“I think when I get to Cameroon I’m might get sick because all the stress will be gone!” I had said earlier in the day. Now I wondered how accurate that would turn out to be…

The morning had gone smoothly. It was a first time for me to travel by matatu alone. The night before Gary had called me to see if I could come to town for the meeting planned with Pan Africa Network. It was a new TV network that the government licensing organization had referred us to. It was one of two broadcasting companies in the country available to broadcast the new digital TV signal. It was a company based in China with outlets and broadcasting in Asia, Africa, and developing in Europe. They offered a new type of delivery to not only the standard tv sets, but also customized delivery to mobile phones and TVs in buses as well. The system had worked well in other countries and was already in process of development in Kenya.

I had agreed to come to the meeting, as he was planning to leave the next day and it would give me more time to discuss things with him. He said to just meet him at 9am at the Shell station outside the Wilson airport. We met up with another board member of 2CBN, then went into the airport premises so Gary could take care of something with the plane. Then we were off to the meeting at Upper Hill. The meeting went well, and we left thinking more about the possibility of going on satellite and covering all of Africa. We started laying plans and discussing what would need to happen so we could go on satellite at a moments notice. The previous week we had streamed the morning and evening meetings of the Week of Prayer with Kepha Matena online so the whole would could watch. This had made quite an impression at the Division, even the President had introduced 2CBN on Sabbath morning and talked some about what we were doing. I knew that God was preparing 2CBN for something big. But there was one thing…

We had a couple of people that had come and were volunteering with us. True, there had been other people interested in working with us, but for various reasons they weren’t on board with us. We needed more people… people willing to work as volunteers, people with a real vision for fulfilling the Gospel Commission, people with an eye single for the glory of God. But most of all we needed a programming director, someone with the vision who could take the lead, and keep the project growing and on course.

“I wish there was someone that could come that is more qualified than me.” We were eating lunch at the place where Gary was staying. I knew there were many people who were more qualified than me… “This is the way it works in most of our projects…” Gary began. “There are people more qualified than me at getting TV licenses, they know the prices, and how all the stuff works, but they weren’t here, and I was the only one here to do it. There are people more qualified than you for training and managing production here, but you’re the only one here.” Even if I was only here for 2 months, I still felt like the task was too big. Why couldn’t someone else come? Someone who had experience in leading? Someone who had the talents in all the fields that we needed? It seemed that no one wanted to come to Africa… Why? Lots of people would go for some time to South America, even other places, but it seemed that only a few would come to Africa. And only a small fraction of those few had anything to do with media. Gary answered my question: “I think it’s partly because South America is close to North America. They speak Spanish which is already familiar to many people in the US. But Africa is so far away, and people in the West generally don’t know much about it… A lot of people think of the people in the bush wearing almost nothing when they think of people in Africa. I think it’s fear of the unknown that keeps more people from coming to Africa.” Fear is a powerful thing… But what if God called you to a place that you were afraid of?