CHASING MY "ON-AIR" DREAM 

    When Greg Newman came to 4GG (pronounced Double G) on the Gold Coast, someone told me that he was a committed Christian. I contacted him and we soon became good friends.

    One day, while working at my father's shop in Surfers Paradise, I received a phone call from the program manager of a commercial radio station at Kempsey on the New South Wales mid-north coast. He had heard from another Christian friend, Don Gillespie, also from the Gold Coast, but at that time working in Christian media in Sydney - that I was seeking to break into radio. This program manager was a Christian and was hoping to hire more Christians for the staff of what was otherwise a secular commercial radio station

    He contacted Greg Newman the same day, encouraging us both to send tapes of our announcing. With Greg's help, I recorded an 'air-check' tape in the production studio of 4GG, and the two of us drove down to Kempsey to 2KM, to meet this man personally.

    I was SO EXCITED! I was sure this was the break I had been waiting (and praying) for. After all, when would a secular commercial radio station normally contact someone unknown to them with the possibility of a job offer? This has to be it, I thought.

    The program manager took us both into one of the studios not being used at that time, and proceeded to thread my tape on the reel to reel tape recorder. He played it through the large studio monitor speakers. After a short time, he stopped it, rewound it and said nothing. After a pause, he asked for Greg's tape. After listening to Greg's tape, he asked him if he would like to take up a position with them. Greg declined, as he really wanted to stay on the Gold Coast.

    About two weeks later, I received a letter from the program manager, bluntly telling me he thought I had a major speech problem. I felt DEFLATED, to say the least.

    Did I ever realise my dream?

   I am happy to say YES! When I applied to join Radio Rhema in New Zealand in 1980, they had been on air for more than two years. Initially, they too rejected my application to be an announcer, stating that they were potentially a network station, and did not consider my announcing to meet their standard. They did, however, offer me a full-time off air position.

    Backtracking a little, between the completion of the "AIR-TV" broadcasting course I had undertaken in Brisbane in 1978 - and July of 1981, I had gained some on air experience at two community FM stations in Lismore, in the Northern Rivers district of New South Wales, and also at 2SER-FM, Sydney, where I did a Sunday evening shift while studying at a Bible college in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney.

    Although I was disappointed at first that Radio Rhema did not offer me an announcer position, after praying for direction, and receiving encouragement from Pastor Alun Davies, one of the lecturers at Commonwealth Bible College in Katoomba, where I undertook a third year of study in 1980 - I accepted their offer and took up my position in Christchurch in July 1981.

    For the first eighteen months at Radio Rhema, I was employed as a "studio operator," my main role being "carting" music. For those unfamiliar with the workings of radio stations of that ere, this meant recording song tracks from vinyl records onto cartridge tapes for airplay using specially designed studio cart machines.

    I also had to load the carts with tape initially, transferring tape from large "pancake reels," to individual cartridge cases facilitate recording of tracks of varying lengths. This work was carried out overnight with me working from around 9pm to 6am the next morning, as the studio was used for program editing during the day. Mostly, I enjoyed this work, as I had the satisfaction of knowing that I was helping the station to transition the use of carts on air, a more practical means of presenting music on air than the tedious task of having to cue every music track on record turntables.

    With some help of a professional speech and drama teacher, and lots of practice, and with God's working, after eighteen months, the station manager made a decision to give me some 'on-air' shifts. Towards the end of the eighteen months, I was getting a little disillusioned, and losing heart that I might ever be allowed on air. Thankfully, the encouragement from other announcers helped me to keep the vision alive of being on air, and with their encouragement, I made another demo tape of my announcing. The station manager, Dudley Scantlebury was impressed enough with the improvement in my speech to offer me some on air music shifts, for which I was extremely grateful. I believe God honoured my faithfulness in working at nights on my own, and seeking to do a good job in the area in which I was employed for those first eighteen months.

    For the next five years at Radio Rhema, I was on air five, and sometimes six shifts per week, with the network starting to grow with the establishment of relay stations at Nelson, and the nation's capital, Wellington. At times, there were also short term broadcasts to Auckland, New Zealand's largest city - in the North Island, and also Invercargill, in the far south of the South Island.

    One of the highlights for me during that time on air was the privilege I had of presenting a weekly song request program on Saturday evenings for prisoners and their families, reaching into a number of prisons in Christchurch and Auckland.

    The program, called "Someone Cares" was initially hosted by a well-loved older lady announcer, Anita Wilkinson, with support from Prison Fellowship Ministry in Christchurch.

    When Anita was unable to continue, I had the opportunity to become the regular host, linking prison inmates and their families on the radio with song requests and greetings received at the station by letter.

    My dream to become a commercial radio announcer was never realised, but I believed that God placed that desire in my heart originally because He knew that one day the door would open to radio in His service.

COMING UP NEXT: THEN and NOW

    

CHASING MY "ON-AIR" DREAM 

    "Four Double G on the Gold Coast - with Greg Newman!" I sat on the opposite side of the studio console watching my friend with envy as he went through the paces of his evening music shift on the local commercial radio station.

    How I longed to be in his place, with my own radio program. Since my early teens, I had dreamed of becoming a radio announcer on a commercial station. I was an avid listener to all the stations in range of where I lived and picked up others on the radio in more distant towns late at night.

    I visited two of the local stations, 4GG, and also 2MW, Murwillumbah a little south of the Gold Coast - to watch the announcers in action and took the opportunity to observe them at work when presenting their music shifts from mobile caravan studios at shopping centres and at the beaches.

    But along with my heartfelt desire to make it into radio on air as an announcer, there was a sense of frustration. I knew that my right-sided facial paralysis, from birth, which affected my speech (as well as appearance) would present a major hurdle to the realisation of my dream.

    I would often record "mock" radio programs on my reel to reel tape recorder (hey, I'm showing my age), at home, feeling excited that I sounded just like the announcers I listened to. When played back, though, the realisation was that the problems in my speech were quite pronounced.

    When I became a Christian at the age of sixteen, my desire for radio did not wane. However, I completed Grade Twelve two years later and radio had to take a lesser priority in my life as I ventured into the world of employment.

    Initially, I undertook hospital-based General Nursing studies and then worked in my father's photographic and music retail business on the Gold Coast in Queensland.

    As a Christian, my desire to be better equipped led me to undertake a two-year Bible College training course at Lower Hutt, near Wellington in the North Island of New Zealand.

    During that time, my desire for radio resurfaced - this time with the dream that I might work in a Christian radio station.

    New Zealand had a group of people with a vision to establish a permanent Christian radio network. At that point in time, their first permanent licence had not been granted, however.  The vision for Christian radio in New Zealand was championed by Richard (Dick) Berry, who, in 1960, as a young man in Christchurch  had been healed by God of severe back pain. He told the Lord that he would commit his life to fully serving Him in whatever direction He would lead him. The Lord birthed in Richard a vision to establish Christian broadcasting in New Zealand, at a time when the only radio stations across the nation were government-owned and operated. There were not even any non-government commercial stations at the time.

    Returning to Australia at the start of 1978, I again found work in my father's business. My radio aspirations were fuelled by a thirty week (one night per week) radio/TV course called "Air-TV" conducted by local media professionals in Brisbane. The principals were Jim Iliffe, well-loved for his kids' television show, "The Channel Niners," and radio personality, John Knox.

    At the end of the course, I sent applications with "air-check" audition tapes to a number of country stations in Queensland and New South Wales. Some of the replies were encouraging, but the "big break" eluded me.

Did I ever fulfil my desire of becoming a radio announcer? To find out, tune in......oops, I mean, Log on to my Facebook page in the next few days to read more of my story.

COMING UP NEXT: ELATED! 😃 AND DEFLATED.

JESUS - THE WAY MAKER 

" I am the LORD, your Holy One,

The Creator Of Israel, your King."

Thus says the LORD, who makes a way

in the sea

And a path through the mighty waters,

Who brings forth the chariot and the horse,

The army and the power

(They shall lie down together, they shall not rise;

They are extinguished, they are quenched like a wick):

Do not remember the former things,

Nor consider the things of old.

Behold, I will do a new thing,

Now it shall spring forth;

Shall you not know it?

I will even make a road in the wilderness

And rivers in the desert.

The beast of the field will honor Me

The jackals and the ostriches,

Because I give waters in the wilderness

And rivers in the desert,

To give drink to My people, My chosen.

This people I have formed for Myself;

They shall declare My praise. Isaiah 43:15-21. NKJV

The first few verses of the passage above brings to mind the mighty deliverance of the children of Israel from Egypt, where they had endured four hundred years of cruel slavery with taskmasters, under the cruel edicts of the godless pharaohs. God had raised up Joseph to be a Deliverer for the people of Egypt when there was severe famine in the land. Because he had found favor in the eyes of the pharaoh at the time, his family was saved from starvation and death, as they came from Canaan and settled in the land of Goshen.

The Bible tells us that, after Joseph died, and when the pharaoh had died, that the children of Israel so multiplied in the land, that the new pharaoh had no appreciation for the deliverance that Joseph had wrought for the people, and set about to bring the children of Israel into slavery in harsh bondage to taskmasters who required of them gruelling work regimens.

The Book Of Exodus relates the details of the deliverance from Egypt of the children of Israel under the leadership of Moses, as they crossed the Red Sea on the journey to the Promised Land, Canaan.

Egypt in Bible typology is a picture of the place where non-Christians dwell spiritually in bondage to sin and in a state of relentless oppression of the enemy, satan.

The GOOD NEWS of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that Jesus came to set the oppressed totally free from demonic bondage and oppression, and to provide a way of freedom from the penalty and power of sin - and to restore us to fellowship with Father God. The Bible tells us in Romans 3:23 that: all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The Greek word for sin 'hamartia' means to miss the mark. In our own strength and in our own efforts to be good, we can never attain to God's standard of righteousness.

Romans 6:23 tells us: The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Jesus said of Himself in John 14:6 "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."

Jesus also said in John 8:12 "I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life."

He also said that whoever comes to Him, He will in no way cast out. Like the father in the parable of the Prodigal son in Luke 15, with open arms, our Father God waits with open arms to receive back those who come to Him humbly renouncing their sin, and acknowledging Jesus' death on the cross in their place, taking upon Him the sin of the world - in order to be restored to fellowship with God.

In Hebrews 13:8, the Bible tells us that: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. 

He is totally trustworthy. Numbers 23:19 says:

God is not a man, that He should lie,

Neither a son of man, that He shiould repent.

Has He said, and will He not do?

Or has He spoken, and wil He not make it good?

Psalm 145:13 says: The LORD is faithful to all His promises and loving toward all He has made.

Psalm 33:4 For the word of the LORD is right,

And all His work is done in truth.

JESUS IS OUR WAY MAKER!

Psalm 119:105 tells us: Your word is a lamp to my feet,

and a light to my path.

Jesus is the personification of the Word of God. As it says in John 1:1-5 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it [or extinguish it].

As we put our full confidence in the Lord God, He will make a way for us where there seems to be no way, because He IS the Way Maker.

This day, let your trust be fully in the Lord God who loves you, and desires to lead you in His perfect will for your life. 

Psalm 23, one of best known psalms in the Old Testament says: 

The LORD is my shepherd;

I shall not want.

He makes me to lie down in green pastures;

He leads me beside the still waters.

Jesus, the Miracle Worker is still confirming His Word through signs and wonders - healings, miracles and freedom-producing deliverance from demonic oppression as the Holy Spirit makes Jesus real in the lives of those who avail themselves of His life-giving, transforming love and power. Increasingly, God is anointing ordinary committed, Spirit-filled Christians to display His love and power to change and free lives from bondage to satan's lies and torment - into the liberty of the sons and daughters of God.

This coming Sunday night, 16th April, you are invited to attend a special outreach meeting at Mt Stuart Memorial Hall at 7a Raymont, Terrace, Mount Stuart Hobart. The time: 6-9pm Healing Evangelist, Joshua Sawiris from Glory City Church in Brisbane will be ministering the Word of God. Joshua has an amazing testimony of being gloriously saved and transformed by the love and power of God.

He has a healing ministry with significant healings and miracles marking his ministry in the love and power of the Holy Spirit. He has seen tumors disappear, blind eyes see and cancers healed. Joshua has ministered powerfully in Africa, Cambodia, Brazil and here in Australia, with healings and miracles following his ministry of the Word of God

He has a heart full of God's compassion for the hurt and broken, with a desire to see lives fully restored and made whole by the Holy Spirit as they come to the Lord.

Outreach Healing meetings will also be conducted at the Mount Stuart Memorial Hall, 

7a Raymont Terrace, Mount Stuart on Sunday 23rd April and 30th April from 6-9pm, led by Pastor AnthonyRay Castro. ALL ARE WELCOME! 

God is moving by His Spirit! Lean in for all the Lord has for you in this exciting season.