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I n central Africa a lone missionary stopped in a jungle clearing, got out a small portable phonograph, wound it up and put on a record in' the local dialect. By the time the record had played through four times a sizable crowd was pressing in upon him. To these natives a box that talked was sheer magic. On the edge of the crowd the village witch doctor listened carefully. He had never heard the claims of Christ before but this once was enough. Then and there he made a public confes sion and, with the townspeople fol lowing him, went to his hut and burned all his witchcraft things. The box that talks had just been used
tener’s own language without any tell-tale accent. Phonographs and records seemed to be the answer. A box that talked was novel enough to attract almost any native in just about any part of the world. When Joy Ridderhof was forced to leave the mission field because of illness she went to work on her new idea. Today that new idea is a full- grown missionary enterprise. And this month, as nearly every month in the past few years, Joy Ridderhof and some of her co-workers were out again getting on-the-spot recordings of basic gospel messages and hymns. This time it was to the hot jun gles of New Guinea.
to win another soul to Christ. And back in Los Angeles, Calif, a small group of hard-working Chris tians, headed by ex-missionary Joy Ridderhof, were busy building the boxes and pressing records in over 550 languages and dialects. In the past 12 month-period production reached 137,007 records and 2,251 phonographs. Joy Ridderhof got the idea for making gospel records when she was a missionary in 'Honduras back in the mid-thirties. Two things were crystal-clear to her. 1) The mission ary needed a method to attract na tive listeners and 2) any message to be effective had to be in the lis
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