Joy F. Ridderhof (March 30, 1903 in Minnesota - December 19, 1984 in Stanton, California) was an American missionary. The youngest child of Dutch and Swedish immigrants, Joy Ridderhof was one of the first graduates of Columbia International University (Columbia Bible School) in 1923. In 1930, she traveled to Honduras, establishing her ministry in Marcala and neighboring villages. Forced to return to the United States to recover from malaria, she began making Spanish evangelizing recordings that she distributed to places in Latin America, including Marcala. She was then asked to produce some Navajo recordings that Navajo speakers would provide. She accepted, and then she got more jobs. This led her to form Gospel Recordings, Inc. in 1939. Gospel Recordings (renamed Global Recordings Network) delivers the Gospel to oral-preference people in Africa, South America, Asia, Australia, and Central America via hand-operated record players. As of 2024 the organization has produced recordings in over 6,500 languages. Ridderhof and Gospel Recordings are the subjects of the 2006 P.O.V. documentary The Tailenders. While Joy Ridderhof was attending Columbia Bible School, she learned two life changing truths that stayed with her for the rest of her life: one is "to worry is a sin" and the other is "rejoicing is always God's will no matter what." She started making audio gospel recordings when such recordings were considered to be revolutionary. When she was a missionary to Honduras, she found that many could not read. That prompted her to make gramophone recordings of the gospel verses and songs in Spanish, and the first product was made to send to Honduras in 1939. Joy Ridderhof and her missionary colleague went to the Philippines in 1950s, and thanks to a Gospel Recordings engineer, she was able to bring a portable battery operated tape recorder to the very remote areas of the Philippines. Joy Ridderhof met Stewart Mill in Australia in 1952 on her way to Papua New Guinea (PNG) and she convinced him to start the Global Recordings Network (GRN) office in Australia. It was there that the first hand-cranked record player was developed. Dr. George Cowan, who had a passion to pray for the Bibleless peoples and was the president of Wycliffe Bible Translators International from 1956 to 1981, once said, "It was Joy [Ridderhof], specifically Joy who coming back from her trip to the Philippines, challenged us--the Wycliffe Bible Translators--to go to the Pacific part of the world.... She was a very true instrument of God to pass the vision on...." Joy Ridderhof went as a missionary to Honduras, Mexico, Alaska, the Philippines, and Africa. She and her helpers faced lack of money, wartime restrictions, equipment needs, mechanical breakdowns, travel hardships, and uncertainties. Through it all, answers to prayer multiplied. The organization she created, Gospel Recordings, Inc., continues to record the Good News for those with no written language. After Joy Ridderhof passed away on December 19, 1984, Global Recordings Network continues to grow into global-scale to reach out to over 6,500 languages and dialects (speech varieties) today. The Global Recordings Network vision statement reads, "That people might hear and understand God's Word in their heart language, especially those who are oral communicators and those who do not have Scriptures in a form they can access." Foundation of Vision and Mission Statements says, "While there is a people group with no effective, culturally appropriate form of gospel communication, Global Recordings Network will seek to provide an appropriate audio or audiovisual resource, no matter how small the language group," to the mission fields to have them recorded by the native speakers rather than the native speakers come to a office/center studio.

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