Loney Duncan and his wife Jeannine have long been supporters of Adventist World Radio. Their life story is as interesting and colorful as their generosity toward God’s work.
When Loney was a young GI stationed in France, he met Jeannine on the day of her baptism in Bordeaux in 1954. Jeannine had been raised as an atheist but learned about Seventh-day Adventists from neighbors while working for a private boarding school in England. After the couple married, they had three daughters and the couple supported many overseas mission projects.
Loney became an engineering executive at Collins Radio, supervising the design of 250,000-watt shortwave transmitters for the Voice of America, Radio Australia and Radio Canada. He even researched a plan on behalf of H.M.S. Richards, which would have built a powerful 100,000-watt shortwave station in Africa to broadcast the gospel to India.
After retiring from Collins, he and Jeannine contacted Ben Schoun in 2008 to partner with AWR. They felt his engineering background would be useful to AWR. When the antenna upgrade project on Guam began in early 2011, Loney volunteered to serve as the project manager for an antenna change, plus a fifth antenna installation that enabled AWR to reach further into China and provided more language coverage into Southeast Asia.
Loney can name off a handful of amazing miracles that occurred, from unusually fair weather, to finding the right specialized equipment at bargain prices, to unprecedented permit approvals—all of which made this remarkable project possible. Loney and Jeannine felt humbled and blessed to have had the opportunity to contribute toward the funding for that project, and to work with AWR on other worldwide efforts.
Working with their estate planning attorney, the Duncans have updated their estate plan to remember AWR and other causes dear to their hearts. They have a goal to do most of their giving during their lifetimes.
In gifting to AWR, they are aware of the recent tax law that allows the transfer of a maximum of $100,000 yearly from a tax-deferred retirement plan to be contributed to charity without income tax implications.
They have made provision in their will so that what is left in their retirement plan will go into a Fidelity Charitable Fund to be administered by one of their daughters and distributed to charities such as AWR.
Jeannine says, “Our eager new worldwide church members, trained by our Total Member Involvement pastors, are reaching out and sharing the hopeful, loving news of the gospel. But they need our broadcasting help! We are blessed to be able to contribute to those mission efforts via AWR. It is accomplishing amazing evangelism results with the diversity of programs offered in so many languages. Unreached people groups are receiving the Good News—from family life, to health, to the knowledge of a loving and returning Creator-Redeemer.”
Loney added, “AWR is in on the front lines of world evangelism. While some ministries aim for the Christian world, AWR is reaching out to the world, which desperately needs to hear of Jesus. No other ministry is doing as amazing a job as AWR! When we give to AWR, we are confident in remarkable results.”
To contact AWR’s friendly Planned Giving department and learn more about options such as the Charitable Gift Annuity, visit awr.org/plannedgiving, or call (301) 680-6292 or toll-free 1-800-337-4297.
By Jeff Wilson
