High Adventure, a Christian broadcasting company headed...

High Adventure, a Christian broadcasting company headed by George Otis of Van Nuys, is launching a new radio station to broadcast news and Christian encouragement to Chinese pastors, church members and students involved in the pro-democracy movement. The 100,000-watt transmitter, on Nimitz Hill on the island of Guam, will “blanket most of China with 8 million watts of effective radiated power,” Otis said.

A dedication ceremony will be held in Van Nuys on Sept. 9, and completion of the station is expected later in the month. When it goes into operation Otis’ Voice of Hope World Network will reach every major population in the world, according to the organization.

MOVE

Mercy Ships, the international maritime ministry that has been based in San Pedro for the last seven years, is moving to a 120-acre site near Tyler, Tex. Don Stephens, director of Mercy Ships, said the organization’s 50 some headquarters employees will be relocating early next month in an effort to economize “by moving to an area where the cost of living is lower.” He said the group is also expanding its staff.

Mercy Ships operates the M/V Anastasis, a nine-story, volunteer-staffed hospital, evangelism and training ship. The crew of about 325 represents more than 20 denominations and 25 nationalities.

PEOPLE

The appointment of Msgr. Helmut Hefner as pastor of St. Christopher’s Roman Catholic Church in West Covina last week by Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony ends an era. For 33 of the parish’s 35 years, Msgr. W. Keith Bramble, now retiring, had presided over the church. When Bramble was assigned to the church in 1956 by the late Cardinal James Francis McIntyre, it was still bounded by a walnut grove and a two-lane highway. Mass was celebrated in an old prefab steel-frame building with a tin roof.

The first Sunday . . . it rained so hard on that tin roof that you couldn’t hear anything,” Bramble recalls. “First thing I did was insulate that roof.”

Bramble was ordained in 1939 under Archbishop John Cantwell when the Diocese of Los Angeles extended from San Diego to Monterey. Hefner, 45, a native of Yugoslavia who immigrated to the United States in 1955, was ordained in 1969. He has served on the archdiocese’s Marriage Tribunal for more than 18 years.