A funny thing happened here in Odessa related to fonts.

An American visiting in Ukraine had a vision for the historic Reformed church of Odessa to have its own pipe organ – something very unusual in churches in the East. So he raised the vision and took years to raise the funds – finally preparing a beautiful instrument to be installed here.

When the U.S. company got everything packed in crates to go in the container, we gave them specific instructions to insure its care – please mark the crates “HANDLE WITH CARE”! So they wrote back and asked how to say that in Russian. Our office dutifully wrote out in Russian: “ostarozhno” that looks a lot like:

                              OCTAROXKHO

When the crates finally arrived months later by sea, here is what was written ALL OVER about 50 crates:

                           a%i4p7Z%(^%$&%

We died laughing! Their computer didn't have the Russian fonts installed, and what was left was total gibberish! Just think of that poor soul in the Shipping Department of the pipe organ company who must have sat there for weeks, carefully copying it out, cipher by cipher!! How were they to know?

By the way, the organ got here fine, and is played weekly in worship and in the very popular organ concerts. But we found that EVEN FONTS MATTER!