Hope your service year is off to an excellent start!

I met Grecia through Teresa, who has worked with others who have been affected by the whole kidney/deaf/blind combo. Since Grecia spent the first 35 years of her life living in a hearing world, she speaks Spanish and reads and writes. Her family has communicated with her for the last 5 years by writing on her leg with their finger. She has a husband and a son, but since becoming sick she has had to move in with her sister and her son has had to move in with family in another town. Her husband visits her everyday, and the two of them go visit their 8 year old boy, Anthony, in La Vega every weekend. It is really heartbreaking to see how her life has been turned upside down.

When we first met, she had a very hard time understanding our writing on her leg, plus the method is very laborious, so we started using magnetic letters that she could feel to teach her the manual alphabet. Here she is at the hospital, receiving dialysis and using her one free arm to feel the letters.

Once we received vocal recognition that she knew the letter, we would make the sign in her hand. It was tough to get her to understand that the shape we were making with our hands was representative of the letter, but eventually we got through. When she finally grasped what we were teaching her, she became a voracious learner and mastered the alphabet in just 3 weeks!

From there we would spell things into her hands and then teach her the signs. Her mind had atrophied greatly over the years, and she wasn’t used to communicating back and forth, so questions were a magnificent struggle to start with. Now, she gets everything with ease. Since she still thinks in Spanish I try to sign following a Spanish word order so that she can understand. When I bring Jessica with me, who is deaf and doesn’t know Spanish very well, she tries her best to follow Spanish, and it is super cute!

Despite her physical limitations Grecia has made it to the Kingdom Hall several times where she has been very warmly received.

All three boys are in the deaf school and do very well. I contacted Luis (middle) first about 8 months ago and he has gone from being a lifeless lump to looking forward to his study every week. Little by little he has been opening up and asking more and more probing questions. I think it is amazing the way we were created to have an intense curiosity for our Creator and it really shows in Luis. For being a boy that doesn’t know much about communication, he has some pretty interesting questions every week.

Darwin (first on the left) was contacted about 4 months ago. Friend of a friend of a friend said they talked with him and that he wanted to study the Bible. He is the popular kid at school so he likes to talk a lot… though sometimes about nonsense. We have worked with him a lot and now he doesn’t go off on his tangents nearly as much as he used to. His study is going quite well.

Luis David (right) isn’t actually my student, he is the student of another sister in our congregation but he has really latched on to the other boys.

A few weeks ago while we were cleaning out the house, we found a big bag of ties and a dress shirt that was too small for me. I gave the dress shirt to Luis and 2 ties each to the boys. I also gave 2 ties to another student of mine who isn’t in the picture (I will have to write about him(Alex) another time). It was so exciting to see all of the boys at the meeting in their dress shirts, slacks, shoes and ties. And they all commented at least once at the Watchtower study (I think Darwin commented 5 times though 2 were a little off lol).

We are really hoping to get them to the District Convention this year in the Capital. Darwin’s and Luis’ parents already said yes but they said that they are a little tight economically with the new school year approaching but they would do their best to contribute to the hotel and food. With our uncertain job situation, we aren’t quite sure how it will work out but we are continuing to pray for their fine progress.

I took Liz (who some of you may know as being from our old ASL congregation in Michigan) on several of my studies while she and her husband Scott were here visiting for 2 weeks. Most of my studies are 15 year old girls, and I am comfortable with that nitch, however, I do teach one woman who is 31, Yesenia, lives with her deaf boyfriend, and has never been to school, not one day in her life. She actually didn’t know any sign language until she was contacted by Jehovah’s Witnesses nearly 8 years ago. She studied at that time, but then her family moved deep into the country, and she fell off the radar for nearly 5 years. This is Jess and Yesenia in the photo, from the stairs to her apartment.

That all changed in January, when she and her boyfriend, Carlos, showed up at our Kingdom Hall and asked us to help them understand the Bible. We gladly obliged.

Studying with Yesenia has presented lots of challenges for me. She is “trained” to answer a certain way and so she appears to have a lot of knowledge, but she lacks the ability to reason, which is something that I require of my students. We have been working very hard with her, and she is coming along fantastically (said with a nice thick Michigan accent).

It was Liz though, who brought something more to her study.

I go every week on Wednesday to give her a personal study of the Bible and every Saturday morning to help her study her copy of the Watchtower for the meeting on Sunday, so that she can participate and give comments, which she loves to do. Up until I went with Liz I had just been watching the paragraphs, which we have on DVD, and then drawing a little comment for her every so often.

Liz took my drawing to a whole new level! She suggested drawing pictures on a separate sheet of paper for every paragraph. Since Yesenia can’t read, she could use the pictures to help remind her what the paragraph discussed, kind of like taking notes on the Watchtower, or underlining the paragraphs. I thought it was a lot of work, but Liz was willing to draw, and so we went with it.

Yesenia LOVES her drawings. She has saved every single one and uses them at the meetings, as well as at home to review the things she learned with her boyfriend, who is often at work when we call. (Anton visits him on Sundays, his only free day of the week.)

I knew the drawings were a good idea, but I didn’t realize how great they were until I saw this:

She drew it after I left one week Wednesday on what she had learned. You can see the lame man being lowered into th room in the second column of pictures. She likes the annointed – you can see them on the far right, even though they weren’t in the lesson! Oh, and you can see Jesus has the red coloured garment on – that is how I always differentiate Jesus from the apostles. Since then, she has drawn the Wednesday lesson each week as her way of “taking notes” and remembering what she has learned.

It just goes to show you that there is always more to learn and always ways to improve to be a better teacher. Thanks Liz! Yesenia still associates the drawing of pictures with you!

Counting backwards from Claritza back to Estefani we realized we would have to pick the first student up at 4:05 pm, leaving our house at 3:50 pm! It was crazy, and included three carloads of students to the hall, but we managed to do it. How exciting it was to have all of Jessica’s students there (3), and all but one of mine and one of Anton’s. A couple that Anton and I study with also came on their own, so the whole lot we brought to the Memorial totaled 12, ranging in age from 11 to 31!

We didn’t want the parents to worry, especially for those who were getting picked up first, as they would be dropped off last, so we printed out little slips of paper for each set of parents with the pick-up and drop-off times written on them. I have to say, the entire project was a major success and we had a fantastic time, as did the students!

In the picture above, which was taken back in the summer of 2006 Jess is drawing her house and my house in Paradise. She put us both on opposite mountains, even though she prefers the beach! Since that picture was taken she has completed her study in Learn from the Great Teacher and What Does the Bible Really Teach? and is now over halfway finished with the Worship the Only True God DVD, and is conducting her own Bible studies in the Learn from the Great Teacher DVD with other deaf youth.

In this picture she is assisting another deaf sister in our congregation with illustrating some Bible texts as they are seen on the Bible Teach DVD. Ever eager to acquire new skills, she has been mastering the art of drawing to aid deaf who are still learning sign language.

She also never neglects her study with me, or her personal study, even when it is “freezing” outside. (It was probably 60, but we were really, really cold!)

Jess is just one of the many blessings we have received by being down here. It hasn’t been easy to get to the point where we are at with her (sometimes she still leaves the water faucet turned on when there is no water due to pipe issues, and we come back to the shower running) but overall, she has been a joy to have in our lives.

A common problem that we face mostly with younger kids (4–18) is the lack of any understanding of questions. For the most part, they know that they are being asked a question and that I am expecting some sort of reply but… exactly what kind of question; that is up to their interpretation. The two questions we have the hardest time with are “who” and “what”. The school does not teach the difference between these two signs here and therefore they attempt to learn their meanings by watching other kids use them. Of course, this leads to a problem when the kids around them don’t know how to use them either.

It seems like such a simple concept, “who” and “what” and yet it seems to take months to master. Here we are giving Billy a crash course in their meaning (this is after I got sick of him pointing at the Bible and asking “who???”. We were able to get a basic understanding down by asking whether things have a heart beat or not. If they do, it is a “who” question, if not it is a “what” question. This is only a crude outline of their meanings but at least it is a first step in the right direction. I think the best part is when he still catches himself mid-sentence and corrects his “who” for a “what” or vice versa.

On the Official Web-Site of the Jehovah’s Witnesses you can see the “Would You Like to Know the Truth?” DVD in 38 different sign languages.

It is wonderful to see how God is arranging things to ensure that all can “hear” the good news of the kingdom. (Matthew 24:14)

If you know ASL or are a part of the Deaf community in the United States, you already know that sign language tends to evolve slowly over time. The difference here is that it is evolving so rapidly that it is hard to keep up with. The reason for this rapid evolution is mostly response to the next generation of deaf kids (ages 8 – 18) who are dying to communicate and find the language that is being taught in the school to be deficient.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have been teaching the deaf here in the DR for over 15 years and have molded the local sign language to be very similar to the ASL that we are familiar with in the US, the difference though is that since most of the people that have come here to teach the deaf didn’t have a very firm grasp on the language (or even the culture for that matter) themselves, the deaf were still left needing a more comprehensive language to be able to express themselves in. This, mixed with the few deaf that have been to the US and the misunderstandings between hearing and deaf, as well as a lack of awareness to deaf culture in the schools has been the burning catalyst that has been spurring on this evolutionary process.

It is interesting to see what the kids in the school here in Santiago come up with since the culture is still not very tight and for the most part, the ones who have the tightest grasp on their language are all under 18. Many signs are just recycled ASL whereas others are different all together.

Here is a sample video that we did on the spot with An Unbaptized Publisher named Jessica and a student of hers named Claritza. They are both 14 and have been in the deaf school since they were young. (Jessica is quite a bit more communicative since she spends so much time with us)

If you just had a hard time understanding that, don’t worry! We were recently at another students house with Jessica who is in the same class. Before we started the Bible study, Jessica was chatting with the other girl and about 2 minutes in, Jac and I both looked at each other and asked “do you have any idea what they are talking about???” It is just a simple fact that the language in this country is changing whether we like it or not and this is going to affect more than just us and the Bible education work we do, it may well affect the entire deaf community.

The only downside to this is that where ASL has had many MANY decades to evolve and grow with great coaxing and care, mostly from ‘closed to hearing’ deaf groups, the language here is still very young and has a lot of outside meddling and playing that is done by well meaning hearing people that still don’t fully understand the detrimental affect their inventing of signs has on the deaf community.

It is interesting being in the thick of it all and realizing just what it means to be part of the deaf community in any country and to see why the deaf community I’ve come to know in Michigan, New York and Florida are so weary about letting hearing people in to romp through their beautifully arranged and delicately balanced language.

I guess we will just have to see what the future holds but for the moment, we are just trying to strike that balance between the ASL we teach with and the ‘DSL’ (hehe “DSL”) that is popping up all around us.