Thanks to all of you that participated in this year’s Sharathon, “Keep On Looking Up”.  We saw a record commitment of $103,506, with several anonymous donors also providing a record number of matching funds that together helped us reach this amount of support.

Our theme this year was “Keep on Looking Up”, taking us back to our roots of the founding of our flagship station, KOLU, in 1971. Then and now, the goal of this ministry has been to help people to “Keep on Looking Up” to Jesus Christ in every aspect of their lives.

Our listeners responded well to the additional costs we have incurred since the upgrade of KOLU to 39,000 watts and the expansion of the ministry through a translator reaching into Yakima. Yet, we have these Sharathons to remind our audience of both the cost and value of keeping this ministry on the air.  This year’s Sharathon also saw many new supporters join us in moving this ministry forward.

This year’s budget remained at $105,000. With our new, higher powered transmitter at KOLU, the cost for electricity alone is over $19,000. Annual increases in rental fees bring the cost of our transmitter sites to $15,000, making these two items nearly one-third of our budget.  With commitments that usually come in after the Sharathon, we are confident that we will have the necessary funds to continue serving our listeners and growing in our outreach to the glory of God!

Last year, we were able to replace our audio processor, which both enhances the sound and prepare it for stereo broadcasting.  This has improved the sound of our signal and also enabled us to keep the old processor so that we have a “backup” in case of failure of this vital piece of equipment.  We also installed our backup antenna and now can run close to our old power level automatically should the “big” transmitter fail or we lose electrical service to our transmitter site.  A generator installed earlier enable us to “keep the power on” during outages.  Also, we were able to “paint” the tower at our studio (with a grey cold-galvanizing compound) and perform other maintenance at the KOLU transmitter site.

Our guest hosts this year were George Zarris of Christian Media International along with his wife Barbara. Bro. Zarris has been instrumental in establishing Christian radio stations and television programs around the world, and was able to share how vital these ministries are at home and abroad.

Listeners had the opportunity to drop by the studio and learn more about this ministry and meet many of us that keep Christian Family Radio broadcasting 24 hours a day. Saturday brought a hot dog cookout as well; with the rainy weather we moved it indoors and many of you were able to enjoy the wonderful food and fellowship.

Of course, regular support is still necessary to keep Christian Family Radio broadcasting, and these needs are also stressed.

You can watch our video covering the upgrades we made two years ago at our 2015 Upgrades link. This 8-minute video provides a lot of background information on this achievement made possible by supporters of Christian Family Radio. If you want to know more about the history of this ministry, you can also view our KOLU History and Expansion Video produced earlier.