PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/31/2008

I have lots of pictures of Trent when he was younger and could easily fill several more weeks with them, but in the past 10 years or so, he has mastered avoiding the camera! I have lots of him from the back! But I so wanted to have something recent for today, so last night I went over to his house to visit him and had fun taking pictures of him and Tux. This is as up-to-the-minute as you will ever see!

Here they are at the deck outside his back door. I was standing in the driveway to take this picture. Tux is antsy to get down, so Trent has a good grip on him!

Calmly sitting in front of Trent's computers...

...and then the playing begins!




Both of them, all riled up!

(This last picture is my favorite! They are so good for each other!)

I hope you have had fun meeting Trent on his birthday week! I have had such a good time tracking down pictures, taking new ones, and just reliving lots of memories.
I love you, Trent!

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/30/2008

Trent (right), his best friend Grady, and his cousin Stephanie
all dressed up at the Junior/Senior Banquet (their school's equivalent of a prom).

They went as a trio and left our house in a limo.
Stephanie was absolutely elegant that day,
and the boys were so handsome in their suits!

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/29/2008

Trent and some of his friends played soccer for a recreational league when they were in the third and fourth grades.

A windy day!

His team picture the year he played on his high school team. He was in the 9th grade.

Oh, some of those morning games were cold!

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/28/2008

Several pictures today...

Trent had some fun toys when he was little. Most of them were passed on to him from other families who had outgrown them or from garage sales, as the budget was pretty tight! He used to get on this horse and bounce up and down with all his might. Up he would go, and on the way down again, his hair stood out like this, up he would go again, and down he came with his hair all sticking out! We had so much fun watching him! But no matter how much fun his toys were, his very favorite activities showed me that kids don't necessarily need a lot of expensive toys to make them happy....

He passed up all his toys to spend time in here. He would take all the bags and boxes out on the floor and just have so much fun. He couldn't hurt himself with it, so I gave up on trying to keep it in order and just kept stuffing everything back in there. The other cupboard had my pots and pans, and that was the next source of noisy entertainment. He had the best imagination for how to play with ordinary kitchen things!

I had a lot of magazines on that bottom shelf, and Trent just loved to take them all down onto the wood floor. He didn't tear them up or ruin them, but he liked to take them all down, sit on them, and look at them. He was too little to put them back, so there he left them. He would come trotting around the corner, forgetting about all those slick magazines on the floor, and down he would go, thumping his head. Wail, wail, wail! And I would comfort him and help him pick up the magazines! It happened a lot of times!

(I'm so glad we took these pictures, because they help me to remember what he was into all day as a very little boy! He always knew how to keep himself occupied and was happy playing by himself as long as Mom or Dad was close by.)

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/27/2008

Trent and me

This was taken at the 4th of July picnic in the mountains about 6 weeks after Trent had his 2nd birthday.
This is one of my favorite pictures!

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/26/2008

Happy Birthday, Trent!

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/25/2008

Trent waking up from a nap!

Tomorrow will be Trent's 26th birthday, so this week the pictures will all be about him.
Just one look at his little face here, still too little for the crib, and you will know why I say he was the smartest, most alert baby ever! (Of course, you have to forgive me if you think I am biased on this!) He was for the most part a very good-natured baby and very patient with the fact that his older sister could not do as many things as he could and often needed attention more urgently than he did. I guess in many ways he was the little brother and the big brother all at the same time.

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/24/2008

When Coral was little, we got a piano. One of her very favorite things was to sit and "play" it for hours on end.

(Just check out that challenging music she is working on!!)

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/23/2008

Happy Birthday, Barry!

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/22/2008

Trent hugging his cousin Stephanie

Stephanie and her family had been living in Liberia where they were missionaries and had come back to the United States just in time for the birth of Stephanie's brother, Nathaniel. It was so exciting to have a cousin his own size to play with!
(That is "Grandma" Entz in the background. She took care of Coral and Trent for me every day when I used to work in an office. What a brave lady!)

(All the toys a kid could want, and they choose the old margarine container every time!)

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/21/2008

I promised earlier to post a picture of Coral when she was real little doing one of her favorite things. She spent a lot of time on the floor and got quite adept at scooting herself around the house, maneuvering through doorways, and pretty much going wherever I was.

Reading the newspaper was her absolute favorite thing! Well, that's what it looks like, anyway! Here is Trent trying to figure out what his sister is doing. She loved to get ahold of the paper and tear it into little pieces. She loved the ripping sound and thought it was hilarious to "make a mess!" Her hands would get all black from the newspaper ink, but we always let her do it because she had such a ball!

(My favorite things in this picture: Coral's cute little feet, and Trent's adorable red rompers!)

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/20/2008

This is a page from a book my mother filled out for each of her three children, each one of them individually written by hand. I guess this proves that we come by our love of cats very honestly! (You can click on the page above to see it better.)

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/19/2008

Coral and Daddy catching some zzzzz's.
This Daddy's-girl thing started long time ago!

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/18/2008

Coral and I have found the perfect seat for Elmo! We pull out the top left drawer on my desk, and he sits looking at Coral who is keeping me company in my office! Coral knows Elmo is not a real person, but still she somehow thinks he is. If he is in another part of the house, she calls, "Big Ellmmoo, big Ellmmoo" in a singsong voice until I go get him. If I don't respond quite as quickly as I should, she says to me, "I need Big Elmo!" (Hint, hint -- get him!) Dad and Aunt Paula are very good at playing games with Elmo, and they get Coral laughing so hard she has to remember to breathe! Elmo goes for rides with them or has to go outside to play in the snow, and sometimes he runs outside to ring the doorbell so Coral can tell him, "Come in!"

(Yes, I use the mouse with my left hand!)

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...)

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/14/2008

This picture is really a combination of two things my mom did when I was growing up.

One of them I'll post more about tomorrow -- Bible translation. This little girl is holding the newly published book of Genesis, translated by my mom with the help of many other people (more later on that).

What I wanted to post this picture for today, though, is the beautiful flowers. My mom planned out and oversaw the planting and upkeep of flowers on the little mission compound where we lived. This is "The Circle" which had lilies all around the edge and trees inside the circle including gardenia, frangipani, and bougainvillea. When all those lilies were in bloom, it was absolutely gorgeous! As an earlier picture showed, we lived in the middle of the African rain forest, and when I was little, there was no access by car to where we lived. Sometimes we had expatriate visitors who came walking through the forest, and they were always delightfully surprised to find our neat well-kept paths lined with trimmed hedges, The Circle of beautiful flowers, the pineapple patch in straight rows, and the lovely coconut, plum, grapefruit, orange, and lime trees.

(This is definitely making me homesick today!)

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/13/2008

My mother making toast on the wood stove.

She spent a lot of time in this hot little room with the wood stove, either cooking or supervising the cooking. There were no convenience foods, so she made everything from scratch. She is still the queen of ingenious ways to use leftovers and was a past master at magical substitutions in recipes when the called-for ingredients were not available! She knew how to use sour milk to make something good and was used to sifting grubs and weevils out of the flour. She coexisted with cockroaches because there was no other option. She learned how to protect her sugar from sugar-eating ants by setting the canister in the middle of a dish of water. She made sure our fruit was safe to eat by washing it all in a purple solution of potassium permanganate.

She learned 101 ways to fix rice -- rice porridge in the morning, rice and gravy at noon, leftover rice in fried rice balls or rice pancakes at night, and the best rice pudding ever made. (I think she secretly thanked God every night that she could not get any potatoes, because she never liked them anyway!)

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/12/2008

This is my dad getting a drink at "The Filter."

When we were growing up, the thing always at the top of my mother's subconscious was making sure we had enough water to drink. All our water had to be boiled to purify it, and that was a HUGE JOB. We had a wood stove, and there were always large pots of water on it being watched so they could be timed boiling for 20 minutes. The boiled water was then dumped into large covered white enamel pails. From there it was used either in cooking or in keeping The Filter full. The Filter had a chalk-like "candle" (that's what my dad always called it, anyway) through which the water we put in the top passed through to get to the bottom of The Filter. This did not purify the water at all but just helped to take out the smoky flavor it had after boiling on the wood stove. I would have to say that keeping up with the boiled water was one of my mother's biggest responsibilities for her family.

(I think every bit of furniture we had was made by my father. Check out that perfect made-to-measure filter stand with the handy-dandy little shelf for the glass!)

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/11/2008

Our family in the middle years.
This is definitely the most dressed up we got! This picture was taken when our family went to the annual missionary conference in another part of Liberia.

In honor of Mother's Day, each picture this week will be about my mother and the things she did when we were growing up.

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/10/2008

Coral and Trent sizing each other up!

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/09/2008

Trent's love of cats goes way back!

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/08/2008

One more picture of my Mum and Dad.
A little celebration of 40 years as missionaries in Liberia.

This was taken in the living room/dining room of the house where I grew up. No caterer, no music, no balloons. No rich food, fancy cake, or flowery speeches.
Just a little handmade sign -- "40 YEARS" -- and the love of friends and family.

If you could zoom in on the picture, you would see whitewashed mud walls, a cement floor with the surface long worn off, a ceiling with big watermarks from the tropical downpours, and insects everywhere (no getting rid of them!).

Don't store up your treasures on earth. Instead, store them up in heaven where moth and rust won't destroy them and where thieves can't break in and steal... because your heart will be where your treasure is. (Matt. 6:20-21)

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/07/2008

My Mum and Dad many years ago.
They were sitting on a little red bench on the cement front porch of our house. I love this picture because they were enjoying the moment so much and were paying no attention to the camera.

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/06/2008

Trent's cat, Tux.
He is playing on the little shelf on the TV stand, one of his favorite places.
He is almost like a little dog. When we go over to Trent's house, he is so happy to see us and comes running out meowing to greet us with his tail held high. I think he is the best cat ever! The flash is really reflecting in his eyes here.

(Trent took this picture last night with his new Nikon Coolpix camera and sent it to me by email.)

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/05/2008

Betty holding the deer while I hold the bottle, taking care of a little orphan African deer.

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/03/2008

A typical scene from our dining room when Coral and Trent were young!

Coral is holding Sally, a little doll that Barry brought home for her from a convention he went to in Nashville. Sally was just the right size, shape, and weight for Coral to hold easily, and she went everywhere with Coral until the unhappy day when one of her companions riding the accessible van to school gave Sally too much love, and she tore apart, limb from limb! We made a desperate trip to the store and found Rainbow Brite -- also just the right size and shape with long orange hair perfect for holding! She became the new "Sally" and thankfully lasted as long as Coral needed her!

(I just love that special face Trent is making for the camera!)

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/02/2008

Here's the other side of the story! And just to be clear, there was nothing hurting her that day. She just did not want to be in that outfit and kicked up such a fuss that we could not resist getting the camera! Ha ha! What a little rascal! (Those were the days when I curled her bangs with a curling iron every morning before she went to school!!)

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 05/01/2008

Coral in her little red rocking chair.

As I went through my albums, I found picture after picture of Coral's sweet little smile and gentle spirit. It was hard to pick just one!
However, there is definitely another side to the story, which we will see tomorrow!!