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.
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.
ReplyDeleteBritt
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
DeleteThat 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.
ReplyDeleteBritt