One of the sweetest gifts the Lord has given me on the Race has been a squadmate – now teammate – who is Deaf. Jess L and I don’t just share a name; we also share a language: American Sign Language. I have loved ASL and the Deaf community since high school when my best friend’s little brother was Deaf and their parents used ASL with him. I learned to sign from living alongside their family, and then I took two semesters in college; I now consider myself conversationally fluent. Sign Language and the Deaf community are actually two of the reasons I decided to study Speech-Language Pathology.
On the Race, I haven’t encountered many uses for sign besides talking “in code” with Jess L. But this past month, God gave us both a really sweet gift: a Deaf encounter or four. These are those stories!
When we first arrived in Malaysia, we took a bus from Kuala Lumpur to Penang – about a 6-7 hour drive. About halfway we stopped for a potty/snack break at a mall/outdoor food court. Across the food court from where I was sitting with a few squadmates, I saw a family communicating exclusively with sign language. It’s rude to eavesdrop, even in Sign, so I didn’t try too hard to understand them, but I could tell they were using some signs I understood. Before we got back on the bus, Jess and I walked over to them and introduced ourselves in ASL and talked with them a little bit. They don’t use ASL, but their Sign Language (thanks Google) is derivative of French Sign Language, same as ASL! So we were able to understand each other about 90% of the time! It was so cool! We had to go back and join the group after about 5 minutes, but the family called us back over again and asked us to sit down and talk some more. A few squadmates told us later that all the shop owners in the food court were watching us with big grins on their faces; the family owns a stall in the food court, and they must all know the family is Deaf, and they seemed excited to watch them communicate with us! It was a really sweet gift – that I got to use ASL to bless a family in Malaysia of all places! – and I was so delighted by it. But God didn’t stop there.
After that 6-7 hour bus ride, we got dropped off at a bus station and we had to take two Ubers to our house (three teammates per car). The second Uber – my Uber – came with a disclaimer notification when I booked the ride: “Your driver may be Deaf or Hard of Hearing.” Whaaat?? That’s so cool! When our driver, a really kind young woman, picked us up and we piled in the car with all our things, I turned to her to say hello and she gestured that she can’t hear, so I started signing to her. Her face lit up. She was so excited to sign with me. Every time we stopped for a stoplight or traffic, she would turn and talk to me. We chatted about Penang and her favorite parts of the island. She even taught us the name sign for Penang, which came in handy the rest of the month. It was such a cool encounter, and so sweet to see how knowing Sign blessed her and really made her day. I was stoked – two Deaf encounters in one day? Wow that was so fun! But God had even more in store for us.
Part of our ministry in Malaysia was going to school with our housing host, Kelly. She works at a school for refugee children, and we assisted with teaching in the classrooms and one-on-one reading help. On our second day there she had a Eureka! moment and pulled Jess and I out of tutoring. One of her students, a 17-year-old boy, is deaf and has very little means to communicate. We spent the rest of the day teaching him as much ASL as we could given the limited amount of time we had with him. By the end of the day, when we told him in ASL that he could go back to class, he understood and signed, “thank you.” AAAAHHHH it was so cool!! One of the other really cool things that happened while we were working with him was when we were looking at pictures in a book and asking him what the people in the pictures were doing. On his own, he put together the phrase “read book.” For someone who has little language comprehension and is learning a brand new language, putting together a two-word phrase is AWESOME. I – again – was delighted. Empowering this boy to have the ability to communicate with his peers and teachers in a language completely accessible to him was such a sweet gift.
I wasn’t there on our last day at the school, but here’s Jess L to tell you all about it: When we were there helping teach the 17 year old boy as much sign as we could, Kelly’s class of kids wanted to learn some signs, so we taught them “thank you” and “teacher”. After going back a few days I had thrown in some more signs of “you’re welcome”, “student”, “I miss you”, and so on. The kids loved learning sign and were SO ANXIOUS to learn more! On our last day at the school, the school had an assembly at the end of the school day. There were already 4 different languages being spoken at this assembly to make sure that all kids were understanding what was being said; English, Malay, Burmese, and Rohingya. After the teachers were done, we got to speak and say goodbye to the kids. After we spoke, one of the kids came up from Kelly’s class and told us, “thank you teacher for coming, thank you for coming to teach, thank you for being here. I will miss you, I hope I see you again.” Then he turned to me and signed “thank you teacher.” It just made my heart melt – just a 10 minute sign session with this group of kids and they picked up on the signs so quickly! And after an assembly with 4 languages spoken, we saw ASL become the fifth language used at the school!
And yet, even then, God wasn’t done blessing us – and using us to bless others – through Deaf encounters.
Last weekend, Jess attended a Bible conference at a Methodist church in Georgetown, Penang. At that church, she met people involved in a Deaf ministry. What?? So cool! So this past weekend, I went back and attended the ASL-interpreted service at that church. After the service, I went to the front and introduced myself to the interpreters and their Deaf friends who attended – a group of 6 in total. They were so excited to meet me and they invited me to lunch with them. They paid for my food and insisted I try all sorts of new things haha! They were so incredibly kind and I believe they blessed me even more than I may have blessed them by going out of my way to meet them and get to know them.
Last month in South Africa, a pastor told Jess he wanted to pray for healing for her deafness. She told him she didn’t want to be healed, because she sees her deafness as a gift and a way to bring the Gospel to the Deaf community, which is considered an unreached people group (fun fact: the Deaf community is the third most unreached-by-the-Gospel people group in the world). I fully believe that our time in Malaysia and the encounters we had with the Deaf community were evidence that her deafness truly is a gift, and the Lord has had a purpose in giving me the desire to learn and use American Sign Language.
Thank you, Jesus, for your sweet gifts. You rock.
To God be the glory!
Xoxo
Jess
