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Category Archives: News

Conference Attendance Planned

March 11th, 2017

The Adult Handbell Choir Trio and our Upper School Handbell Duo are combining their efforts to raise money to fly to Toronto Ontario Canada to attend the 38th Annual World Mission to the Deaf missions conference.

flyer download : WMD Conference June 10 2017

We are super excited to be going together and have been practicing for weeks already.  We are performing on April 7 at an afternoon meeting in Humacao PR and had our first FULLY attended rehearsal yesterday.  The group is coming together so well.  If you are interested in helping us on this trip north, please feel free to buy a t-shirt or send along your encouragements to us through e-mail or Facebook and of course letters by snail-mail are always appreciated as are your prayers.

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our new year is starting slowly

January 12th, 2017

Someone’s family member died.  Someone’s car is not working. Someone has a medical appointment.  Someone has an appointment for educational testing.  But TWO students have been in school this week.  Since these two are a little ahead of the others in their linguistic development, we have been taking the time to work on problem solving skills, musical literacy skills and handbells, Bible and life skills, and of course written language skills. It has been a nice quiet calm week. Of course tomorrow is Friday and God alone knows what Friday will hold for us!

Tomorrow night is social night and we are hopeful to have a full house of friends coming by for games and conversation.  The Adult Bell Choir will be rehearsing and hopefully honing our skills.

And then there is the weekend.  We have been under a rain cloud for several days now.  We also have a team of workers who were hoping for some sunshine. Sorry.  Today we sent them to the south side of the island.  Tomorrow they may hit the north-west corner. Saturday they may WORK doing some odd jobs that have accumulated.  If there is any break in the rain, maybe they will hike into the rainforest and enjoy the wetness there.

For now, we are thankful that God is sovereign and has given us a peaceful start to our semester.  Pray for the broken car, the medical appointments, the educational opportunities, the understanding of our students in the face of these situation. Many times, they navigate without an interpreter.  Many times, they come back with questions and want some help with figuring things out. Pray for our insights and wisdom into situations we do not understand!

See you next time!

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Christmas Party 2016

December 21st, 2016

December 20 at 6 p.m. we sat down in our school chapel with the students and their families and enjoyed games, music and sweets. It was a good time!

Betsy had made a special Kahoots game for the parents and students to play together. Juan’s mom made delicious desserts for all of us to enjoy after the program.

The program started with Tess teaching everyone a song in ASL. The song was in Spanish so everyone understood in their own language 🙂

Lora presented the dorm students signing “I’ll be home for Christmas” and her last object lesson about LOVE IS… from 1 Corinthians 13. As you can see in the fifth photo in the list to the left, we had TWO interpreters – one from English to Spanish and the other from English to ASL. Our school programs are always a multi-linguistic endeavor as we weave together the languages and cultures of Deaf/Puerto Rican/American/Christian.

This morning, Lora took off so she’ll be home for Christmas. Tess and Betsy took the last of the students to their home in Orocovis and are now settling into naps since yesterday was busy and today’s activities started before sunrise.  Enjoy lots of fellowship and fun during your holidays!

See you again on January 11!

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Model Letter to Request Interpreter

November 16th, 2016

Too often recently, I have heard a complaint that a governmental entity has not called for an interpreter for a Deaf person in need.  Too often recently, I have seen video of such interactions.  Too often recently, I have received a phone call from an agency asking WHY an interpreter was needed…

And so to have this at my fingertips, here is a PDF of a model letter for a Deaf person to give to an agency or office explaining the law and requesting an interpreter be called. I did not write this.  It was given to me by someone who knows more about this than I do.  Yet it is so needed.  It is in Spanish.

Modelo Carta para Persona Sorda  a Entidades

Disponible aqui:

modelo-carta-persona-sorda-a-entidades-pdf

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week of November 04 2016

November 6th, 2016

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Our week started with students who wanted to “celebrate” Halloween.  Well, I am not opposed to candy but I am opposed to many aspects of Halloween’s “religious” traditions.  So we got around it by doing “Crazy Hair” and playing some games.

Thanks to our two stylists to their crazy input on the activity!

This year’s handbell choir did their first performance on November 1 with a surprisingly good repertoire. With three fairly young and new ringers, the director of the troupe was nervous but everyone came through with bells on!

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We had some workers around this week – installing a new white board, installing a generator interface for power outages, and power washing everything it seemed.

How beautiful are the feet that bring good news! Isaiah 52:7 and Romans 10:15 both remind us that Good News comes by way of personal delivery.  How eager we were to receive our guest workers and their news of jobs well-done!  How eager we are to continue to teach the Good News to our students and plant the seeds of God’s Word in their hearts! Pray with us for their hearts to be fertile fields as we plant that precious seed.  Pray for their minds to desire to obey Him always.

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Was last week only 5 school days long?

September 3rd, 2016

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While I know each school week is 5 days, some feel so FULL!  Last week was a full week!  We are doing more “silent” reading this year – trying to get in at least 15 minutes of independent reading daily and it’s fun to watch the students examine the bookshelves and find hidden treasures. Also sweet to watch the more able to read students introduce books and love of reading to the ones who are not able to read on their own yet.  Pray that literacy will be a skill they love and each student will exercise a passion for WORDS and sharing God’s Word!

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We were excited to see Nathan and Deborah visiting from Canada! This lovely Deaf couple stopped by with their three hearing daughters.  We always love seeing them and enjoyed some games and relaxing time together.

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This year, we are making cursive writing a priority. Every afternoon before we dive into our learning logs, we do some structured writing.  Betsy, our only teacher this year, has developed this framework for teaching cursive – using the data projector to shine guidelines onto the white board and then writing on them. The students love showing off their skills  too though they still do better on paper than on the board.

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Thanks for praying along with us for the ministry of our school and chapel.  We look forward to next week when we will be practicing conversational skills and learning how fractions work.

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