Joy Ridderhof pulled the blankets around her head to warm her shivering body, knowing she’d soon be throwing them off as sweat soaked her nightgown.
Joy had succumbed to malaria before, but this episode wouldn’t subside. As a result, she’d had to leave the people she’d grown to love in Honduras and return home to Los Angeles. The year: 1937.
Her doctors weren’t sure why she didn’t improve. Added to her discomfort was their discouragement: “You mustn’t go back to Honduras, Joy.”
A mountain village of Honduras , 2008
The thirty-four-year-old had served as a missionary in a remote, mountain village for five years. In spite of hardship, illness, and even threats on her life, she’d loved her time there, and many Hondurans had come to know Christ.
Now it appeared that challenging yet satisfying life-chapter was over. Joy faced the possibility of being an invalid the rest of her life—or at least a semi-invalid.
One day as Joy lay in bed, a wonderful idea occurred to her. The gramophones many villages owned could be put to good use if she made records of stories and songs about Jesus. As far as she knew, no such records existed in Spanish.
But how could she implement such a plan? Joy began to pray and asked others to join her.
Slowly, her health improved. And then, she happened to be introduced to a missionary returned from Central America who’d built a recording studio in his home. She shared her idea, and he became enthused about such a project.
Joy wrote the scripts and arranged for singers and their accompaniment. She herself read the stories.
The first record was produced on December 31, 1938. Joy sent them to various locations in Central America. Now people who couldn’t read would hear about Christ in their own language.
But each record cost fifty cents to produce and Joy had no income. The Great Depression meant resources were tight everywhere. Joy prayed for God’s provision. She believed what the great missionary Hudson Taylor had said [1]:
And supply God did.
In May 1939, Joy established Spanish Gospel Recordings.
Missionaries in Mexico heard about Joy’s work and asked for records in another language. Of course, finding native speakers in L. A. for an indigenous Mexican-Indian language would be nearly impossible.
So Joy and her college friend Ann Sherwood left for Mexico and Central America in 1944, a trip made possible by a doctor who loaned them a car and provided gas ration coupons.
Once they arrived in Mexico, a man invited them to use his new recording studio. The women spent ten months producing records in thirty-five languages, then returned to the States, satisfied their task was complete.
But God had more in store.
Missionaries to the Navajo Indians in Arizona asked for recordings; Joy found native speakers to translate and record scripts for them [2].
Next came a call from Alaska. The two women drove from L.A. to Alaska, equipped with one of the first tape recorders produced in America. While there, someone mentioned that such records would be helpful in the Philippines.
“Oh no!” Joy laughed. “Now we’ve got to go to there!”
Joy and Ann spent one year in the Philippine Islands, producing records in ninety-two languages [3].
By 1955, the two women and others had travelled around the world. Records were being sent to more than one hundred countries [4], prepared on top-of-the-line recorders that God supplied.
He also provided workers who lived in various countries. By 1980 about 3,500 languages had been recorded [5]. Millions of records had been produced.
Of course, not all remote villages owned a record player. So Joy’s organization developed and supplied a number of different players over the decades.
The simplest was a cardboard sleeve that also housed the record for shipping. When opened up, a needle fastened to one edge played the record when placed on the stubby spindle attached to one side. The record could be turned by a pencil or stick stuck into a hole on the edge of the label.
Hand-wound box-players were later issued, then cassette players, followed by hand-wound mp3 players. Today, the internet and apps allow people all over the world to hear about Jesus and his gift of salvation.
In an interview recorded in 1974 [6], Joy Ridderhof (1903-1984) passionately affirmed:
“We have a God that’s alive, who answers prayer, takes care of us, gives us joy in the work, and provides great results from our work.
“Many thousands have heard about Jesus; little churches have sprung up in different places. He has met our needs and proven himself faithful [7]!”
Today, the Global Recordings Network includes forty offices worldwide, and has produced recordings in more than 6,500 languages [8].
Joy Ridderhof
[1] https://www.globalrecordingsusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Magazine-viewing-version-1.pdf
[2] https://fromthevault.wheaton.edu/2024/03/04/too-impractical-to-be-a-missionary-remembering-missions-pioneer-joy-ridderhof/
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsLfY9bOkxo
[4] https://fromthevault.wheaton.edu.
[6] (and [7]) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsLfY9bOkxo
[8] https://www.globalrecordingsusa.org/about/overview/
Image credits: http://www.canva.com; http://www.flickr.com; commons.wikimedia.org; http://www.picryl.com; http://www.canva.com; http://www.commons.wikimedia.org (2).
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