On Oct. 16, 2017, Leonard and Pat Pamplin presented Elizabeth C. Bernard’s New Testament Bible to the Center for Restoration Studies at ACU Library. Bernard (1890-1971) was a lifelong missionary in Hong Kong. She first served in China in 1933 and returned there in 1949. “Though completely blind, she ran an orphanage in her home, distributed food and clothing to the poor and helped lead two small congregations: Shum Shui Po and Hunghorn. She labored alone until 1959, when additional missionaries began arriving.” (The Stone-Campbell Movement: A Global History, p. 264.)
The Bible, printed in the Cantonese dialect, is annotated with pronunciations so that it could be read aloud.
The Pamplins met and befriended Bernard in Hong Kong while doing mission work in the late 1960s. They are parents of library faculty member Shan (Pamplin ’86) Martinez and chemistry faculty member Kim Pamplin (’91).
Jeremy Hegi (’12) of Lubbock, TX, currently a doctoral student at Boston University, also attended the presentation. Hegi’s current research focuses on women in Asian missions in Churches of Christ, including Bernard. Hegi worked in Special Collections while earning a master’s degree from ACU’s Graduate School of Theology in 2012, and joined the library staff In 2013 on an NEH grant to prepare the library’s digital collection of mission photography. The special collection features two photographs of Elizabeth C. Bernard.