The scanning of all the past issues of Beacon Lights is going well. At this time, about 10% have been scanned and available in PDF files. We plan to make these available soon along with a MS Excel index on the Faith Christian School website: randolphfcs.org. The website has not yet been developed for Faith, and we are glad to make Beacon Lights available to you as quickly as possible. These files are being fed through some text recognition software so that they can be searched in a word processor program.

Scanning is moving along at a pretty good rate of about 30 pages a minute provided there are no paper jams or other glitches. Text recognition takes about 10 minutes per issue, and proof reading a couple of hours. The process has not been without its problems, but they are being worked out and the work is enjoyable. In fact, one of our proof readers wrote:

Some of these articles are very, very interesting…early 1954 after the split. Wow! I feel the tension in the articles. I’m grateful for the opportunity to help with this project. I feel like I’ve renewed my “passion” for our faith. I want to know why and what and when and where for everything (re 1953 split, re 1924 split). I’m reading a lot more and I’m reading substantive books (Reformed bookshelf), as opposed to my murder mysteries or watching TV. Usually I’m not certain of what I know, but I feel like I have more confidence.

We are eager to make this treasure available to many more of our readers. Many of you enjoyed the reprint of material from “Our Boys in Service,” so I have included some more in this issue.