How a Braille Bible made it to Maryland West Africa

 

It’s crazy how life turns out. Back in April 2010, I was still in college and dreaming about hiking the Appalachian Trail and trying to squelch my longings for Africa. I just happened to mention my plans for adventure too my brother who had recently purchased a VW Bus and was about to be a hippy in L.A. I was thinking I would work a bit, then go to Europe, hop some trains, backpack around and then come back to do the ultimate backpack trip and hike the trail. Clay said if I switched things around and started the trail in 2011 that he would go with me. “Really Clay? You are serious? Because I am serious about this? If you really will do it then I’ll see what I can do about moving my classes around so that we can do this.” “Yes Vickie I am serious, if you can make it happen in 2011 then I have always wanted to hike the trail too.” I couldn’t really believe it. All through college I had been asking among my friends and trying to find a hiking partner, some people said they wanted to but no one was ever truly committed. But I knew Clay; he’s a Tarleton, if he says he will do something he will. So that next week I met with professors and Deans and I worked out a plan to complete my remaining courses in one semester instead of two. I Clepped out of three courses, gained 6 credit hours through an international course, wrote my capstone, and kept two jobs that summer… I also hiked some, I was kind of psyched about the Trail. The next semester I could take it easy on the courses, I only took 12 hours but I worked 40 and I had to revise my capstone along the way and with every pay check I bought new hiking gear. When I decide to do something I can get super obsessive. I was always thinking about the trail, about the packs and the food drops, etc. By the time I joined my brother at his hippy pad on Venice Beach L.A. in January 2011 I had already mentally hiked each step of the trail, I knew tourist locations along the way and what shelters to stay in, how many days to take an various portions of the trail, and what we needed to eat to stay healthy. But mentally walking the Trail and actually walking it are very different. Clay and I trained in L.A. at the Tapanga State Park, and one day we hiked 22 miles and I thought well if we can do that we can hike 12-15 miles a day on the trail no problem. But it was a problem.

 

 

 The first day on the trail, I barely made it 8 miles and I started feeling sick. I think we made it 13 miles that day, and that night I started puking and couldn’t stop. I got scared, I rarely get sick like that. I mean I’ve lived in Africa for over a year and I’ve only lost my lunch once on this continent. Which is an incredible record considering what I have eaten along the way. Well I got scared, but thankfully the Trail starts in GA and I have friends familiar with the access roads. I called my friend Keith, and he came out and picked me up and brought Clay and I back to my friend Stephanie’s house so that I could feel better. Stephanie was still living in the basement of a retired missionary to Africa. After a day recouping, we left out again. Mrs. Rhoda came out to greet us before we left, we told her what we were doing and she exclaimed, “Well that is just great practice for the mission field!” She wouldn’t let us go until we held hands and she prayed for our trip. I felt honored to have her praying over us. She was a missionary in Rhodesia before it became Zambia and Zimbabwe. I kind of wish that day she was praying over me for the trip I knew I should have been starting but I was honored all the same and God was doing things even if I wasn’t doing what he wanted. So after that I lasted like maybe 4 more days. I knew by the time I got to Blood Mountain that I wasn’t going to continue. I was miserable trying to keep up the pace and I also knew deep inside that this wasn’t the plan God had laid for me. But I had put so much time and money into this already and there was my pride of finishing what I started. I started trying to psyche myself out to make it up the next mountain. “What would make me want to climb this mountain? If there was something or someone waiting for me at the top, that would make me want to climb it, what would it be?” The answer I discovered was Africa. If I knew that when I reached the top I’d be in Africa, the place I knew God wanted me, then I would be able to run up the next mountain. Well, I thought, “I will at least make it to the first Trail town and then go home”, but I didn’t even make it that far. I made it to the top of Tray mountain about 55 miles of that 2200 mile trail and then a tornado hit and yanked my little Hennessey Hammock ties right out of the ground and soaked me. That was an awful night. Everything was soaked. I couldn’t even find some of my things the next day. I think they blew away. I made Clay Clay skooch over and let me in his tent but I still had to ring out gallons of water out of my sleeping bag the next day before I said goodbye to Clay and walked the opposite way.

 

 

I was pretty embarrassed about the whole thing. I regretted leaving Clay to hike “alone” but I knew he’d make friends fast and would go a lot father a lot faster without me there. And I was right, when I left he started speeding right along and before I knew it he was already in Virginia getting ready to Aqua Blaze part of the trail. Meanwhile I had visited around GA, MS and SC doing a little ministry mainly making excuses to see old friends, had made my way back up to North KY and completed my J-man application. I was on my way to doing what God wanted me too but I was still feeling pretty ashamed of myself. Clay Clay was just about to meet someone special. He met Amber that summer rafting the Shenandoah River. We started hearing about her mainly through Mom whenever he talked to her on the phone about food drops. Through his description I immediately liked her. None of Clay’s other girlfriends had made the sort of “Yeah she so right for him” impression that I was conjuring from his description. She was tough, courageous, sweet, beautiful and southern to boot. In October Becca, Mom, Dad, and I all traveled up to meet Clay at Katahdyn the final mountain in Maine. We came to hike that bit with him and to pick him up but we were equally excited to see if this girl was all he was saying she was. She was, we liked her a lot. We even liked her Mom and sister too. A week after bringing Clay home I flew out to job placements for J-man program. Then there was Field Personal Orientation in January-March. During that Clay called me to ask “what is the tallest mountain in Georgia” because he wanted to propose to Amber on it. Amber said yes. I was excited for them but worried I’d miss the wedding because I was leaving for my two year term in April. But God was gracious and one year later I was able to come home and be a part of their big day.

But a few months before that, I was on a research vision trip in southern Liberia called Harper Maryland. In Harper we met with pastors and they told us all about the history of the former SBC work there. They really miss the SBC presence in Liberia, it was a huge morale booster for them and SBC also provided theological education for many Liberian pastors. Since the Liberian civil war there has been much tension not only among tribes and peoples but also in the church. There has been church politics just like you see in America and it has left many pastors feeling alone in their struggle for the Gospel. One pastor stood up in the meeting and spoke to the other pastors about their need for unity among the body of Christ. The pastors listened in silent respect to Rev. Appleton. He spoke directly to their hearts though he looked in no particular direction. Rev. Appleton lost his sight sometime after the war, no one really knows why he lost it but they say that it happened rather quickly. After the meeting, Rev. Appleton slowly made his way onto the platform in the church where we were meeting and over to a desk which had pages of braille spread out all over. I watched in awe as he moved his hands over the bumpy paper. In Liberia the literacy rate is extremely low. Some people quote 75% illiterate, yet here was a blind Liberian man reading Braille in the furthest county in the country. While I was watching him, another pastor told me that Rev. Appleton did not have the full Bible in Braille; he had a few portion of it but not the whole thing. That struck me as a very sad thing. Here in a country where it is a feat just to learn how to read with seeing eyes a blind man had somehow learned to read Braille yet still could not read the book which was obviously so precious to him. I knew that it would be impossible to find a Braille Bible here in Liberia; the only way was to get one brought by a team but we did not have any on the schedule. So I made a mental note to try and get a Braille Bible while I was home for Clay Clay’s wedding. A couple of weeks before I was scheduled to leave I looked up some ministries to the Blind in the U.S. One was the Lutheran’s outreach to the blind. They produced NIV Braille Bibles free of charge, they even ship for free but only in the U.S. So I contacted and asked if they could ship me one. They informed me that the Braille Bible was a 40 volume set, weighed 70 Lbs and took up 5 feet of space on a shelf. I was a little shocked. I was expecting it to be large but not that large. Never the less, if they could get me one for free, how could I refuse to take it over? It’s such a precious thing made available free of charge. They were asking questions about what sort of Braille Rev. Appleton read and I did not know so I gave Rev. Appleton a call and explained what I was trying to do for him. He immediately said, “I will take any Braille Bible, NIV, KJV, etc. Grade 1, Grade 2… I don’t want to make things hard but I would be so happy for any Braille Bible.” It took me some time to get him to tell me which he would prefer because he didn’t want to cause trouble, he was just too humbled at the possibility of getting a full Bible. The day before I flew home I called Mom to let her know a few boxes might show up on her door step. And when I walked in the front door to my parent’s North Kentucky home I was surprised to see the four boxes filled with God’s word already sitting in the parlor. My Mom was pretty delighted with delivery of a full braille Bible to our home but rolled her eyes in mockery of the things that show up at our house. After attending the most beautiful wedding I think I will ever be a part of (outdoors, arches, Chinese lanterns, and a very beautiful bride… Clay looked pretty suave too), Rebecca and I packed the 70 lbs. of Bible into our two checked bags, and I still had space for two boxes of life cereal... it’s the important things you make space for.

Did I mention Becca was coming home to Liberia with me? Fhew! This story keeps getting longer.

Way back while I was still traipsing through Guinea, Sierra Leone, Mali and Cape Verde and dreaming of settling in Liberia, we made plans for Becca to come back with me from the wedding and do some ministry with me in Liberia. We came in to Liberia and the first week we told Bible stories to some kids in a village and in an orphanage close to Monrovia. The next week I was really concerned over because that was the week we planned to take the Braille Bible down to Harper Maryland. I was hoping we’d be able to take a helicopter ride down there because I had been told the conditions of the road in rainy season was atrocious and I didn’t really want to waste Becca’s precious Africa time stuck in the mud for several days. However, we could not find a helicopter headed down there so after talking with several Liberians and finding a few good Liberian pastors who agreed to go with us we began our journey down early Tuesday morning.

 

Becca and I left out alone from Monrovia with plans to pick up the two pastors along are route before we hit the back roads of Liberia. However the front roads of Liberia aren’t exactly a walk in the park either and an hour and ½ outside of Monrovia I knocked my battery cord off my battery and shorted out my windshield wipers (a must have during rainy season). I didn’t know what was wrong at first I heard a pop and my windshield wipers froze so I pulled over to see what was up and then I couldn’t get the thing to crank again. I lifted the lid of the vehicle to pretend like I knew what I was doing and peered inside, and there to my great relief was my battery cored popped off. Back in college I had issues with my battery cord corroding on my little Mazda and remember a very trying day being stuck in a Piggly Wiggly parking lot not know what to do. But today things were different and I thanked God for that day in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot as I slipped the clasp back over the metal thingy and drove back to the closest gas station/ mechanic. I was happy to instruct the mechanic to please tighten down the clasp thingy on the metal thingy but dismayed to discover the windshield wipers still not working.  After a few minutes a car electrician was found (I don’t know the difference between a car mechanic and a car electrician but there is one apparently in Liberia). He took of the steering column cover and fiddled with things, I asked him to replace the fuses and he did that, he fiddled with the wires connected to the wiper motor and then declared it “fixed” (he had gotten it to work on one of the three speeds and I had to time it just right to get the wipers to set down and not freeze in front of my face). I thanked the man, paid him and then was getting ready to pull out when the steering column began to smoke. I called him back over told him to try again. The fuse had melted in the box and I could see smoke coming from the wiper motor as well. This time he took the wiper motor off and banged on it for a while before putting everything back together and sending me happily on my way. I don’t know what he did, the detour took us about three hours but the rigged wipers worked the rest of the trip which is all I really wanted at that point.

 We continued on picked up our two Liberian Pastor travel buddies and made it all the way to Tapeta by 4pm. West Africans are generally very severe on Women drivers and are always suggesting that maybe you should let them drive, but I was rather pleased by these pastors reactions. The more I drove, the more impressed they became by this white ladies driving skills. “Wow we are really moving!” they kept exclaiming as we passed town names familiar to them. I was really nervous about the roads ahead and what kinds of conditions I might find so I just kept my foot down and only stopped once for a combined lunch / potty break. But the truth is all those white faces back in Monrovia were wrong, the road was awesome. Rebecca may not believe that but my definition of awesome roads is any day I don’t have to turn on the 4x4. The next morning was the same drill, we were on the road by 5:30, I didn’t let anyone pee and we made it to Harper by 4pm. There was only one short section of the road that I could feel my tires drifting a bit.

The entire trip occasionally the pastors would ask why it was again we were headed down to Harper. This amused me a lot, no American would sign on for a trip like this without fully understanding the reason why and all the “how’s” to the logistics of it but not West Africans. One friend calls another and asks him to assist two strange white girls on a journey down to the furthest county and they don’t even ask why. I tried to explain what a braille bible was and they shook their heads like they understood but I could see they really weren’t getting it. They were just content to be with us and to be with each other, the two pastors were old friends and had not seen each other in several years. One of the pastors had not been down to Maryland since 1979 and was very interested to see the place again. When we got to Harper and greeted the pastors there they again asked about what type of Bibles (plural) we were bringing. And I tried again to explain it was just one Bible and it was Braille for a blind person. “right, right” shaking his head. “It’s really big, you see, because they have to write all the words with little bumps,” I tried to explain. “Yes, yes really big,” he says smiling and shaking his head. Then one of the local pastors says something about Rev. Appleton being blind and being excited about the Bible and suddenly the pastor explodes, “OH! It’s a Braille Bible! For a blind person!” Two day into the journey and now he knows why we are here. Though Liberians speak English and I speak English sometimes I feel there is less communication happening then when I was using my one weeks’ worth of French lessons in Guinea.

The next morning the big unveil happened over at the local Baptist Church where Rev. Appleton has been teaching Bible to the students in the church’s new elementary school. We open up the two trunks filled with the 40 volumes that contain the complete Braille Bible and I present Rev. Appleton with the first volume of Genesis (it comes in two volumes). I explain to him that he now has the full Braille Bible Genesis to Revelation. He is excited to be holding a portion of the Old Testament since he has only had portions of the New Testament up until today. But his excitement barely matches the other pastors present when they see the Bible for the first time. Everyone grabs a volume and begins to exclaim about how big it is. “Wow! Look, this is just 1 Samuel alone!” “Whoa this is the other half of Genesis, do you see it’s so big they had to put it on two books!” Each person runs their fingers over the bumps in awe of this technological feat that allows the blind to read. When everyone settles down the two pastors who traveled with Becca and I, come to shake my hand. Their faces are beaming as they thank us for allowing them to be a part of presenting this Bible and for meeting this need for Rev. Appleton. We all sit back down and as Rev. Appleton feels the name of Genesis impressed on the cover of the volume he says, “This week I am teaching about Abraham but I did not have a copy of Genesis, so whenever I was studying I had to walk out into the street and ask people to read Genesis for me. Now I can read it for myself.”  

The tone of the trip changed after the presentation. Before there had been confusion but now there was joy. We spent the rest of the day visiting and touring around the town of Harper. The two pastors were eager and overjoyed to see the sights of Harper, the old port and the deteriorating monument built in the 60’s. They thanked me often for allowing them to see this part of the country and to see history with their own eyes. I was more thankful to have them along, to see pastors connecting with other pastors and sharing their struggles and their dreams and to see their joy in recognizing that they are not alone. Liberia is a little larger than the state of Ohio. It’s really not that big yet the roads and the poverty keep many pastors cut off from each other. There are so many things they could help each other with and teach each other if they could only reach it each other.

We stayed in Harper only one day and I drove out confidently early that Friday morning thinking now I know the roads I have nothing to fear. We had driven maybe an 1 ½ hours when I noticed my back tires felt odd. I had checked them before I left that morning and everything looked okay but I pulled over to check again. Nothing looked low. So I continued on for a while and one of the pastors asked me to pull over and we both checked the tires again. We got back in and began again, we drove just a short ways and as we were topping a hill I had the thought, “You know it doesn’t really feel like it’s dragging it kind of feels like my back driver tire is wobbling.” Just at that moment my back driver tire came running along beside my window. I think it smirked at me before it went dashing out into the bush. I guess I hit one to many potholes and it gave up the fight. I skid on the drum until I stopped at the bottom of the hill. The pastor in the back seat, thinking we had a flat yelled at me, “Vickie, pull off the road!” I yelled back “I can’t my tire just rolled into the bush!” The two pastors suddenly morphed into road crew; one running off into the bush to retrieve the escapee, the other jacking up the back off the Cruiser. It took maybe 20 minutes and their Liberian ingenuity, as they borrowed a few lug nuts from each of the three faithful tires to re-enslave the fourth tire and we were back on the road. I made use of our satellite phone for the first time to tell Rita what was up and where we were. We limped on for an hour, my confidence in my vehicle shot, until we reached the next town in which we visited the local mechanic. I could hear an abnormal squeak. They took off the tire and opened up the drum, stuck a few things back in place that I had knocked out in the skid and sent us on our way, again it only took like 30 minutes. In most ways Africa is never convenient but in rigging up a vehicle so you can continue a trip, I am on the right continent. The rest of the trip with broad smiles the pastor repeated, “I can’t my tire just rolled into the bush!” I think that made his week. He laughed and laughed and I laughed too, what else can you do?

Things work out weird sometimes. Clay Clay wouldn’t have hiked the trail unless I had been traipsing along doing my own thing (not what God asked me to do) and so he wouldn’t have met Amber and gotten married this past May. I wouldn’t have ended up taking the position in Mali which dissolved and left me in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cape Verde everywhere but Timbuktu (get it, Timbuktu is in Mali) if I had gone straight out of college into the J-man program. If I had started the j-man program sooner Becca would have been too young to visit me in Liberia and I wouldn’t have had a partner to take with me down to Harper. If Clay hadn’t been getting married while I was on my term I wouldn’t have come home and brought that Braille Bible back with me. So there you have it the story of the Braille Bible and how it made it to Harper Maryland in Liberia. But those are just the details, I know what really happened. God loved Rev. Appleton and He saw his faithfulness. He didn’t need me to be in Liberia, I think he would have found another way to bless His servant if this servant had been absent but like the pastors exuberant just to come along for the ride, I am extremely happy He let me ride along.