Your Global Link With The World
‘Micro SD Memory Cards Are Changing Everything’
Dan Wooding, Founder & Int’l Director of Assist News Service —A digital revolution is taking place at astonishing speed in various parts of the world, with Micro SD memory cards, smart phones and the Internet now making it easier for workers with the Global Recordings Network (GRN) to share the Gospel with unreached people groups, even in the remotest parts of the world.
GRN is a leading provider of Christian evangelistic and discipleship audio visual materials to the least reached language groups of the world.
“Our passion is to work where there are no translated Scriptures and no viable local church, or where a written Scripture or portion is available but where there are few if any who can read it or make sense of it,” said a spokesperson for the group which was begun in 1939, by American missionary to Honduras, Joy Ridderhof who, while back in the United States recovering from a bout of malaria, made Spanish evangelizing recordings that she distributed to oral learners in Latin America.
Ms. Ridderhof was then contacted and asked to produce Navajo recordings. She accepted, and then received more projects to record. This led her to form Gospel Recordings (now Global Recordings Network), and soon the work spread around the world. Often the way recordings were played were low-tech with hand-wound 78 rpm record players for people to listen to the Good News messages in often forgotten communities of the world.
This pioneer passed away on December 19, 1984 in Stanton, California, but if she had lived, she would be amazed to have witnessed the incredible digital revolution that has transformed the work of GRN in ways she could never have imagined.“Audio visual materials are a particularly powerful evangelism medium as they communicate the gospel in story format suitable for oral learners,” the GRN spokesperson told the ASSIST News Service. “Our recordings can now be downloaded free of charge from our website Global Recordings Network, and distributed via CD's, e-mail, Bluetooth and other media.
“Since we began in 1939, we have produced recordings in over 6,000 languages. That’s over one language per week! Many of these are the least reached language groups in the world.”
One of the biggest changes in the way these recordings are distributed are via Micro SD cards, which are memory card expansions for small electronic devices, most often telephones. They also get used in smaller cameras, digital recorders, and similar electronic devices.
Even people in St. Petersburg, Russia, have benefited from this digital revolution.
A group of GRN co-workers making a recent evangelistic trip to St. Petersburg, didn’t want to draw attention to their purpose and felt that CD's would appear suspicious to the customs officers at the airport, so instead they took with them 200 Micro SD cards in a small plastic box that contained Gospel materials in Russian.“They were able to distribute them all in an inconspicuous manner to people they met,” said the GRN spokesperson.
In fact, all of the new technology is now being used by GRN to share the Gospel message.
A co-worker in Mexico shared the following story: “A missionary working among the Mixtec’s of Diuxi asked if we had any other material in this language because she had already used the recording of one presentation called ‘Words of Life’. I told her that we had available the audio visual presentation that she immediately wanted--but she could not come to the local office to pick up the CD's. So, we suggested a solution. She went to a local cyber café, got onto the GRN webpage and was able to download the material and then burn it on CDs which she is now using for an outreach among these people who speak the Mixtec, Diuxi-Tilantongo language.”
Another GRN worker, based in the Mexican state of Baja California, used the SD Micro cards for language distribution among the indigenous people living there.
Now the GRN work is proceeding at great speed, especially now that some two billion smart phones are capable of Internet access. Most can also play a Gospel recording in their Micro SD slot.
The GRN spokesperson said, “The world is crazy to get mobile phones and there are now 800 million people in China that have access to the Chinese Internet that blocks Facebook and Twitter, but not Global Recordings Network.”
He added, “Even the Arab Bedouins, who used to search for water to decide where to set up their tents, now searches for the best mobile phone reception, and so they, too, can find the ‘Living Water’ found in Jesus Christ.” » Full Article
About the Author
Dan Wooding, 73, is an award-winning journalist who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for 50 years. They have two sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS) and he hosts the weekly “Front Page Radio” show on the KWVE Radio Network in Southern California and which is also carried throughout the United States and around the world. He is the author of some 45 books, the latest of which is a novel about the life of Jesus through the eyes of his mother called “Mary: My Story from Bethlehem to Calvary”
» ASSIST News Service
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