So many years, people have commented -IT’S NOT REALLY CHRISTMAS UNTIL I HEAR THE BELLS. We are well into our Christmas music practices and looking forward to presenting our bell choir offerings beginning December 2! To me (Betsy) Christmas has already begun!
The middle of October and we are still feeling the summer humidity. Someone thought playing outside on Friday was a good idea. And it was. But getting back into the school chapel was a better idea!
We always enjoy our friends from Young Life come for some fun and games and the challenge from God’s Word. Jerry and Christina are amazing and we love having them and our friends from the Palmas Community Church.
There are four of us on staff now – we welcomed Dave Markle (white shirt) as our maintenance and Go To Guy for all things dysfunctional. Valie is enjoying having another guy around who knows how to fix things. Last week Dave installed a new hard drive on the school ZOOM CLASS laptop. This week he fixed leaks in the east wall that allowed Hurricane Fiona waters to enter the preschool classroom and kitchen. Imagine finding water in the breaker box! Only God knows what next week will bring to his plate!
Similarly in the classrooms – as teachers, we can know ourselves and prepare but we never know what will be behind the faces that enter. Our morning students are pretty settled into their studies and arrive knowing we will be doing SCHOOL work. Afternoons, we face ZOOM class with a teenaged girl and Tuesday Thursday with a Kindergartener girl. Oh dear. Pray in the afternoons if you think of it!
We love a weekend to do prep work and gardening but one Saturday each month we have Deaf Fellowship Day. The ladies have taken an interest in Diamond Art which is very tiny work. They got a little competition going to see who can complete the Christmas pieces they are working on. For me (Betsy), this project is too small and I took the paper sample to the printer and made an enlargement to help explain what we were doing.
There are already plans for more Christmas themed projects.
We also enjoy a night at the movies each month – coming up November 4 will be MOSES by Sight and Sound Theaters. Love their productions and the way the play shows us more of the character of the Bible person and times.
Pray with us for more opportunities and more hands to help with reaching out to the Adult Deaf community. Thanks for stopping by today!
We have completed three weeks of classes and are happy to say that our students have been attending IN PERSON consistently!
This year, we have only THREE students – the two boys pictured above are 17 and 18 years old and attend full time (8 a.m. to 2 and 3:30 respectively) and our little girl comes Tuesday and Thursdays from 2:30 to 4:30 for ASL/language development instruction.
From these photos, you can see we are working to maintain safe distances while still being able to talk easily without masks. For our students, it is SO important that they SEE our facial expressions and read lips. While working with them, we are maintaining air flow and safe distance protocols, using clear face shields and desk shields are necessary. We are thankful for our outside spaces and the free flow of air through the classrooms plus an amazing supply of alcohol to spray the desks and floors and keep things as Covid-Free as possible.
We continue to have our Deaf Fellowship time on the Second Saturday of each month. (third photo above). Our next event is scheduled for Sept 11. Pray that our deaf friends will be able to come – many are aging and find it difficult to drive at night so we have changed our meeting time to afternoon. We are so glad that our friends in the area have been coming and we are glad to be able to sit and talk with them.
Thank you for praying for our students, our staff and our ministry here in Luquillo. Times are weird but God is FAITHFUL. Praise Him!
Last week, we held a week-long ASL workshop. We were pleased with the attendance and outcomes – more people signing with a little more confidence and new connections we have made with a pre-school were our little student Natalia will be attending!
Our school director, Betsy, was assisted by Valie Carrillo (our maintenance man) and Jennifer Woods (visiting ASL teacher from the States). With the occasional assist of Mike and Glenda Coupe, the class had plenty of models for great signing. We played lots of games to keep everyone’s attention – the morning sessions were 3 hours – and to keep everyone learning. What a great week!
We are already thinking and scheduling for the 2020 version of the workshop so if you are interested in learning ASL and wanted to join us, let me know!
Click above link for a printable flyer.
June 8, 2019. 3:30 p.m.
Bob Rumball Centre of Excellence for the Deaf
Toronto Ontario Canada
Speaker: Gilberto Martinez,
former student of the Evangelical School for the Deaf
Needed: one (or more) 7(ish) year old hearing-impaired or Deaf children to accompany Diego on his educational journey.
His teacher is older than his grandmother and she needs some help in the PLAY department… The other students are older too and don’t exactly want to swing and play baseball during recess time. Pray with us for the next group of little ones to join in the learning fun.
Needed: one (or more) 2ish something hearing-impaired or Deaf children to accompany Natalie on her educational journey.
It’s just more fun to learn with a friend and have someone to talk with other than the older people around you.
We truly know that language is best learned in community. We have established an environment that is linguistically rich and visually accessible for our students. Pray with us for the little ones in the area – we hear of some in public schools where they are not linguistically stimulated, where they are developing delays in their linguistic development due to the non-accessibility of a visual stimulus accompanying their language experience. Deaf children learn by SEEing and DOing. Hearing children learn by hearing. English and Spanish are but auditory languages. They do not reach into the brains of a child who has a hearing loss of any significant levels.
And hearing aids don’t FIX things the same way glasses can fix things. My students all have hearing losses 
into the orange region of the audiogram at this LINK. They do not hear most of the speech sounds without extra help – that means raising my voice, using a hearing aid or other amplification. Most parents don’t take the time to look their hard-of-hearing/Deaf child in the face to have a conversation. So the child misses out on 82.9% (totally off the cuff estimation) of what is said. They are left wondering, guessing, trying to fill in the blanks.
On the other hand, most parents don’t raise a HAND to help their hearing-impaired child:
About 90%of the deaf population has two hearing parents and 88% of those parents do not know sign language. LINK HERE
And so I know there are children experiencing LANGUAGE DEPRIVATION simply because someone told their parents that having an interpreter is the answer. Suppose you don’t know ASL (American Sign Language) and you travel to China and you are given an ASL-Chinese interpreter. How much are you going to learn about China from watching the ASL interpreter?
Exactly what a child who doesn’t KNOW ASL faces when watching someone batting their hands around in first grade. The child MUST be in a place to learn the language so that they can then access the materials of learning. How does one learn a language? Come on, you know. You learned a language. You are reading this. YES! You learned by listening to your world from the time your ears developed (about week 16 of gestation inside your mom) you were learning the language of your world. But a child born deaf missed out on even that opportunity. Of course, some babies are born hearing and then lose the sense through trauma… but alas, without a language, they are left behind.
And so, would you pray for those children who are in this area, on this island? Because we have some lovely little ones here beginning to learn ASL and speaking and communicating in glorious ways… and my heart breaks every time I meet a small child who is SO isolated because the significant forces at work for the child haven’t grasped the idea that LANGUAGE development is IMPERATIVE to life experience and learning.
Thanks for praying. Thanks for your interest.
The first Friday of every month, we have OPEN HOUSE and invite ANYONE in to play games with us in the school multi-purpose building. WHAT FUN it is to catch up with our friends in the area!
Our games night in January was led by Mike and Glenda Coupe – our new Outreach and Chapel Program Director. We had loads of fun games and plenty of conversation and snacks when the group games ended. Already we are looking at the next games night this coming Friday (February 1).
How did that happen? It seems we just had our first social night… time surely does fly.
“For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.” (Psalm 90:4)
Thanks for praying for our school and our other ministry programs. We are seeing God at work as He answers prayers prayed since 1957 (or before) for the Deaf of the island to have churches that teach His Word in a way that is accessible for the Deaf. Pray for our students as they have opportunity to learn from the Bible and have opportunity to shine His light in their homes. Pray for our island as crime is increasing and many are still rebuilding their homes and lives 16 months post-hurricanes.
We take time to pray for our supporters – if you have a request, please send it along (by e-mail or snail mail) so that we may pray for YOU.
We are gearing up for Thanksgiving WITH turkey this year! After last year’s hurricanes and lack of turkey around the island, we are all excited for “real” holiday meals followed by decorating with Christmas lights galore!
Some of our supporters brought us some “paper pumpkin” craft boxes which we used to create our Give Thanks frame seen above. Thanks!
We enjoyed two visits to hearing schools to teach some ASL and tell the students about deafness.
Mike and Glenda Coupe are working with us this year. Such a blessing they are as they do this and that. Mike adds a male role model to our work – and the boys love hearing his stories about life and his challenges to live as godly men. Glenda is our lunch room manager and preprepre-school teacher – we have no idea why the photos prefer to be in landscape position so just tilt your head!
Betsy is teaching an ASL class at her church. Learning and practicing more Spanish as she does so. And just for frights’ sake, Mizael donned a live tarantula a day before Halloween… YUCK! brave or foolish?? The spider was safely released under supervision and Mizael was not harmed by the friendly critter.
Thanks for your prayers, your letters, and your BOXTOPS 4 Education – we are awaiting the arrival of a check for just over $300 in December. Remember also to use GOODSEARCH.org as your search engine to bring more pennies for searches to our ministry. it’s true. We get paid when you do a search using this Yahoo based search engine. There is also a shopping benefactor through this site- check it out, enroll, do your Christmas shopping using their coupons and a % comes to the school.
This year, we have three students every morning. Two are doing High School work and we are thankful to have English and Math volunteers working with them. Our English tutor meets with the students two hours each week by Facetime while our Math tutor walks into the classroom when he has time free to do so. We are thankful for the ways God provides for morning assistance so that our principal, Betsy Hoke can work with our new 6 year-old student who is learning the alphabet, learning to sit in class, learning to ask before taking or doing things, learning to use his hands to communicate, learning so many life skills!
Pray for teachers as Diego (6) and the two older students all need full time teachers to be present in their learning times. We also have a little 18 month old girl who we would love to have full time – again the need of someone to be her guide and language model through the day is holding us back.
In our next blog entry, I will introduce you to our missionary staff for this school year. Busy busy busy days prevent me from getting the photos I want to post!
Next Friday, September 7 is Deaf Social Night – come if you are able and join in games and fun with us!
The semester is continuing on as all good semesters do. For science, we are learning about EXPERIMENTS. Many experiments FAIL – or do not produce the expected results. We packaged eggs and dropped them. 3 out of 4 resulted in scrambled eggs. Our winner, Juan (on the right above) succeeded in packaging his egg so that it was useful later.
In our Bible class, we are memorizing verses about WISDOM. Pray with us that our students will learn to depend on God and His wisdom above all other choices available to them. Pray with us that our students’ lives would not like scrambled eggs… but would be protected by God’s wisdom as they apply it to their lives.
