MB Spanish radio program honoured

Ernesto Pinto, Spanish producer of Family Life Network (FLN), was honoured last fall at the Latin American Christian Communicators Convention (COICOM) for ten years of producing the radio program Encuentro with “efficiency, excellence and holiness.”

“I can tell you there’s nothing better out there than your program,” a journalist at the convention commented.

Unique in the Hispanic world, the Encuentro (Encounter) program treats themes that others keep silent, such as abuse, addictions, incest and AIDS. Pinto records people’s personal stories in every country he visits and interviews many others by phone. His guests have ranged from taxi drivers to famous musicians to members of a presidential family.

Ernesto Pinto (left) on live radio in El Salvador.

Pinto spent his boyhood days in a Honduran banana plantation supporting his family after his father left them. One day his superior placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, “You do not belong here.” That launched him on a track leading to a Masters degree in theology and a desire to share hope with his own people.

While pastoring a Hispanic Mennonite Brethren church in Winnipeg, Pinto began making a radio program in his basement. “But I couldn’t get anyone interested in it,” he says. FLN (then called MB Communications) produced programs in Russian and German but did not yet have a vision for Spanish.

Neil Klassen, FLN recording engineer at the time, recalls how that vision grew. After a trip with his wife to a Latin American country he felt strongly that FLN should do something for Spanish-speaking people. Neil Block, then director of Missions and Church Extension for Manitoba, told Klassen about Ernesto and his program. “Ernesto started to come in the evenings and we recorded his programs after hours on our own time,” says Klassen. About a year later, in February 1995, the agency officially adopted Encuentro.

Ten years later, FLN’s Spanish department employs four people. Letters and calls pour in to the Winnipeg office as well as to local stations. Encuentro airs on both Catholic and Protestant stations. A station in Central America writes, “Every day we get calls about your program telling us of people who have made new decisions because of it. Really, it’s crazy how the people just wait every day to hear your program.”

Stations that air Encuentro, 1994–2004, in 23 countries.

From New York to California, and down to Argentina, convicts tell of turning to God in prison, families tell of being reconciled, abuse victims tell of healing, abusers tell of turning a corner. Thousands of lives have changed through Encuentro.

—Dorothy Siebert, FLN release