AWR News

by Dr. Adrian Peterson
AWR International Relations Coordinator

I was born into a secular family of seven children in a small town in South Australia. Back in the era before World War II, good-quality radio receivers were not available, and many listeners made their own, particularly for shortwave. My uncle let me listen to his homemade receiver, and I marveled at hearing the distant radio stations in our state capital, Adelaide.

My first QSL (reception report confirmation) card from a radio station in another country was the giant 2YA in Wellington, New Zealand. For shortwave, my first QSL was the familiar red, white, and blue card issued during World War II for the American shortwave station KGEX in San Francisco, California.

After our family joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church, I felt a call to serve in ministry. I gave up my employment as a trainee in industrial management and attended Avondale College, where I met my future wife.

When H.M.S. Richards Sr., the illustrious founder of the well-known American Voice of Prophecy radio program, visited Australia, I found him to be very approachable and interested in young, budding pastors. He challenged me: “Why don’t you make this your life work, to combine ministry with shortwave international radio broadcasting?” This sounded like a good idea, so I accepted his mandate to serve the Lord, both in ministry and international radio broadcasting.

After ministering in Australia, we were appointed to the Pakistan Union, with particular emphasis on opening a new work in Afghanistan. I listened to shortwave radio programming for news, information, and a touch of home and western culture. Many different shortwave stations – such as the BBC, Voice of America, and Deutsche Welle – requested I serve as their monitor, reporting on the strength and clarity of their signals.

In 1968, three years before Adventist World Radio started, Walter Scragg, from the General Conference, invited me to become an informal advisor to him for the purpose of launching an Adventist shortwave broadcasting service.

After graduating from Andrews University, we were appointed to Sri Lanka in Southern Asia. The Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation asked me to launch a shortwave program on their behalf, so with the approval of church administrators, I created the program Radio Monitors International in 1975. Over the years, we received mail responses from listeners in more than 100 countries, many of whom also enrolled in a Bible correspondence course.

Later, we were called to serve in the communication ministry at the Southern Asia headquarters in India. An existing radio production studio was already preparing programming in several Indian languages. This studio later became the AWR – Asia radio production studio, and we started issuing our own QSL cards. AWR was on the air in Europe by this time, under the direction of Allen Steele, broadcasting from Portugal.

Eventually, our family moved to the United States, where my involvement with AWR’s ministry continued. I visited many AWR locations in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific, representing AWR through presentations at radio conventions in various countries.

During such travels, the airplane captain would sometimes invite me into the flight deck, to sit by the radio in the jump seat and tune in to many stations normally not heard on my receiver. On one occasion, while flying over the Indian Ocean, I heard the lonely medium-wave station VLU2 on Christmas Island. Another time, while flying near Cocos (Keeling) Island off Australia, the captain made a radio phone call to the little station on the island, telling them I was tuned to their station; the announcer on duty interviewed me live on the air!

Today, my collection of QSL cards and letters has climbed to more than 35,000, the largest collection of its type in private hands anywhere in the world, and we are still on the air with a worldwide shortwave program, Wavescan. I am grateful for the honor and privilege of having the longest continuous association with Adventist World Radio. I express gratitude to God for the privilege of service and ministry in international radio broadcasting on behalf of the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church.