Words to not adequately describe how I am doing or what I am feeling. But there is a language that understands my heart better than any other. It is the language of the heart and it is called Sign Language. The beauty of expressing oneself with your own hands and creating beautiful raw images in space, well that just sounds too good to be true eh? But that is what Sign Language is for me.
My journey began when I was in the 10th grade. I needed to take another foreign language aside from Spanish. What I thought would be an easy A became a life changing class. In there, I saw the beauty of using hands to describe things, to take a song and describe it spatially. I was hooked.
Sign Language, Deaf, hard of hearing, and Deaf-Blind people is where my heart is at.
And this month, the Lord answered one of my prayers: to work with the Deaf in Asia.
We arrived in Vietnam, eager to meet our contacts and see what sort of ministry we were about to do. We met with Orphan Voice and one of our contacts told us that we would be separated into many different teams of 2 or 3 people. Sherman, one of our contacts called out names and told us our ministry. When my name and Ash’s names were called, he said that we would be working with the Deaf. It took me a second to register what he said but once he did, I was beyond excited and overjoyed. I just couldn’t believe it. I knew that ASL would come in handy to help me learn Vietnamese Sign Language.
We arrived at a Central Deaf Services we met the wonderful couple who felt the call upon their lives. Jeff and Nancy. They were ASL interpreters in the States but once they visited Vietnam, they felt the Lord calling them to start a center. And sure enough they have. It is staffed by both hearing and Deaf. Two of the teachers graduated from a Deaf College in Pho Chi Min. They in turn would teach VSL to other kids and it was a unique experience to sit in on their classes and see how they teach.
Orphan Voice has a Deaf school in the village and every Tuesday and Thursday, we would take the long 2 hour drive into the village. We pulled up to a very small school. We were welcomed with friendly smiles of the children that went to school there, around 7 varying from many different ages. But as I was watching, I noticed that these kids not only lacked the appropriate materials but also didn’t have any discipline and the teacher did her best with so many kids. With the little Vietnamese Sign Language that I knew, and with the permission from the teacher, I went to work. I took the older girl who was more advanced than the others and was “in charge” and moved her to another seat. I told her to stay put to worry about herself while I tried to handle the other children who were all over the place. That was just one day. Imagine the potential with more resources.
