Bibles for the blind

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, March 20th.

We’re glad you’ve joined us today on The World and Everything in It. Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

More than 43 million people throughout the world are blind or visually impaired. According to Lutheran Braille Workers: 95-percent of them don’t have a church home. Now, some congregations are stepping up to bring the Word of God right to their fingertips.

Recent WORLD Journalism Institute graduate Betsy Brown has the story.

AUDIO: [Chatter from volunteers]

BETSY BROWN: A small group gathers in the foyer at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Louisville, Kentucky.

They get together every week to print scripture in braille.

DONNA GRANDERSON: This is Jeremiah volume two and Lamentations…

Donna Granderson is one of six volunteers today.

Normally there are 12 and each one has a role.

SOUND: [Sound of press turning on, machine start up, “It’s gonna be loud”]

The process starts by placing blank sheets of paper between metal plates. And that’s when Jerry Granderson steps in.

JERRY GRANDERSON: Basically, I load the grill plates into this envelope, you know, a hinged envelope, and then we put it through the press and that's what puts the bumps on the paper, so to speak.

Leslie Faulkner takes the newly printed pages…

FAULKNER: I just take the imprinted pages out in order and get the plates ready to go again to be re-stuffed.

The book they’re printing contains 61 sheets of paper and is just over 2 inches thick.

Jerry puts it in perspective.

JERRY: So if you can then imagine what it would look like if you had the entire Bible in Braille, it would stack to the ceiling all of those Braille Bibles.

AUDIO: [“Oh wait a minute…”]

Every now and then the group slows down to check their work..

While they’re all familiar with scripture, Sisters Debbie and Sue Wolter point out they’re not able to read the words they’ve printed.

DEBBIE: Jerry here has numbered, because none of us reads braille so if we get them out of order we’re in trouble.

SUE: And that's the hardest thing, because, again, if we can't read the Braille, so we have to, you know, check page numbers and just continually be, you know, observant.

Samples are sent to The Lutheran Braille Ministry headquarters in California for proofreading and quality control.

DEBBIE: I don't think we've ever had a problem with books that we've had to send to them. We usually catch the problem if there is one here.

On a normal week the group will repeat the process until they have 15 copies to box and ship that same day.

Jerry says the books go to individuals and organizations throughout the world.

JERRY: Some of them go here in the United States, but the majority of them go overseas to, like, Nigeria, Bangladesh, India. We send a lot to those places.

The Congregation’s efforts reached more than 56-hundred people with the word of God in 2023.

The braille ministry has been part of the church for several decades. Sue says that’s drawn the group close.

SUE: Once you join Braille, you stay in Braille until you can't do it, and, yeah, until you can't do it, until you physically feel you can't do it anymore. You know, other than that, I've never seen anybody not want to be doing it.

Lutheran Braille Workers credits the congregation for giving more than $183,000 in labor in 2023. It’s something the volunteers say they’re glad to do.

JERRY: This is a pay-for-play service so each week we each contribute into the kitty to help fund for the materials. So I like to tell people you know the pay is not that great here but the benefits are heavenly.

AUDIO: The friendship is phenomenal. The fellowship we get each week is great.

And according to Sue, they’ve seen the fruit of their work in their own congregation.

SUE: We have a gentleman who comes to our church periodically, who is blind, and we had the youth, second graders here one day learning how we do this. They got to see he could read it just as fast in braille as they could with their eyes.

SOUND: [Printing and sorting sounds]

After about an hour, all 122 pages of the volume are printed, and Donna binds it together.

DONNA: There you go, a finished book.

Another volume of scripture ready for new hands to read.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Betsy Brown in Louisville, Kentucky.

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