by James Ray

A few days ago, Mary and I stood with Roy and Marge Ackerle’s on the shore of Cuba’s western coast. It was in 1949 that the Ackerles came to this site as missionaries. They devoted eleven years of their lives to the ministry of preaching and teaching the wonderful Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Cuban people. Both of them are amazing people. At 81 years of age, Dr. Ackerle continues a widespread radio ministry in Spanish. The broadcast “La Capilla del Aire” is being heard worldwide on the Internet at www.radioespanol.org. His translation work is also read worldwide via the Internet at www.BSMI.org. He still travels extensively throughout the US and to many mission fields, playing the accordion, singing and preaching.

Dr. Ackerle is also the director for the Rogma Bible Doctrine’s Correspondence Course in Latin America and Spain with over 350 students enrolled from 11 countries. Many hispanic prisoners are studying the Bible through the course in the United States. A good number of students have come to receive Christ as their Savior through the study of God’s Word.

Many years ago, Dr. Ackerle won an 11-year-old boy to Christ in Cuba. That young boy was Pablo Marchante. He now pastors a church located in the house that Roy and Marge once owned when they ministered full time in the country. It was my privilege to minister there while on this trip.

I had a thousand questions for Dr. Ackerle. I asked him about his youth, his father and mother, and about his years of missionary service. Roy went to the mission field with his parents when he was only 11 years old. At age 17 he returned to the US to attend Bob Jones University. Dr. J. R. Faulkner, Dr. Fred Afman, and other great leaders of fundamentalism were fellow students.

His parents were missionaries to Bolivia and went to the field with only one church supporting them at $40 per month.

His great grandfather, Dr. LeRoy Ackerle, a medical doctor in Germany, had developed and sold a medicine he called “Y-B-SIC.” The recipe for Y-B-SIC had been passed down through generations in the family to Roy’s dad. Roy said it had a terrible taste. His father would make the concoction in a tub, pouring in large amounts of brown sugar and adding different herbs. Some of the main customers were men who had over indulged in alcohol. These men would come down from Philadelphia and buy large quantities of “Y-B-SIC” to help them recover from their bouts of drunkenness. It would literally clean them out. If Roy ever became sick, his dad would make him drink a bottle of “Y-B-SIC” and there would always be immediate results. Roy instantly ceased complaining for fear of another dose of the horrendous potion.

To finance Roy’s way to Bob Jones, his father sold the patent for the medicine for $75. I don’t know what happened to “Y-B-SIC,” but the career it launched has touched thousands of lives through the ministry of Roy Ackerle.

In June, I watched Roy and Marge Ackerle as they stood on the western shores of Cuba looking back with tears in their eyes but hope in their hearts for the future of Cuba.

Recently at BIMI, I watched over 70 candidates as they focused on distant shores. Some day they too will look back through the years to lives they have touched and places they have been, but always to the future, for our work is never done.

“Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest” (Matt 9:38-10:1).