Childhood Listener of TWR Is Partner Now

Of the 1.3 million people in Timor-Leste, almost 90% of the population identifies as Catholic, according to Joshua Project. 

Praise the Lord for a God-given opportunity to reach listeners in Timor-Leste, also known as East Timor!

In the early 16th century, Portuguese missionaries brought Catholicism to East Timor. Over time the religion spread, and Joshua Project reports that almost 90% of the population today identifies as Catholic. However, traditional animist traditions and rituals are still followed, resulting in a syncretic worldview where spirits and nature are sacralized and ancestors are venerated.

Daniel Saputra, international director for TWR’s Southeast Asia region, had been looking for opportunities to develop a ministry partnership by which TWR could share God’s Word through media in East Timor. He paid a visit to Radio Voz, the only evangelical radio station network in the country. Radio Voz (also known as UCB Timor-Leste) is affiliated with UCB¹ Asia Pacific.

Broadcasting from a 1,000-watt transmitter and a strategically placed antenna, Radio Voz covers the entire capital, Dili, and a good number of villages along the mountains. The network also has nine stations across the country, extending its broadcast coverage to all districts of East Timor.

Saputra met with Elienae Moura, a Brazilian missionary serving as director of the Radio Voz network, and Rio Ribeiro, director of one of the network’s FM stations. To everyone’s pleasant surprise, we learned that Moura’s personal spiritual journey had been greatly impacted by one of TWR’s national partners in Latin America: RTM² Brazil!

Moura was born into a family of 11 children. They lived in a riverside community in Tefé, a town in a rural area of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. In 1975, his eldest brother – then only an infant – fell gravely ill and was on the verge of death.

One of their relatives informed his father about an RTM radio program during which a pastor would pray for the sick in the evenings. His aunt brought the AM radio to his parents’ house, to the room where the baby was lying, without much hope that he would survive. The program came on. Over the airwaves, the pastor asked for family members to place their hands on the sick and believe with all their hearts while he prayed.

Moura’s parents did as they were instructed. And immediately after the prayer, the baby recovered and was completely healed.

Both his parents accepted Jesus and shortly afterward became leaders of a small Assemblies of God congregation that was experiencing a shortage of workers.

Today, all 11 of the family’s children are strong believers, and some are serving in full-time ministry. Many members of Moura’s family still live in Tefé today.

Like his father, Moura felt the call to ministry while listening to an RTM radio program, deciding to serve the Lord by becoming a missionary. He doesn’t remember the name of the pastor or of the program that God used to work a miracle in his family, but he knows that his spiritual journey and missionary ministry began with that RTM radio broadcast.

Moura was excited to learn about the Mission 66 and Women of Hope programs in the Brazilian dialect of the Portuguese language. He found these two programs to be very suitable for audiences in East Timor, where Brazilian Portuguese is widely spoken. There is a large potential audience for the programs as radio is the most popular and most accessible medium in the country.

On 1 May 2024, TWR signed a memorandum of understanding with Radio Voz to broadcast the Mission 66 program daily and the Women of Hope program on the weekends.

“This partnership between TWR and Radio Voz enables us to share gospel programs with people across all of East Timor,” Saputra said.

“We are starting with the Mission 66 and Women of Hope programs in the Portuguese language. God willing, we have future plans to expand our broadcasts in other languages, such as Indonesian, that are still widely used in East Timor.”

Saputra and TWR Asia call for prayer for this new effort, asking the Lord to bring blessing to the East Timorese through the broadcasts of Mission 66 and Women of Hope.

¹ United Christian Broadcasters
² RTM stands for Radio Trans Mundial, Portuguese for Trans World Radio.