Alan along with Donna was a great support and friend to our family, from the time Lee and I were married in 1986. Every year he sent us each a birthday card, even though our birthdays are only 12 days apart and it would have been reasonable to send only one for both of us! He also sent us a Christmas card every year. He occasionally contributed financially to our ministry with Wycliffe Bible Translators.
When Lee and I were studying French in Neuchatel, Switzerland, he met us there when on business with his employer, Givaudon, in Switzerland. We visited a historic castle on a lake, and he treated us to a delicious meal in a historic restaurant.
He had wanted to visit us in Africa, but when he was diagnosed with Parkinson's he knew that his abilities would decline, so he made it a priority to visit us while he could. He came to Mali the winter of 1997 when Laura and David were small, and I was pregnant with Sarah. We were living in a family compound lent to us in the village of Koura, and Alan helped Lee put some finishing touches on the larger house he was building for our family out of mud bricks roofed with corrugated tin. A polished cement floor had been laid by a local mason, but as it dried, it cracked and came loose. Alan helped us decide to shovel it out and replace it with pressed cement tile, that we then ordered from the factory where it was made in the city of Sikasso, two hours away. Alan built out of cement a counter and stand to hold our bathroom sink. He installed a water tower on which he and Lee arranged two plastic barrels connected with hoses to the hand pump on our well, and to our kitchen sink and bathroom sink, toilet and shower. (Alan's initials remain in the cement footer of one of the water tower legs. The house continues to serve Bible translation in the Jowulu language, as our colleagues occupy it when consulting with the Koura translation team, which is now nearing completion of the translation into the Jowulu language of the New Testament with major excerpts from the Old Testament.)
We enjoyed putting together clues to figure out the titles of well known carols from the sheet he shared at extended family Christmas gatherings. I especially liked listening to him sing from memory several verses of the humorous "While Shepherds Washed Their Socks By Night" based on the well known carol that starts "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night."
We enjoyed Alan's humor, his warm, encouraging heart, and his dedication to serving the living God by serving the poorest of the poor in very remote regions. His hard work and perseverance were an inspiration to all of us, and certainly contributed to Lee's exceptional development in these areas, which allowed Lee, in turn, to make exemplary contributions in three areas: the identification of Malian languages and translation needs; the introduction to Africa of a course on participatory methods for language research, including the development and production of the course in French; and the development of the Jowulu language program, which included identifying workers with the best background preparation possible, and then both sending them for training in other places, and mentoring them on-site to a very high level, which has enabled them to both work very independently and train others.
Susan Hochstetler
(Her spouse, Alan's nephew Lee, died the next day after Alan's death)
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