50 Years of Media Ministry – It Is Written Canada

by: Mike Lemon, speaker/director for It Is Written Canada.

Some would say it all started in a country schoolhouse in Waldheim, Sask., with a boy named Henry Feyerabend. His skinny, four-year-old legs dangled from the bench while his uncle Dietrich Neufeld, affectionately known as Uncle D.D., preached at an evangelistic meeting. Old charts covered the chalkboard, revealing the beasts from the prophetic books of Daniel and Revelation.

The boy poked his mother to get her attention. Then, he pulled her close so she could hear his announcement: “Mama, you know something? Mama, someday I’m going to be a preacher and a baptizer, just like Uncle D.D.”

Instead of pin-up pictures of hockey heroes and movie stars, a young Feyerabend papered the walls of his bedroom with pictures of H.M.S. Richards, of the Voice of Prophecy radio program, along with prints of the King’s Heralds quartet.

Feyerabend had a persistent fire burning in his heart to preach, to sing, and to share his love for his Saviour. That fire took him from selling Christian books to teaching, to being a boys’ dean at an academy, to being a singing evangelist, and to spending 11 years as a missionary in Brazil. There, he preached and sang to thousands of people from the pulpit and from the broadcasting studio.

When Feyerabend returned to Canada in 1969, his first assignment was working with Pastor George Vandeman in a Toronto evangelistic campaign. At the time, Feyerabend had no idea how the Lord was about to amplify his voice as a humble servant of God.

First, God led Feyerabend to produce weekly broadcasts from a tiny radio station in Toronto and then to make five-minute telecasts—first in Portuguese and later in English. After that, God led him to establish what today is the national and international media ministry known as It Is Written Canada.

When Feyerabend returned to Canada from his 11 years in Brazil, he was able to speak, teach, and preach in Portuguese. But he didn’t realize how much he would have to rely on his ability to speak Portuguese in order to reach a large group of Portuguese-speaking immigrants who had come to Canada.

“Henry was given the challenge of opening up a Portuguese-speaking Seventh-day Adventist Church in downtown Toronto,” Pastor Bill Santos recalls. “Pastor Henry, his wife, a Bible worker from Brazil (Tracy Bravo), and her parents set out to reach the Portuguese community, which was about 250,000 people. This is long before Google. So literally they used the white pages—the phone book—and they looked at every name that sounded Portuguese.”

After writing the addresses down, they set out knocking on doors, introducing themselves and asking people if they would like to study the Bible. They put forth a tremendous effort, but the first 80 doors they knocked on resulted in not a single interest.

“What you and I may take as an obstacle,” Santos says, “Henry would say, ‘This is an opportunity; we’ve just got to keep plugging away.’ And in the course of that search, they found six Portuguese-speaking Seventh-day Adventists. Some were not attending church because they didn’t speak any English, and some were attending an English church but were struggling.”

Those six—together with Feyerabend and his wife, and Bravo and her parents—rented space in the Ukrainian Seventh-day Adventist Church in downtown Toronto. One day Feyerabend decided to visit one of his church members at her home, and a certain older lady was in the living room.

Doug Bruce, who has been working with Feyerabend since 1979, first doing sound and then directing and producing, describes what happened next.

“Henry ended up visiting this woman, and she was watching TV. But the sound was off. She was just watching the picture. And he asked her, in Portuguese, ‘Is something wrong with your TV? Why is there no sound?’ She said, ‘Well, Pastor, I like watching the pictures, but I don’t understand the English, so there’s no point in me having the sound,’” says Bruce.  

“And that inspired him to think, like, ‘Wow, so she just wants to be able to watch television in Portuguese. I’ll start a Portuguese TV program.’ So Henry immediately tried to find air time. And through a series of miracles, he managed to hook up with a fellow that had some air time.”

Feyerabend asked the businessman to sell him some air time, but the answer was emphatic: “Nope!”

Feyerabend didn’t see the barriers. He kept on asking, day after day, no matter how many times he heard no. Finally, to get Feyerabend off his back, the businessman answered, “I’ll give you a contract for $4,000 for 13 five-minute telecasts.”

Without hesitation, Feyerabend accepted the offer. “I’ll take it!” he said.

Walking away with the contract in his hands, Feyerabend remembered he had no money. The average price of a new car in 1972 stood at $3,690, and he had only six working-class, blue-collar members in his church.

No money.

Nothing but faith.

Feyerabend feared he had gone too far. He thought, Maybe I should go back and tell him I made a mistake. But then again, what would it hurt to wait a few days, tell my members, pray about it, and see what happens?

Santos picks up the story: “Henry goes back to the Ukrainian Church where they were renting, and a miracle happens. A miracle! He says he felt impressed to go to the mailbox and he found a letter.

“They just recently came to use the Ukrainian Church, so no one knew they were there, and this was a letter from Massachusetts that had to have been mailed a couple of weeks beforehand.

“It’s a letter from a friend of his by the name of Dr. Edgar Latimer. Well, he opens it, and inside there’s just two pieces of paper, a note, and a cheque. And the note says, ‘Henry, I thought you might need this. Use it wherever you need it.’ And the cheque is for $1,000.”

Bruce continues the story. “The miraculous thing about this cheque,” he says, “is that Henry signed the deal for the TV contract that day—no more than an hour before he received the letter.

“Think about the timing on this: this is not an e-transfer. This is back when you had to mail something, and from the U.S. it would take a couple of weeks. So, Dr. Latimer was impressed to actually donate the money, fill out the cheque, and mail the cheque two weeks before Henry actually even managed to sign a contract. To me, that’s absolutely incredible! How that happened is nothing short of miraculous.”

By the end of the week, another $3,000 had come in, unsolicited. The donors were Tony Diniz, Carroll Cross, and Gus Martin—none of whom were members of his congregation.

After that, Feyerabend’s focus was no longer on how he was going to pay for the air time; the focus was on what he was going to say in each of those five-minute episodes. In the first television broadcast, Feyerabend offered free Bible studies and a free Bible in Portuguese; 29 families called in to request Bible studies and to receive the free offer.

The first family that responded was the Santos family. “One Sunday, God wanted me to stay home.” Isabel Santos fondly recalls, “We didn’t go to the beach as we usually did, and I put my television on. There is a man speaking about God in Portuguese.

“I’m listening closely to this man, and he said something that touched my heart. He says, ‘Some people say that God is dead, but I know that’s not true because I talked to Him this morning. God is alive.’

“‘Oh, my!’ I thought. ‘He talks to God?!’ Being a very faithful Catholic, I was praying to my saints. At that time, I must be honest, I never talked to God directly. When I heard him saying that he could talk to God, I said, ‘I have to know how he does this.’

“Pastor Feyerabend and Tracy gave me a Portuguese Bible and Bible studies. You know, I did not know that Jesus suffered so much for me. And when I heard this, I said, ‘I have to tell this to everyone. All my friends and my family have to know this—the love of Jesus!’”

Says Pastor Shawn Boonstra, “Henry was a legend. Henry loved people. Henry loved winning people to Christ more than anything in the world. He just absolutely lived for it. I mean, he bought a bus at one point just so he could tour Canada and go from town to town and hold public meetings where people could investigate the scriptures with him and get to know Christ.

“I’ve never seen that level of dedication. I mean he literally died on the job eventually—right to the end, serving Christ, leading people to Christ. My first impression was, ‘Man, I’ve never met somebody so dedicated to anything in my life!’ And I found it contagious to hang out with him. Henry rubs off on you. And the next thing you know, I’m doing it every day and probably for the rest of my life.”

Through this media ministry, countless souls across Canada and around the world have come to know the love of Jesus and have embraced Him as their Saviour, Lord, and Friend.

To honour how God has used the ministry of It Is Written Canada over the years, we invite you to attend one of the six weekend rallies we will be holding. The rallies will celebrate the 50th anniversary of this media ministry, which began with a flame the Lord sparked in a young Henry Feyerabend’s heart so many years ago.

Here are the locations and dates of the six It Is Written Canada weekend rallies this year:

We look forward to meeting you there as we look back and celebrate how the Lord has kept the fire of It Is Written Canada burning over the past 50 years.

Mike Lemon is the speaker/director for It Is Written Canada.

Source: https://adventistmessenger.ca/features/50-years-of-media-ministry-it-is-written-canada