In early 2014 Open Door Baptist Church in the Filipino village of Pandan began a Lifeword Community Radio station with the help of Lifeword Asia-Pacific. Pandan villagers immediately loved the station, which broadcasts from 5 a.m. until 9 p.m. and provides the only radio service in the area. After several months on air, Lifeword began receiving calls in response to the programs from a place no one had never heard of—a place called Melendrez. Only four miles from Open Door, the village of Melendrez was unknown to the people of Pandan until they called with requests for more information on the Bible.
As soon as they could, Open Door’s pastor and a deacon visited the village, bringing transistor radios to distribute and estimating that there were 90 households and 500 hundred people in Melendrez. After that initial visit, they planned to return during Christmas of 2014 and meet more of the people who had been listening to Lifeword.
Loaded with gifts from EIM (Evangelistic International Ministries), the young people from Tangub Baptist Church in Bacolod City and Open Door Baptist Church in Pandan played games and shared the gospel with the children during the trip. This was the first time they had been visited by any Christian group, and the first time these children ever heard a Bible story or received a Christmas gift.
Pastor Pete (Pedro Etabag, director of Lifeword Asia-Pacific) said, “It is amazing what these small radio stations can do. Even though the signals do not travel a long way, they go places we have never been and reach people we have never met. Open Door Baptist Church was organized in 1978, but this nearby village was not known until the church at Pandan started its radio station. What a great way to reach people and plant churches. Our goal and challenge in the coming years is to use the LPFM Radio (Lifeword Community Radio) to reach more places and then start a mission that will eventually become a church. To God be the glory!”
The work in Melendrez continues to this day with an extension class held every Saturday by leaders at Open Door Baptist Church in Pandan. More young people and adults have been saved and are attending their Sunday worship services as well. Responses to the church’s Lifeword broadcast continue, but since they have no available workers to start a new church, new believers attend Open Door Baptist Church. Pastor Pete says that he and other leaders are praying for the Lord to provide trained workers for a church plant in Melendrez. Please join Lifeword in that prayer as well.
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