Hello, Beulah, North Dakota!

There’s a new station on the air in Beulah, North Dakota on KHRU 97.9 FM. The Horizon Broadcast Network turned on the 6000 watt full power station broadcasting the gospel through expository teaching and praise and worship music October 18th of this year. The Beulah signal is expected to reach over 15,000 people locally and will feed our Bismarck translator for total population coverage of over 100,000 potential listeners. KHRU is HBN’s first full power station in North Dakota and is joining two translators already currently on the air in Minot and Williston.

The Horizon Broadcast Network’s Operation Center is based in Minot, ND. So having our first full power station in the state up and running is a great accomplishment and very exciting for all involved with the network.

So with great pleasure I would like to welcome all of our new Beulah listeners to the Horizon Broadcast Network family.

Matt McNeilly
Operations and Production Supervisor

Esterlyn Concert

The Minot Building and HBN hosted a great concert this past weekend. Click here for the wrap-up.

On the Air: Kotzebue Community Update

Recently, our engineer, Curtis Young, took a trip to Kotzebue, Alaska, to assist in the installation of our newest full-power station. Kotzebue is a town of about 3,500 located 33 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Curtis was glad to be traveling in June!

In Kotzebue, Curtis joined Keith and Kelly Kendall and their son Cameron, who moved to Alaska last year to begin a new work. Keith will be maintaining the radio equipment for HBN, and the Kendalls have already begun a Bible study and a Sunday School. The population is over 70% native Alaskan Inupiaq, and because of the location and isolation of the city, it is like entering another culture. There are no roads in or out so the Kendalls stay connected using modern technology.Keith shared this moment of encouragement with us, “…people are warming up. A guy came into the hardware store the other day and asked me if I was connected to the radio station. He told me his wife listens at home all day long. I was so blessed. He also told me he has a daughter that cannot speak or walk, (from birth). I was able to pray for him and his daughter in the store…”

Please pray for Keith, Kelly and Cameron as they share the love and hope of Jesus Christ with the people of Kotzebue. Pray also that people would tune in to KHZK 103.9FM in Kotzebue and receive the Word into their hearts and that lives would be changed.

Progress Report!

For our leasing team and tower build crews, the last three months have been a lot of hard work and effort in the service of the Lord. In those three months, the tower crews have installed equipment at 166 tower sites…an average of almost 2 sites per day! Each one of these sites will be a translator or satellator station in that community. HBN’s current total of sites that have been built is 283: 6 full-power stations, 58 satellators, and 219 translators.

The pace of these translator builds will soon slow a bit as the focus shifts to the development of the network in the areas of marketing and ministry development.

Please continue to pray for the safety of the crews as they climb towers for equipment installation, for HBN to be a blessing and to find favor with tower owners, and for the Word of God as it goes out over the air.

Slideshow

Here is a great slideshow from Horizon Christian Fellowship with some prayer points for the network.

Thank you for your continued prayer support!

Event Update: Crossover Festival

Mark 15:16 states, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”

As part of the Horizon Broadcast Network, we were blessed to be able to do just that at the recent Crossover Festival in Camdenton, Missouri. While this was meant to be a fun music-centered event, it was for us foremost an opportunity to talk to people about Jesus Christ, about the network, and share what God is doing to advance His kingdom through the airwaves.


It is always amazing to see God’s hand at work, but our entire group was taken aback at how He orchestrated a perfect weekend filled with testaments of His love for His children. From weather, to extra tickets, to bringing just the right person to our booth at the right time, we had no doubt that we were indeed doing what He had called us to do and He was leading our thoughts, actions and driving our conversations.


I would like to take this time to share with all of our HBN family just a few of the many highlights of this ministry outreach. We were blessed by a beautiful sunny weekend without the predicted storms, which came at the perfect time; the morning after the event wrapped up. The event staff was amazing to work with and provided us with the best vendor spot available…right at the front entrance. I wish I could describe in words how the Spirit was just enveloping this place. You could feel it and see it is the faces of the artists and crowd.


Leading up to the festival, our staff had been giving away tickets on-air. One of our first winners happened to be from McCook, Nebraska which is almost to the Colorado border. He happened to be listening to our newest full power station KHZY in Overton. He shared that he shouldn’t have been able to get our signal that far out of Overton and was amazed that it was coming in. God is so good! At the booth on Friday, he stopped by and let us know that he drove over 9 hours just to attend. He again stopped by the booth later that evening and thanked us and shared how blessed he was by the event but also by the teaching and music that he heard on our station.


By Friday, we still had three extra tickets for Saturday’s event. I began to worry about who they should be given to or what should be done with them. One of our volunteers, Mike Brock, just smiled and said, “Just wait and God will let you know.” Within half an hour we were able to witness to a man in a wheelchair. We had seen him throughout the day and he had stopped by our booth to look at some of the books displayed. I would like to add that he was so easily noticeable because he resembled Ozzy Osborne down to the last bit of clothing he was wearing….this was his witnessing tool. As we spoke with him, he shared some of his testimony and walk with God. He shared that he had only enough money to buy tickets for one day of the festival. I asked him how many were in his family and he told me three. Just like that, God gave us an answer to prayer and we were able to bless him, his wife and daughter later with the tickets for Saturday. The look on his face as we announced this from the stage was one that I will never forget…just pure joy. Throughout the next day we had further opportunity to witness to him and his wife. God is so good to those that are faithful.

Finally, we had a women stop by our booth and inquire if we were in any way connected to Horizon Christian Fellowship in San Diego. After telling her that we were and a little about the network, God put it on her heart to share her story with us. During her twenties, she was living in San Diego. She had the misfortune of losing her baby. Hurt and broken, God led her to seek help at HCF. Amazingly, it was Sandy Macintosh that helped her through this tough time in her life and brought her to Christ. She testified to the impact that God still had on her life and how she knew that she wouldn’t have been able to cope if it wasn’t for Sandy and HCF. Just writing this brings tears to my eyes, because it shows clearly how God’s perfect timing and good plan for us all comes together in the most amazing and unexpected ways.

In all, we walked away with our spirits renewed and a greater commitment to continuing God’s work with HBN. It is just overwhelming each day how God can choose to use us in His plans. We are blessed to be given the opportunity to just that with all of you. God bless.


Brian KC Jones
KSRD Station Manager
St. Joseph, MO

If We Build it, They Will Come

Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” John 8:12

The original HBN flagship station - KSRD, St. Joseph, Missouri - has been on the air since December 2004. In addition to directly feeding its own listening area, which includes Kansas City, KSRD has been, since April 2005, delivering a satellite uplink signal that feeds the rest of HBN, including full power stations in Kettleman City, California, Coahoma, Texas, and Bruce, Mississippi, as well as a number of satellator retransmit sites around the country.

Full time operation from the Network Operations Center in Minot, North Dakota is rapidly approaching. The satellite uplink from KSRD in St. Joseph is now being received in Minot and retransmitted to the Horizons-1 satellite using the Wegener uplink system installed at the NOC. This uplink feeds the newer portions of HBN as the network grows, including our newest full power station in Overton, Nebraska and satellator retransmit sites in Minot and Williston, North Dakota and several other locations.The HBN team in Minot is communicating with KSRD on a daily basis to get everything ready so that the switch in operations from KSRD to the NOC will be seamless. Karen Arrington and Chris Spousta have been working tirelessly on the Visual Traffic software to get that ball rolling, while Curtis Young and Matt McNeilly work out the bugs of the Wegener satellite system. Extensive testing on all receivers and related equipment is performed before they are deployed into the field. The remaining operations software such as iMediaTouch, PowerGold and Axia are also being worked on, continuing our preparation.

The construction of the studios at the NOC are in the homestretch, with just a few connections and installations to be buttoned up. With these studios finished, we will begin upgrading the studios at KSRD in St. Joseph that will allow them to operate the Heartland Region feed remotely. Shortly after that, we will design and build a brand new studio in Indianapolis for their remote control of our Eastern Region feed.

From the operations standpoint, we would ask for your prayers for understanding of software and equipment and for the functionality of the equipment as a whole.

Matt McNeilly
NOC Operations Supervisor