A leaflet that slipped out of a Bible. Chance radio encounters. An escape from a war. Over the 27 years that Mari Atkinson produced FEBC Australia’s Skywaves newsletters and missionary brochures, she saw much evidence of God’s divine direction.
“There were just so many accounts from listeners who turned to Jesus because they found a program in their own language and stopped to listen to something they probably wouldn’t have listened to otherwise.” Mari shared.
She recalled another incident: “When Saigon fell at the end of the Vietnam War, a couple got on the very last U.S. Air Force plane out of the country, before the communists took over.
“They were Vietnamese believers who then created FEBC programs in Vietnamese from America. It’s like God reserved a space for them so that they could continue speaking to their people via shortwave radio. God kept reaching people in a language they understood.”
These stories make real Revelation 7:9: “After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb”.
God also penned Mari’s beautiful chapter with FEBC. When Dr Robert Bowman, the founder of FEBC visited her church in Melbourne in 1969, Mari’s imagination was set on fire by the possibilities of radio. Mari hadn’t met her husband David yet, but he trained as a radio engineer, which inspired him to use technology to reach people and places otherwise closed to the gospel and traditional mission methods.
After marrying, they talked about how they could serve God in some form of mission, and in 1982 they found an FEBC brochure that had dropped out of someone’s Bible. Pursuing this lead, they joined the Victorian FEBC Committee. David was soon invited to join the FEBC Australia Board, becoming Chairman in 1991, a position he held for two decades. Mari volunteered in Communications. Working 1000 km away from the Sydney team meant it was a lonely job. David was also often away on FEBC travels. But God inspired her to tell the stories of His supply of equipment and personnel to studios all around the world, and the miraculous stories of thousands of lives changed as the truth of Jesus became real to them.
1997, God miraculously provided transmitter parts and even the transport so that the transmitter could keep running.
Then they experienced their own miracle. In 1997, God led David to acquire Radio Australia’s former transmitter parts for free and provided free shipping to Manila to keep an old transmitter going until new ones were installed.
Stories of God infiltrating homes and hearts through radio fuelled them, so that even with full-time work and three children to raise, a suburban couple could partner with God to bring all people to Himself.
Special thanks to Mari for collaborating on this story.
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