PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/17/2008

We just had to have several pictures to finish this week off!

After the final version of the translation was done, my mother typed all the stencils. Then began a tussle with the mimeograph. It had a mind of its own, and added to that was the fact that in the very humid weather, the ink did not dry quickly, and she often had the ink from one sheet bleed onto the next sheet that landed on top of it. Finally, though, piles of each sheet were stacked everywhere waiting for the assembly line.

Here are my sister-in-law Paula (right), Sharon who was a co-worker with my parents (center), and a girl who was part of a group visiting from Prairie Bible Institute (left). Long tables were lined up, and someone began by taking the last page of the book and laying down as many as possible. The next person put the second-to-last page on top of it, and so on, and so on, and so on...until page 1 was on the top. These piles were all stacked on top of each other, alternating them the short way on top of the long way of the paper so they were kept as separate books. Then the process began all over again until all the sheets were gone!





Then it was time to put the covers on! Here are my brother Gord, Paula, and my mother putting one pink sheet on the back and one on the front. It looks like they are enjoying it, too!











Sharon is tightening the staples with pliers.









My mother, carefully covering the staples with tape to bind the edge of the book.









All that hard work, and she is so pleased! A little bit more of God's Word that people can read in their own language!


This is the end of the Mother's Day week in pictures! I hope you have enjoyed this little glimpse into the life of my mom and what I remember her doing when I was growing up. If everyone's mom was like mine, how much better this world would be!

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/16/2008

The checking conference

They are checking one of the little sections of mimeographed sheets that I talked about with yesterday's picture. Robert (or his wife Edna) and my mom had written a few chapters down, she had carefully typed it on stencils, the stencils had been duplicated on the mimeograph, and the sheets were assembled and stapled into booklets. These booklets had been distributed to some of the Christians in the area who had agreed to read them over and then gather together to discuss and improve on or clarify the translation so that the final version could be decided on and published.

It was sometimes very obvious that an expression or word needed to be changed after hearing the possible understandings people got from the first draft. And sometimes there were other better words or phrases that could be used that my mother and Robert had not thought of. This pooling of knowledge and ideas was a very important part of the process.

I think they all looked forward to these get-togethers! They usually met in a large open room in a building not too far from our house, and sometimes we would hear a roar of laughter coming from that room as they all enjoyed a joke together!

(You can see my mom's made-to-order book turntable in use sitting beside her!)

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/15/2008

My mother in "The Alcove," a little open area off the livingroom where she did a lot of her Bible translation work.

There was no such thing as a computer then to make any of the job easy. She spent long hours working with Robert (the father of Amy in yesterday's picture) writing down the first draft of a few chapters at a time of the Old Testament. It took them a long time sometimes to figure out how to express things properly so the meaning would not be changed somehow in the translation. They checked concordances, various English translations, and other resources to try to come up with the best wording. To help make that easier for my mom, my father made this turntable to hold all her heavy books at just the right angle for easy reading.

After that first handwritten draft, she would use the typewriter you see on the left to type it all onto stencils to use for printing on the mimeograph. The typewriter basically cut the stencils in the shape of each letter so that the thick gooey ink from the mimeograph could seep through those cuts and onto the paper as it was hand-cranked through the mimeograph.

Many were the times when we children would hear her being interrupted in her typing over and over by many other aspects of everyday life. This was very tedious work, because the language is a tonal one, and there had to be additional tones -- up, down, and other ways, too -- added to many of the letters. With each interruption, her frustration would grow as she would lose her place in what she was copying onto the stencil. Then we would hear, "Oh no! Now look what I did!" Next we would smell the pungent odor of the stencil correction fluid which fixed the error by sealing the letter that had been cut into the stencil, giving her one last chance at another letter in that spot. But soon there would be another interruption and another.... and then... RRIIIPP!! She would yank the stencil by the top and pull it right out of the typewriter, scrumple it up, and put it in the trash! An unfixable error, and now she had to start all over again! (I am so spoiled by my computer! If I had to be sure to do it right the first time, I don't know where I would be!)

These mimeographed pages, when finally printed, were assembled into booklets and given to people who had agreed to read this first draft, then gather together for a "checking conference" to discuss it and give their input.

(More on this tomorrow...)