This time last year I was working at an elementary school in North Carolina. I was 1 of 3 speech therapists at my school working with kids who have hearing aids or cochlear implants. We helped our deaf students learn to listen and talk. My students had state of the art technology. Our program was the best in our area for Deaf education especially kids who want to learn to listen and talk. We also worked with kids who had trouble articulating their words, difficulty understanding language, kids who were in the severe to profound room, everything. That’s just the schools. Cabarrus County has countless opportunities to receive speech therapy from the schools to hospitals to clinics to home health. We are blessed.
Flash forward to this week where I spent the morning at Nzeve, a children’s center for the deaf. Nzeve is the only center of it’s kind in Mutare, Zimbabwe. They run a preschool for deaf children as well as life skills groups for older students. They also hold a deaf discipleship meeting each Monday. All of the students at Nzeve use Zimbabwe Sign Language. A few students had one hearing aid that was secured by a piece of yarn. My team and team Ignite had the opportunity to help clean up the grounds of Nzeve, play in the water with the kids, sit on a preschool lesson, and attend the discipleship program. We also performed a skit to help illustrate the lesson during the discipleship program.
I loved every minute of my time with these kids. The minute I jumped out of the back of our truck, I was playing with the kids, trying to fix hearing aids, and doing my best to communicate with them without knowing their language. I was in my element and it was incredible. They were no different from my kids back in North Carolina. They loved to communicate and laugh. God started tugging at my heartstrings.
Earlier this month, I learned that Muture has zero speech therapists. When I told people my profession back in the states I heard countless stories of the desperate need for speech therapists in Mutare. It’s not just the kids at Nzeve who need one. It’s the neighbor of a woman who had a stroke and lost all of his speech but continues to struggle because there is no one to give him speech therapy. It’s Raymond who appeared to have cerebral palsy and struggled to get all his words out but desired so much to communicate. These were just a couple stories I heard.
For the first time, I’ve seen firsthand the need for my profession in a tangible way outside of my context. God is showing me that missions and my profession can mix. Who knows what that means for me? Maybe, I’ll be one of the first speech therapists in Mutare. Maybe I’ll spend time during summers doing what I can. Maybe I’m just supposed to write this blog so someone else can hear about the need and God can use them to help these people. Until I know, I’ll keep praying and believing that God will provide for these people.
