Saturday Hike into Pululahua Crater for a Picnic Lunch

His Work In Cambodia Amid Great Challenges

Is healing possible for a small country in southeast Asia?

Janine is in Cambodia, promoting Spotlight Listeners` Clubs. She writes, “ The enthusiasm for the clubs seems high, please pray they do something with it..”

The high-profile trial of Comrade Duch is also going on there now. During the Khmer Rouge reign of terror in the 1970s, he ordered the executions of 12,000 to 15,000 people. A “Killing Fields” survivor, François Bizot, explores possibilities of forgiveness briefly in his op/ed piece, “My Savior, Their Killer.”



Against this dark backdrop, God is at work in Cambodia. In the 1970s revolution to establish utopia, the Khmer Rouge set about eradicating religion. Now these former fighters (Comrade Duch included) profess faith in Jesus Christ.

If you look closely you'll see a tear streaking down her cheek. The KR recorded many of its victims with photos. She knew what was about to happen to her. -Janine


In a similar trial 10 years ago of Ta Mok (“The Butcher”) in Cambodia, who should emerge as the Khmer Rouge leader’s defense attorney? Benson Samay, whose own wife and 12-year-old daughter were killed by the Khmer Rouge.


I do not know Samay´s motivation. If he could serve the executioner, imagine what God can do in lives of perpetrators and victims who have embraced Christ! Where sin abounds, grace much more abounds.

If clubs get going in Cambodia . . . people (many who lost loved ones in the “Killing Fields”, I´m sure) will have SO MUCH to talk about.

photos provided by Janine. To go to her blog click her name above or click here.

This Time She Got Flowers

I've always been captured by stories of gangsters. So when we moved to Chicago as newlyweds, I took my new wife to the scene of the Valentine’s Day Massacre.

For Valentine’s Day. Wasn’t that romantic?? (Please see the video of men in “the doghouse” for giving their wives unromantic gifts like vacuum cleaners or tummy exercisers.)

Recently, I picked up a copy of the book, They Called Me Devil by George Meyer, the alleged wheelman when Al Capone’s gang - some dressed as policemen – machine gunned several members of Bugsy Moran’s gang. Years later in prison, Meyer came to personal faith in Jesus, providing a happy detour to an otherwise pointless existence marked by fleeting pleasures and great pain.

No big romantic, still I have learned something since we walked the small park at Chicago’s north Clark Street, where the shootings occurred 80 years ago in a garage. Kathy got flowers.


At the price of just $3 for 25 roses, it almost felt like stealing.

HCJB Global-Australia Staff Safe Despite Devastating Bushfires

Sources: BBC, Breaking Christian News, Baptist World Alliance, Associated Press, HCJB Global

With a climbing death toll from bushfires in southeastern Australia, HCJB Global-Australia’s staff reported that they are safe.

Record-high temperatures that reached 115 F last weekend, followed by shifting winds, contributed to devastating fires, killing more than 181 people, destroying at least 1,033 homes and blackening more than 1,200 square miles, according to the Victoria fire service. An estimated 5,000 people are reported as homeless. Across Victoria, 450 people have been treated for injuries, according to medical officials and emergency departments.

Victoria Premier John Brumby referred to the fires as the “largest natural disaster in our state’s history and Australia’s history.” He described entire communities wiped from existence by “what people would describe as literally a fireball that just came over the hills and devoured everything before them.”

News reports cite officials as suspecting that some fires were intentionally set, provoking Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s description of the calamity as “mass murder.”

“None of our staff have lost homes, but we know of people who have died in the fires,” said Peter Penford, studio manager at HCJB Global-Australia.

“It’s been devastating for parts of my community,” added Dale Stagg, who recently began duties as director of the HCJB Global-Australia World Office in Melbourne. “We live near one of the major fire areas. We believe that 18 families from our Christian school have lost their homes.”

Stagg said Melbourne-area ministries in Kinglake and Marysville have suffered material losses. “At least 35 people died in Kinglake. Everyone is just in a state of disbelief,” he said. ”We believe that the death toll could be well beyond 200 from the Victorian fires. Our prayers are many, and rain would be nice!”

Blazes continue to sweep across Victoria. In many areas, residents remain on alert as more than a dozen fires continue burning uncontrolled. Some 100 police are investigating the fires, and some are being treated as arson. Task Force Phoenix will work with the state’s coroners’ office, fire and health authorities to investigate all fire-related deaths.

In Australia, deliberately lighting a fire which results in death carries a sentence of up to 25 years in prison, while intentionally or recklessly causing a bushfire carries a 15-year maximum sentence.

More than 100 people have been admitted to hospitals across Victoria with burns, at least 20 in a critical condition and nine on life support or in intensive care. Heather Clelland, director of Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, said 21 burn victims were admitted earlier this week with “classic burn patterns that we are seeing are mostly due to people who have been forced to run through flames or have been exposed to extremely high radiant heat temperatures.”

Nick Bryant of the BBC reported the mood as somber at Victoria state relief centers with many people searching for loved ones among the survivors. Prime Minister Rudd has announced an aid package of $10 million (US$6.6 million).

Three closely related Baptist bodies (Baptcare, the Baptist Union of Victoria and the Baptist Union of Australia) have established an Emergency Bushfire Relief Fund with an initial grant of $50,000 (US$33,000). The fund will be used primarily for food, clothing, accommodation and personal needs, as well as for bereavement counseling. In addition, Baptist churches in Victoria are being used as emergency shelters, and local congregations are offering pastoral care to victims.

“We are safe,” said Eric Skattebo, a former radio producer with HCJB Global-Australia. “Our eastern suburb of Melbourne (Mount Evelyn) has not been directly affected” but his home is only 10 to 15 minutes from one of the major fires. He also referred to nearby Marysville, saying “each autumn we would travel there to see the beautiful change of leaves and visit friends at a Christian retreat center. Sadly, this town is no more. The headline reads, ‘Marysville Wiped from the Map as Inferno Shows No Mercy.’”

HCJB Global-Australia operates a shortwave station in Kununurra, reaching across the Asia Pacific Region with programs in 20 languages. Studios at the office in Melbourne are used to record programs in English and Oromo, a language spoken in Ethiopia.

View The Video, Catch the Vision

This will take you three and a half minutes (once the video loads).

Awhile back we showed you a tower going down. So what else is "going down" or what else is happening? What´s going on? We´re happy to tell you a LOT is going on, and we want to show you a recently-produced video.

Different delivery system. Different audience.

The same purpose. The same message. The same Name.

Mr. Lincoln a Copperhead? Well no, but . . .

Abraham Lincoln
February 12, 1809- April 15, 1865

For years, pennies of copper bore on the “heads” side of the coin the inscription of none other than Abraham Lincoln. Would this have made President Lincoln a latent “Copperhead”?

The Copperhead Democrats were Lincoln's political enemies. Northerners, they opposed the war against the South. Considered lethal to the war cause, they were dubbed “Copperheads” after the venomous snake. With time, they accepted the moniker, sporting copper coins on their lapels to proclaim their sentiments. (More than a century earlier in England, the Methodists had been named by their detractors as well.)

The most prominent of the Copperheads was Clement Vallandigham, a congressman from Ohio. Formerly an editor of the Dayton Empire newspaper, Vallandigham was a powerful orator.


Lincoln had placed General Ambrose Burnside in charge in Ohio, and the general was aghast at the outright dissent being expressed against the war and against the president. Burnside issued General Order No. 38, threatening penalties to anyone expressing public sympathy for the Confederacy. In a speech at Mt. Vernon, Ohio, Vallandigham challenged General Order No. 38, provoking his arrest by soldiers at his home in the wee hours.

After Vallandigham's arrest by military officials, his supporters burned down the Dayton Empire's rival newspaper, the Republican. Vallandigham was denied a writ of habeas corpus* and a military court convicted him of "uttering disloyal sentiments" and attempting to hinder the prosecution of the war. Initially sentenced to prison until the close of the war, Vallandigham's sentence was changed. Lincoln ordered him exiled to the Confederate states.

One biography describes how Vallandigham, “unintentionally aided the war effort by becoming a symbol of treasonous activity.” A Copperhead who unintentionally aided the war effort. An interesting twist of history, no?



An irony too, that we see Lincoln's likeness on copper pennies.

In one cents, Mr. Lincoln was a Copperhead.


*writ of habeas corpus recognizes the right of a citizen to know on what charges he or she is jailed. Lincoln suspended writ of habeas corpus several times during the war. President Jefferson Davis did so in the Confederate states until this power was withdrawn by the Confederate Congress.

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