Saturday, November 21, 2015

We serve an all-knowing, sovereign, loving God

At the last few churches, I specifically asked for prayer for wisdom about a situation.  There is a deaf woman named Miguelina who has been coming to church in the batey.  Miguelina has “no language:” she neither knows how to speak or to sign.   I have a desire to reach her, but I'm not sure what that looks like...I mean, how do you reach someone with no language?  There were so many questions unanswered in my mind.

  • Do I begin learning American Sign Language (ASL)? 
  • Is ASL used in the Dominican?
  • If I can learn sign language, how do I go about teaching someone who knows no language?


God, however, reminded me that He is never surprised by anything that I encounter.  Over the last few months, He has brought 2 different people into my life who have experience sign language in the Dominican Republic…turns out it’s about 70% ASL (apparently that’s pretty common).  That’s great news!  Now I have a starting point: learn ASL so I can teach it to Miguelina.  But that still leaves a problem.  How on earth do I teach it to her???
Just this past Sunday, a sweet woman from Calvary Baptist Church in Byesville, OH shared with me her experiences in sign-language interpreting and teaching sign language to those with “no language.”  She pointed me to a resource called Silent Word Ministries, which not only has some valuable tools to share the Gospel but also contains a few articles on how to teach sign language to someone with “no language.” 
I guess God had all these things figured out before I did…but then, that’s no surprise, is it? J

God is good all the time. All the time, God is good.

3 comments:

  1. That is so amazing! It reminds me of Helen Keller too, in a way. Just her teaching naming things for her so that she could then associate the words with things. It took a while, but finally Hellen started learning a language. Maybe that will help too.
    Britt

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    Replies
    1. That's kind of what I thought of too...only definitely not as difficult as Helen Keller. I'm pretty excited to see what God does

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  2. That is so amazing! It reminds me of Helen Keller too, in a way. Just her teaching naming things for her so that she could then associate the words with things. It took a while, but finally Hellen started learning a language. Maybe that will help too.
    Britt

    ReplyDelete