switched again, and the train moved forward up the next length of track. Slowly the train began to zigzag its way up the rock face. In fifty miles of switching backward and forward in this manner, the train climbed ten thousand feet up into the mountains. And as the train moved along, Clarence filmed the sheer drop from the train to the valley floor far below.
Leaving the switchbacks behind, the train chugged even higher into the mountains, traveling across a cold, desolate plateau where few people lived. It steamed past Mount Chimborazo, a snowcapped volcano and the highest point in Ecuador, reaching to a height of 20,709 feet above sea level. Finally the train climbed through the cloud line, where it rumbled along above the clouds. Once again Clarence had the movie camera outside the window, filming the clouds below.
Eventually they reached a height of 11,800 feet before the narrow-gauge train began its descent into Quito. Clarence was glad that they did not go any higher, because at that altitude, the air was thin, and he found himself gasping for air, especially when he tried to move around. By the time the train pulled into the station in Quito, Clarence had experienced the most exciting and the most scenic rail journey of his life.
Waiting to meet Clarence at the station in Quito was Stuart Clark. It was the first time the two men had met, and Clarence liked Stuart right away. Stuart was a gracious and charming person who welcomed Clarence to Quito. As Stuart led the way through the streets of Quito, Clarence could see for himself what a city of contrasts the place was. Quito was the oldest capital in South America, and its maze of narrow streets was lined with old stone churches and buildings, some of which, Stuart pointed out, were over three hundred years old. But Quito was also a modern city. It had broad, tree-lined avenues, along which gleaming new buildings had been erected. Beyond the broad avenues and narrow streets, the city was surrounded by soaring, rocky, snowcapped mountain peaks that reached high into the thin, clear-blue atmosphere.
That evening Clarence ate dinner with Stuart and his American wife, Erma. As they ate, Stuart filled Clarence in on the details of how the government had decided to grant them a license to establish a radio station.
“My office is located right across the street from the government’s lawyer,” Stuart began. “One day when I saw him leaving his office, I raced outside, where I managed to meet the man. His name is Dr. Luís Calisto. He is a wonderful man, and we became friends. He has a very favorable view of the work done in Ecuador by missionaries, and when I mentioned to him our desire to start a radio station in his country, he became very excited.”
“That’s wonderful,” Clarence commented while Stuart stopped to take a bite of food.
“Yes,” Stuart said, taking up the story again. “Dr. Calisto was the man who worked out all the final details of the contract, and he was very fair and thorough. But God moved a lot of hearts along the way before Dr. Calisto was able to do his part. Reuben and I submitted the proposal for the radio station to the government official who presents such things to Congress and the president. But this man was troubled by the proposal. ‘How can I approve the establishing of a Protestant radio station in a Catholic country?’ he asked himself, and he set the proposal aside.
“In the meantime Reuben and I waited patiently and prayed much about the proposal, asking God to grant us favor with the government. Finally the official to whom we had submitted the proposal decided to read through it again. He was still conflicted about a Protestant radio station in a Catholic country, but as he told me later, ‘There was something inside me that impelled me to put my signature on the document.’ And with that the gentleman signed the front of the proposal, stamped ‘visto bueno’ (approved) on it, and sent it on to the president’s office.”
“Where God’s finger points, God’s hand will open the door,” Clarence said, as Erma Clark reached over and took his now empty plate.
“Quite so,” Stuart said, “but there’s more to the story. At the president’s office, his young clerk, Carlos Andrade Marín, saw the proposal for a radio station in Ecuador and became very excited. He put the proposal at the top of a pile of papers awaiting the president’s attention. But the next morning he found that it had been moved to the bottom of the pile. So he pulled it out and once again placed it on top. He had to do this several times before the president finally looked at the proposal. The president was impressed enough to send it on to Congress to be voted on. Congress voted and approved the proposal, and Luís Calisto was asked to draw up a contract, which he did, and the president signed it. So now, here we are, ready to take the next step.”
“Indeed we are,” Clarence said, trying not to think of the gloomy warning the radio engineers had given him in Guayaquil several days before.
The following day Clarence was out exploring Quito some more. “Quito, this ancient, glorious capital of Ecuador, is a great city. I like its people, its beauty, its progressive air. The climate is wonderfully fresh and invigorating,” he wrote in his journal later that day.
Clarence had been disappointed to learn on his arrival in Quito that Reuben and Grace Larson had returned to their mission station at Dos Ríos in the Oriente. He was anxious to see the couple again, and so, several days after arriving in Quito, Clarence set out with Stuart to visit the Larsons.
“Dos Ríos is only seventy-five miles away as the crow flies,” Stuart informed Clarence, “but to get there overland is an arduous journey. It will take us two days on horseback, another three days of hiking, and then another day or two on horseback.”
On the day of their departure, Clarence and Stuart were up a 1:30 AM. They ate a hearty breakfast and were then driven by car two hours south of Quito to the trailhead, where a local Indian guide met them. Since the trail they would be following passed through a desolate and largely uninhabited area, they had to carry with them all the supplies they would need for the journey. Once these supplies were loaded onto two packhorses, Clarence and Stuart mounted their horses, and they were off. It was still two hours before dawn, and their guide, walking ahead in the silvery moonlight, led the way. At 6:00 AM the sun finally emerged and turned the snowcapped mountain peaks into mounds of glistening gold.
