ORU grad combines media and missions
By Josh M. Shepherd

When did you graduate from ORU?
1982. I went four years, starting in 1978 and graduating with a Telecommunications [major] which specialized in TV Production.

What was your connection to ORU before coming?
My mother and grandmother had been interested in Oral Roberts' ministry for a long time. They talked about his ministry and then the University-I was looking to go to a Christian university. I was a fairly new Christian; I had grown up in the church but had made a commitment to the Lord in high school.

My mother heard about telecommunications and thought I might be interested. I was interested in journalism at first, going on staff as a writer for the Oracle. I was the assistant layout editor. At that time, we didn't have computers so we had to cut and paste things… I remember being down there in the LRC every Wednesday night or something, practically all night, laying out the paper. So as I got into it I realized I didn't like the journalistic world. At the same time, I was taking a class in TV Production. I really liked it so I specialized in that instead.

Where did you go after college?
Right after graduating in 1982, I moved to Indiana to work with a parachurch group. InSight Ministries was a campus outreach ministry similar to The Navigators; we worked at Purdue University in Indiana reaching out to the students there. We were self-supporting so I had a job during the day. Eventually I was able to get into TV Production at Purdue, making educational and recruitment videos. After several years of that, I became a short-term missionary to Switzerland; England and Cameroon, Africa. I met my husband, Alan, in 1987 in France.

Why did you get involved in missions?
When I was a senior at ORU, a group with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) came for a Missions Weekend. They performed a play called "Toymaker and Son" which really impacted me. At that time I made a commitment to the Lord that someday I would be a missionary. That college outreach group was certainly a "homeland missions"-type thing, and I never felt that the time was right for me to go overseas-until about 1987. In that trip, I really saw God help me through the differences that you experience when you're in another culture. When I returned, God was saying, "Now is the time for you to look into missions."

I wrote to the two missions organizations I knew of at that time-Wycliffe Bible Translators and YWAM-saying, "Look, I'm not an evangelist or a teacher or a nurse. I'm a video producer. Can you use anybody like me?" They wrote back and said, "Yes, yes, we want people in media! Please come and work for us."

In 1988, I left the States and went to Switzerland with YWAM. I was their Staff Photographer for six months. Then in 1989 I went to England and worked as a video producer for Wycliffe. In Cameroon, Africa (1989), I didn't do much media work - some photography-but mainly I was getting to know Alan, my future husband. By that time I knew that I was going to get into missions whether I married him or not. Alan asked me to marry him, so I also became a Bible translator.

How would you describe ministering in Europe?
Switzerland is very clean and beautiful, like all the pictures you've ever seen. Yet it's actually quite a hard place to evangelize because people have a lot of their material needs met already. European society is more closed to spiritual things than Third World countries, even more so than the U.S., though that would differ according to where you were in the U.S. In England, they're also very hard spiritually-as a rule, that is… there are wonderful Christians in all these countries. In most European countries there are a lot of churches and church history, but less than one percent of the population is [comprised of] actual committed Christians.

Are there still hindrances to evangelism in Africa?
The Moloko in Cameroon are much more open spiritually because the spiritual world is all around them. It's part of their daily lives because their cultural, tribal and family traditions are very strong. They don't have any trouble believing in some sort of god. What's happened all across Africa-really, all across the world-is that even though there are churches and certainly Christians there, a lot of the churches are filled with people who haven't heard the Gospel in their native language. If [the Gospel has] come to them, it's through a language of past colonial powers like French, English or Spanish because those are the languages that their governments are run in. Now, many of them are very educated and they speak those languages very well, but there's something about your heart language that when you hear the good news about Jesus in your heart language, it really touches you in a way that hearing it in another language cannot.

I know for myself, I can read the French Bible and listen to sermons in French, yet it doesn't touch me like it does when I hear it in English because that's my native language. It's the same for people in Africa and really all over the world.

What is the result of this miscommunication of the message?
What people hear can often be the legalistic side of Christianity-the rules, the dos and don'ts-and they mix that with their traditional beliefs. What they end up living is not a relationship with Jesus Christ, but it's a form of church-going. They call themselves Christians, but they really don't know Jesus. That's why we're working for Wycliffe Bible Translators. We want to be able to bring the Gospel to people in their native language so that they can hear it with their heart and not just with their mind.

In what practical ways has your family ministered?
One big thing to [the people of Cameroon], they tell us, is us living in their village. Most outsiders would not want to come and live in a village like we do. It's pretty simple living, pretty rustic-in the world's eyes, it's not very exciting. Yet we communicate God's love by showing an interest in them, wanting to learn their language and sharing their lives.

The people in our village are very far from any kind of medical help; the clinics are generally too far for people who don't have transportation to get to. A lot of cuts, wounds and diseases that go untreated would sometimes kill them. Fairly often they will come to our house in the evenings and we'll do things like bandage up their cuts or give them antibiotics. Even just a little first aid and things that we know is more than what they know. If it's a serious case we'll give them the money to go to a clinic. We'd like to build a clinic in our village for the people to have. We wouldn't run it because we're not medically trained, but we would get it started.

When we begin having literacy classes, teaching them to read and write their own language, I think that will really mean a lot to them. It will validate their language, make it seem more important in their eyes. We're also involved in the local church there-my husband and I both teach Bible studies. I teach one for the ladies, and he teaches one for the men. Day to day we're developing relationships, trying to love people in the opportunities that come to us everyday.

How have your children handled growing up as missionaries?
They've never really known anything else. The boys, Caleb (9) and Peter (7), were both born in Cameroon. We have a younger daughter, Kate (4), who went to Cameroon when she was 8 months old. All of them love living there-it's really their home. Today, Peter was upset about something, and he threw himself into my arms, cried, and said, "I miss Cameroon so much! I have friends there and I miss it and I wish I was there right now!" This is after being gone three months, and he still misses it. They have good relationships there. They love the freedom of living in the village and playing outside with the village kids all day-when they're not in school! They're growing up with people from a different ethnic background and learning that really they are just like them. There are some external differences, but the same kinds of needs, wants and enjoyments… they all love playing soccer. They love Cameroon and want to go back.

Did ORU prepare you for the mission field?
[ORU] did more than just prepare me for my profession. Although I'd grown up in church and had a Christian family, ORU was the beginning of learning to live the Christian life. I didn't even really know what a "quiet time" was before I got to ORU. Real Christian fellowship, having different standards from the world, reading my Bible every day, prayer groups… things like that I hadn't experienced even though I grew up in a church.

What did you do this summer at ORU?
[The Wycliffe policy is to have four years on the field and one year at home.] Because of my background in video production, we have always tried to send videos home to our supporters to update them on what we're doing. As life got busier and children came along, we weren't able to do it very often. But we have always done one when we've come home on furlough. I had been at ORU 10 years ago and had seen Dr. Culp, who was sort-of a mentor to me. He had said at that time, "If you ever need editing for any of your videos, let us know and we'll try to work something out." As I was planning the beginning of this furlough and thinking about the need for a new video, I contacted him and asked, "Could I possibly come and do it there at ORU?"

We edited the video at ORU just a week after I returned to the U.S. It was also an opportunity for me, who has been out of the video production field actively for 13 years, to get a feel for the new technology. I ended up with what I think is the best video I have ever done in my life. Already a lot of people have seen that 10-minute tape. In fact, we were able to show it here at our home church just two nights ago. They were all really surprised because it's my husband's church originally. They didn't know much about my background and couldn't believe I had done this video!

Was electricity or equipment an issue in Cameroon?
There's no electricity in our village but because we're foreign and have appliances, computers, etc., we do have electricity in our house. We have five solar panels and eight deep cycle batteries that run the electrical system of our house. With equipment, I just have a camcorder, a tripod and a microphone. Whenever there's something of interest going on I videotape it.

How does your calling compare to those of your classmates who have been in a professional field all this time?
I have struggled a lot with it. When I was single, it was all very exciting to me. Since being married and starting a family, it's been a little more difficult because I have other people to consider now, not just myself. The responsibilities that come with parenthood have been a big challenge overseas. I have struggled quite a bit with fears and things like that, but the Lord has taken care of us. He has protected us in marvelous ways. He has provided for us.

I still believe in what we're doing. I really do believe that these people need to hear God's message of love to them in their native language. If you could just see where we live, it's kind of a plain between some mountains-a forgotten little corner of the world. If we or somebody like us didn't go there to tell them about Jesus and show them Jesus, they really wouldn't hear very much. Without having the Bible in your native language, it's very hard to learn, grow and be discipled as a Christian. There are places in the world where missionaries are very much needed. The Gospel message is not going to spring up out of their own culture; they need somebody to come from outside who has been a little further down the path with the Lord to tell them, "This is what the scripture says, this is who Jesus is and this is how much He loves you."

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