Liberia ELWA 20th Anniversary

LIBERIA on 16 January 1974 issued a First Day Cover (FDC) stamp combo to commemorate the 20th anniversary of ELWA Radio. It was a missionary radio station in Liberia. It's call letters ELWA stood for Eternal Love Winning Africa. This particular FDC features four stamps, two 15-cent and two 17-cent stamps, depicting the map of Africa and a person  listening to a portable radio. The postmark cancellation originated from Monrovia, Liberia. 

This radio station, which operated on shortwave, could be received worldwide in the 1970s. When civil war broke out in Liberia in 1990, the station was burned and looted. For the next 13 years, ELWA Radio struggled to stay on the air through waves of civil strife, broadcasting from an old garage building. ELWA was threatened again when a fire gutted that building in 2011. 

With faith and determination, the ELWA Radio staff set up two studios in the transmitter building and continued work, carrying their listeners through the difficult times of the Ebola epidemic in 2014 and the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020.

The station currently operates primarily on FM with a 2kW transmitter; SW transmission at one point resumed with a 1kW, much less than its former power.

Additionally, the ELWA QSL Card is one I received in the mid-1970s verifying reception from Denver, Colorado -- my residency back then.