Our story
About Us
Serving Location: Africa, Asia & The 10/40 Window
Why Shortwave radio and not the Internet? In Asia and Africa, hundreds of millions are prohibited from hearing the Gospel without radio. Millions of Christians have little or no access to biblical teaching.
Many people are unaware of the real power of radio broadcasting, though most of us use radio quite frequently. Imagine being in a society where the government knows your every move and your beliefs and your dissent and your intents. This “Orwellian” society is the reality in modern Asia. It is becoming true here in the US through the intrusiveness of search engines, operating systems that probe your Internet device, social media and the loss of protection of people’s natural rights. Still, in the oppressive countries of Asia, it is governmental intent to track, monitor and deal with individuals through the same instruments we trust so much here in the US. To a degree, our use of the Internet through our computers and smartphones opens us to these abuses, which are the norm in Russia, China, Southeast Asia and most of that region of the world that comprises nearly 1/2 of the world’s population.
How does your internet browser know what you prefer, what you have ordered online, what programs you have streamed and where you have traveled? Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Instagram and many of the applications you have willingly loaded on your computer and phones use your keystrokes and web page visits and online orders you place to gather intelligence on you. This same technology is used in China to deduce what an individual’s political views are, where they get information, what religious beliefs they have, whom they communicate with and whether they fit the personal mold that the state has for them. These are not the actions of a government that is attempting to secure the natural rights of individuals – these are actions of despotism.
At the other end of the spectrum are people in Asia and Africa with no Internet service or connectivity at all. For them, the world is as it was before 1992 with no email, no browsing, no search engines, no online orders, no social media – no online anything. In Central Asia alone, there are over 500 million people with no access to the internet at all. This is true for hundreds of millions more people throughout the rest of Asia and Africa. For them, access to the outside world is nearly impossible without radio. Radio, AM, FM and Shortwave is their contact with the world outside of their limited horizons. Through radio, they can hear the word of God, the precious Gospel, the message of God’s love for them, learn the teaching of scripture and grow in their faith.Show More / Less
Only communication from outside their societies that does not use the government-controlled internet is there a vehicle for individuals to hear and share free thoughts and hear information that is not government filtered. Shortwave radio is at the forefront of this kind of communication. Shortwave radio can travel thousands of miles, so it can come from well outside the control of the local and national government. Shortwave radio is available to a large portion of the population because it is included in such a high percentage of locally available radio receivers, most of which are manufactured in and distributed from Asia! Shortwave reception cannot be tracked by practical means, even by a sophisticated government effort on a small scale, let alone widely. Shortwave radio works best at night because of the ionosphere, so listening to shortwave can be done more easily and privately in most cases.
This is why Voice of America; a propaganda arm of the US government was so vested in the use of shortwave radio for many decades. Voice of America further proved the value of shortwave radio when, in 2005 – 2015, the agency shut down several of its international transmitters, believing that the internet and video distribution would supplant the effectiveness of shortwave broadcasts. Their nearsightedness has proved to be a disaster for VOA’s effectiveness. In the last six years, Voice of America has been scrambling to get back into shortwave broadcasting due to the censorship and shutdown to access of the “world wide web”.
Suffice it to say that shortwave radio – a technology that is 120 years old – has a new and robust use in reaching out to billions of people who are trapped under oppressive rule and are otherwise without access to anything other than government-supplied information.
It is because of all these facts, and because we believe the best solution to the world’s problems are found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that Darin and Linda became interested in serving through Trans World Radio, doing volunteer engineering at the big shortwave broadcasting station in the island of Guam. Since then, Darin and Linda have put their efforts into the production of radio programs from broadcast into Asia and now Africa through Air JARON.
Prayers and Praise
Your regular prayers for the Alvords’ ministries are requested. Prayers of our brothers and sisters in Christ have propelled our service. Financial support is always needed and requested. So much is already being done with multiple broadcasts going out weekly, work on the tower restoration has completed. We have grown now into a team of five program producers, a Program Distribution Manager and production ongoing in multiple languages. You can be an important part of supporting these efforts and, ultimately, adding to the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.
- Pray for more volunteers to produce programs and further the reach and effectiveness of Air JARON.
- Pray that the funds needed to air our programs and to continue to expand production into more languages will be provided.
- Praise God for Air JARON expanding into Africa this year.
- Pray that God would bless listeners to the programs including the Christmas Special.
2024
Innovation
Broadcast the first Transclonation program in history.2020 - 2024
Innovation
Several world firsts using DRM technology2020
World first
Produced and broadcast the first dual foreign language multicast in Christian broadcasting history,2020
Inception
Began regularly scheduled DRM broadcasts from Guam on the Book of James.2019
Inception
Created a Christmas program using digitized voices and the Christmas Eve program by Dr. Cecy