Faces of GRN: Doing God's Will in Cameroon

People like to ask Godswill Chongsi how he got his name. "My mother had a few miscarriages. When she was carrying me, things didn't look good. She and my father prayed earnestly and when I was born they decided that it was God's will and named me accordingly."

After starting out in an electronics career, Godswill now serves GRN as a recording technician in Cameroon, Central Africa. There are scores of languages and dialects in this country, and because over 70% of the people are oral communicators, there is plenty of recording work to be done.

A typical recording project will start by spending a few days getting to know the people and asking questions about the way they think, their customs, their religion and their language. Most people in Cameroon are Animists. They live in constant fear of evil spirits that threaten their well-being.

So Godswill may choose a script called, "Are you Afraid?" from our catalog of several hundred scripts. It starts out by naming one or two things that the people are afraid of, such as the fireflies which they think of as evil spirits. The message then goes on to say that the people don't need to be afraid because there is good news for them. God conquered the power of the evil spirits when Jesus died on the cross for their sins.

Other messages tell of creation and how sin entered the world. Of course, every program tells of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, with an invitation to acknowledge their sin and to accept Him as Savior. Countless men women and children have responded to that invitation over the years.

Asked about some of his challenging experiences, Godswill told us about the time he hiked all day in the rain to get to a village. When he arrived he was told that the man who had promised to help make a recording was not there. They told him "Come back next week." Upon arriving back a week later, he was told again, "Sorry we are not ready. Come back next week!"

On another occasion he had to climb a steep mountain to get to a village. Godswill is strong, but his gear was very heavy and halfway up he had to leave his food behind. The people were busy all day and would not help him until ten o'clock at night. It took two weeks to record seven three-minute messages for that group. "But," he reminded us, "the joy of knowing that these people are now hearing the Good News in their own languages makes it all worthwhile."