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Their Jungle Book? It was the Bible

A Clearwater couple reflect on the years they spent in the jungles of Ecuador, using a radio program to spread the Gospel.

By EILEEN SCHULTE
Published October 1, 2005

CLEARWATER - One day in the early 1960s, Kendon Gosney found himself in a 40-foot dugout canoe heading down the Pastaza River on the way to meet the indigenous Atshuar people deep in the Ecuadorian jungle.

After days of drifting past banana trees and cassava plants, the guide, Chief Tsantiacu, led Gosney and his friends to a remote village with leaf-roof houses.

Here lived warriors and headhunters.

They had never heard of sin.

They had never heard of Jesus Christ.

But over dinners of roasted monkey and steamed roots, Gosney and the other missionaries on the trip tried to turn them away from witch doctors and convert them to Christianity.

The trip was one of the most fascinating events of Gosney's missionary career.

Kendon, 80, and his wife of 60 years, Janet, 79, spent several years in South America working with the World Radio Missionary Fellowship. The ministry operates the world's first missionary radio station, HCJB, whose call letters stand for Heralding Christ Jesus' Blessings. It also operated a TV station.

Now they live in Clearwater, surrounded by photos of their adventures in Costa Rica and Ecuador.

The two met at elementary school in Conklin, N.Y.

Kendon Gosney accepted the Lord as his savior when he was 7. Janet Gosney was saved when she was 12. They were married at the Little White Church in Conklin in 1945, coincidentally on the same day the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

Kendon Gosney got a job as a photographer for IBM, and Janet Gosney began having babies.

In 1941, the couple started a Christian radio program at a station called WNBF. It got off to a rocky start. At $13 for a half-hour of air time, the deacons at their church said, "We can't afford it," Janet Gosney said.

Eventually they relented. In 1948, the couple started a live TV program called Down Memories Lane . They took song requests from the audience; Kendon Gosney sang in a quartet.

Kendon Gosney's parents, who also worked at IBM, left the company to work at the ministry's U.S. headquarters with the ministry's founder, Clarence W. Jones.

"He had a vision that there were people in South America that had no way of hearing the Gospel," Janet Gosney said. "His vision was to reach the world through radio."

Jones thought the couple could help fulfill his dream because they had broadcast experience. So he persuaded them to sell their house and move to Quito, Ecuador. There, the ministry provided natives with radios pretuned to the station, where the Gosneys had a program called Think on These Things .

"The excitement of moving to another country and doing something I lov e .. . I hope I didn't do it for my own selfish reasons," Kendon Gosney said. But, "I feel we filled a very diverse niche."

Janet Gosney returned to the United States in 1966. While she taught at Head Start and finished her degree at Florida International University, Kendon Gosney went back to Ecuador and opened a photography business. Although he said "my heart's there," he came back to the United States in 1986 and got a job at Honeywell.

She is now retired, and he works part time for Nielsen Media Research as a bilingual interviewer.

Two of their daughters live in Manatee County. Their son, Ron, a floral designer who had AIDS, died after being hit by a car on Missouri Avenue six years ago.

Despite the tragedy, the couple said they have enjoyed their unique life.

"For little country bumpkins, we've had a pretty exciting life," he said.

They've lived in 28 different houses, five states and several countries working for God.

"After I accepted the Lord on my grandpa's farm, I was sitting in a strawberry patch," said Janet Gosney. "I was 13 years old. I said, "Lord, I will go wherever you want, but please don't send me to Africa. You know how badly I sunburn."'

Kendon Gosney started laughing as he picked up the next part of his wife's story.

"In Ecuador, we were 10 miles south of the equator at 10,000 feet," he said. "The ultraviolet rays were very strong."

--Eileen Schulte can be reached at 727 445-4153 or schulte@sptimes.com

[Last modified October 1, 2005, 01:45:17]