USA (MNN) — Early in the morning on December 22nd, a fire broke out at Trans World Radio’s US office in Cary, North Carolina. The Cary Fire Department responded within five minutes, but not before the flames destroyed a shipping area, loading dock, workshop areas, mail distribution, and some offices. Other areas of the building have sustained smoke damage.
(Photo courtesy of TWR)
TWR’s Gospel broadcasts reach a global network of approximately four billion people every year. Although they suffered damage from the fire, Lauren Libby with TWR says, “We have not missed a minute of airtime, we have not missed any digital delivery. Because we have a backup, we can backup from Europe, we can backup from Asia, we can backup from Africa, and so we had the capability to do that.
“We have another building on the site so we moved operations over there and it’s been almost seamless. It’s just been gracious that the damage was not worse and we’re very grateful that no one was injured.”
TWR has not yet been given the green light to move back into their headquarters. But they hope to begin the slow process of moving operations back in the coming days.
Meanwhile, TWR is facing significant out-of-pocket expenses as a result of the fire, which they estimate will reach over $100,000. And especially when ministries are trying to use God’s resources as effectively as possible for communicating the Gospel, it’s more difficult when unexpected disasters incur a large bill.
“We had insurance on the building but we have, of course, a deductible that has to be met and it’s a fairly high deductible. A number of people have called, not only from the United States but other countries and we’ve been just overwhelmed with the response. People have been calling, even other ministries, to help and it’s been a wonderful response,” says Libby.
(Photo courtesy of TWR)
“If you’re interested, all the details are on our website at twr.org and you can look at the donate button there and you can get the entire perspective of where the project is and how the funding is going and obviously there is a need.”
As they finish the cleanup and restoration process, please pray for TWR’s staff and ministry.
“I think the big thing [to pray for] is that none of the ministry would be interrupted globally…. We’re working to really get our production facilities here in the Americas back into operations for video as well as audio. To this point, we haven’t missed any deadlines or anything, so we just pray that the Lord would give us a smooth path forward.”
Finally, Libby adds, “We just want to say thank you for the tremendous response from the Body of Christ from whom we’ve heard from. It’s been very sobering, it’s been very encouraging…to see people come together, ministries begin to come together and we’ve experienced that and we just want to say a deep thank you to everyone who’s been involved.”