Leading the
Higher Thi magine for a moment what it must be like to be blind. Everything is black, all the time.You can’t look in a mirror and see your reflection or gaze upon the faces of your friends. Driving a car is out of the question. Getting dressed or combing your hair can be a challenge. Everyday activities sighted people take for granted are oftentimes difficult for people who are blind, except when it comes to reading.
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Ever since the invention of the Braille alphabet in the early 1800’s, blind people have been able to read books, magazines and other materials like sighted people.The only difference is blind people read with their hands instead of their eyes. And, blind people, like everyone else, crave good reading material. An insightful Lutheran pastor saw the need to offer good, reading materials for the blind. Over 80 years ago, his insight resulted in the founding of the Lutheran Blind Mission and the Lutheran Library for the Blind, now the largest Christian library serving blind people in North America. Always looking for new reading materials to add to their collection, Lynne Borchelt, manager for the mission and library, was especially intrigued when she received a copy of Higher Things magazine in her mailbox during the summer of 2003. “I found the content of the magazine to be especially engaging because it is aimed at young Lutherans,” remembered Borchelt.“There are few good Lutheran publications out there targeted specifically for young people and offer the highquality theological articles that Higher Things does.” Borchelt knew that if Higher Things could be translated into Braille, there would be an audience ready and willing to read it.The first thing Borchelt did was contact Rev.Todd Peperkorn, publisher and editor-in-chief of Higher Things magazine. “When I called Rev. Peperkorn and told him my idea about translating Higher Things into Braille, he was very excited,” recalled Borchelt.“We both thought that if we could get this project off the ground, it would prove to be a wonderful Christian resource for blind young people in the Lutheran
church and beyond.” Rev. Peperkorn enthusiastically granted Borchelt’s request. The next step was to find a group of people who would be willing to volunteer their time to put the quarterly magazine into Braille and then assemble it for distribution. “For the last year, I had been working with a group of home-schooled students who would come to the Mission and help package and send out Braille books our readers had requested. Since all the students were the age Higher Things targets, I thought they might be interested in helping out with this project,” remembered Borchelt. Borchelt couldn’t have been more correct. In fact, when she approached the students, they already were very familiar with Higher Things. It turned out that several of them had been discussing articles from the magazine and using the accompanying Bible studies in their Sunday school classes at church. “When the kids found out the project involved putting Higher Things into Braille, they jumped at the chance to help out,” explained Borchelt.“They knew this was an outstanding magazine.They wanted to give blind young people the same opportunity they had of reading a magazine that contains such rich theological articles.” And so the project began. Rev. Peperkorn sent Lynne the magazine articles on disk.Then the disk was sent to a person in Illinois who uses a computer program that changes the written text into Braille. Next, the disk containing the converted copy was sent to California where the Braille text was printed onto both sides of a zinc
