MODESTO, CALIF. God's word, Mom's pen

Debbie Boling called writing out the Bible for her children a labor of love.
SACRAMENTO BEE
Debbie Boling wanted her two children to understand the value of the Bible. So she handwrote two copies of the New Testament -- one each for her son and daughter -- and presented it to them when they graduated from high school.
Now that her daughter and son have graduated from college, she has written them copies of the Old Testament -- each copy containing about 6,000 handwritten pages.
"I wanted to give them the type of Bible that would really mean a lot to them, a way of showing the importance that I put in the word of God," said Boling, 48, of Modesto.
She wrote out the books of the Old and New Testament on lined, pastel-colored paper. Each page is sheathed in a protective plastic sleeve and placed in a binder.
Some binders -- such as those containing the New Testament or the Old Testament books of Joshua through Esther -- are 4 inches thick. There are 12 binders in all: five for each Old Testament, one for each New Testament.
Decadelong project
Boling started the project when her son, Joshua, was a sophomore in high school. She has worked on it for about 10 years -- and gone through about 500 pens in the process.
"A co-worker told me, 'This is obsessive; you need some help,'" Boling said. "I thought, 'It's better to be obsessed with this than something else. It's not an obsession to me. It is love, a love for God's word.'"
Boling's first copy of the New Testament -- all of the books are from the New International Version -- took about three years. Her second, written with the looming deadline of her daughter's high school graduation, took two months. Her first Old Testament took nearly four years. The second, a little over a year, as she rushed to finish in time for her children's May graduation from Life Pacific College, a San Dimas, Calif., Bible college.
"I work well under pressure," said Boling, who wrote the Bibles whenever and wherever she could -- in her lap during car trips, at a table at home or during lunch breaks from her job as a high school health clerk.
She wrote meticulously, redoing entire pages if she made a mistake. During the past year, Boling averaged about four Bible pages a day -- or six handwritten pages.
Children's gratitude
"That takes up so much time, and nowadays time is so valuable," said Boling's 22-year-old daughter, Andrea. "To spend 10 years on a project for your children. ... I open it up and it's just like, 'Wow, that's so cool.' "
Andrea will pursue a master's degree in teaching. Joshua, 24, has begun work as a youth pastor at a Yuba City, Calif., church.
"This is something that you think of getting from your great-grandma," Joshua said. "I will probably put it in my office, and put it right there so I can see it every day as a daily reminder of how important the word of God is. I will hand it down to my children, just like an heirloom."
Debbie Boling is an ordained Foursquare minister who, like her husband, William, is an assistant pastor. Boling also lectures on her family's collection of historic Bibles.
Boling's labor of love has nurtured her own faith, too.
Reading Scripture closely as she copied it, Boling grew familiar with stories, historic contexts and details she hadn't known or had forgotten.
Boling says she thinks her project -- as enormous as it seems -- is something "anybody can do. My challenge isn't so much for everybody to write the Bible as it is to see the importance of it, not only reading the Word but living the Word and being that example to other people, whether your own children or other people you influence."