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Tag Archives: Sordo en Puerto Rico

August 2019

August 27th, 2019

Mizael came back to school

Check out the link above to read more about THAT topic.

Look who is hanging out at the school these days:

Gizmo the iguana!

Natalia – her broken arm has healed 100% without any apparent defect!

Zuleika who is learning and helping and growing in God’s amazing grace,

Diego who has an amazing smile and super-intelligent mind,

Mizael who is still having headaches (which are lessening in intensity) and he is pushing through them to have more time in school.

These are the regulars.  We have 4 students – one full-time teacher and two full-time volunteers.  Both of the volunteers help in the classroom as well as cooking and doing maintenance respectively.  As school principal, Betsy is so thankful for the faithful helpers who work alongside her to allow the school to have continuity and dependability.  Our students are all special needs and could be taught one on one all day if we had the resources.  Without the resources, we do a lot of  One Room Schoolhouse work.  The benefits are so cool as the older ones see how the younger ones think and the younger ones are challenged by the older students’ thinking.

Continue to pray for the school, for the students, the workers, the weather… a storm is in the area this week and we are hopeful that we will not have any lasting effects from it. Keep an eye on the weather and remember to pray for us.

Thanks!

TALLERES en ASL

July 27th, 2019

We have the multi-purpose room ready for our summer workshop.

Estamos listos para los talleres de señas ASL.

 

 

 

 

 

Esperamos 12 personas a las 9 a.m. el lunes para el taller de maestros y/o personas aprendiendo ASL para sus professiones.

We are expecting 12 people at 9 a.m. on Monday for a workshop for teacher and/or people learning ASL for their jobs.

 

 

Por la tarde, tendremos un taller SILENCIOSO planificado para cualquier persona interesada en ampliar sus destrezas expresivas en señas.

In the evening, we will have a SILENT workshop for anyone interested in adding to their expressive skills in signing.

 

Si tiene interes, ven el lunes para juntarse con nosotros.

If you are interested, come on Monday to join us.

40th annual World Mission to the Deaf Conference

April 18th, 2019

WMD Conference June 8 2019

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

Mizael’s story

April 14th, 2019

Mizael has been diagnosed with a vestibular disorder that is associated with his deafness. Mizael has missed a great portion of the school year due to dizziness, nausea, medical appointments, motion sickness, and headaches.

With all of the analyses, the doctor suggests doing a cochlear implant so that his health will improve and his dizziness will lessen. Some of the medical costs and costs of therapy and recovery will not be covered by the insurance and we are praying for your cooperation to help us with this.

Please feel free to share with others for prayer support as well as possible financial support through GOFUNDME.Thanks!

 

sick kids’ month

March 29th, 2019

This month, I have had more time on my hands to do office and school administration work.  We have only 4 students!  HOW can I have so much admin to do?!

School insurance needs to be kept up.  The school license documents need to be prepared for our renewal of license. Reports need to be written.  IEP (Individual Educational Profiles) need to be kept current. And then there is the accountant and his questions about accounts and payments. Tax season!

So the extra time has been good for the administrator (me) but the extra time has meant that the teacher (me) is not as content as she would normally like to be.

THIS GIRL above pictured has been in a hospital for 2+ weeks now.  She was in hospital 1 for a week, released for 24 hours, returned to the emergency room and was ambulanced to hospital 2 which has better facilities to take care of the complications.  She’s in the Pediatric ICU. I’ve been doing “relief” work so her mom can get home to take care of the other kids a little.  The ICU has good nursing care too which makes it easier for her mom to feel secure in leaving her alone in the hospital for a few hours.

This one thing I KNOW:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:22-23

So as I drive to hospital 2 (it’s an hour’s drive away) and as I stand in hospital corridors or sit in hospital chairs and listen to whomever is nearby or talk with Larimar (sometimes she just wants a story and I love to story-tell) this is in my head, in my heart pounding away – the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases… so even though the new results seem worse than the previous study’s results, we are trusting the heart of our ever loving Father in Heaven.

In addition to this saga, my boys are both not in school today due to medical appointments and/or health issues.

Well, Deaf children are often multiply-challenged and so are these. Part of this day and age of working with children is addressing their specific needs in individual ways.  Working out how to get a boy who gets dizzy from lights to do online-work from home… maybe we need to resort to paper and pencil but he’s often too weak or dizzy to use his eyes… so I resort to prayer and seeking God’s peace for HIM (my student and his family) and me.

Pray for me as I walk alongside these families and their children with special SPECIAL needs. May I bring God’s peace and love to the situation. May “a merry heart do good like medicine” (Prov 17:22) and may my merriness not insult the gravity of the situations.

Yesterday I was kidding with Larimar and she started to cry!  NO!  Then her mom said, “What did you say?”

I had said, ” seriously, if you wanted to avoid a book report, we could have made a different plan”

Her mom said, “Don’t lie!  What did you say to upset her?

Larimar said, “She’s telling the truth! (cry cry cry)”

So I found a new subject and we had some more smiles… I left her smiling last night!

Pray that she continues to smile today!

Betsy

 

Pray for some little friends

March 7th, 2019

 

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.

THAT was a fast month!

January 30th, 2019

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.

Welcome to 2019!

January 3rd, 2019
January 1 2019, meeting of the board of directors

We started 2019 with prayer. God is at work in our area and we are SO excited to see HOW God will carry out His plan using us.

You can read this at https://cscdluquillo.com/with-these-hands/ – we have been praying for quite some time now for God to show us His plan for this facility and for the Deaf of this part of the island to be reached for Him.

“Continue to pray with us for workers to realize an adult Deaf ministry on our northeast corner of Puerto Rico with CSCD as the home base.

The SAME needs that the first workers discussed in 1957 and 1958 before opening the Evangelical Deaf Mission are still the needs of today:

  1. the need for Bible teaching among the Deaf population (there are presently less than 10 Bible-teaching churches for the Deaf on the island),
  2. the lack of literacy skills among the Deaf population (how can God’s Word speak if God’s Word is not accessible?)”

We look forward to classes resuming on January 14. We have two new volunteers on our list of workers- pray that they will be consistent workers and willing to adapt to the needs of the Deaf children they will be working with.

We are SO thankful for God’s faithfulness to this ministry as we enter our 60th year here. None of the present workers has even been alive for 60 years- we draw on the heritage of the ministry and thank God for His vision in the beginning and through the years until NOW. He continues to provide and we continue to be blessed by His provision.

Happy New Year to all !

Thanksgiving Celebrated with the Students

November 16th, 2018

The BIG NEWS of the day is NO CLASSES NEXT WEEK!  Monday, November 19 is the celebration of Columbus’ arriving to Puerto Rico, thus we are closed.  Thursday is American Thanksgiving so we are closed Thursday and Friday.  The public school system did not see it necessary to open for 2 days so we are closed for the week. SO Friday, November 16 we had a small Thanksgiving lunch with the students.  Diego was underwhelmed…he thought we were having a grand party.  THAT will be November 30.  If you in the area, come on by!

Now for an entertaining moment:

A theme around the school is NOT TO PLAY WITH. We use it regularly.  Natalia, our tiniest student, has learned that Roxy the brown dog is NOT TO PLAY WITH.  While doing a photo shoot for the school calendar (see ABOUT US/OUR CALENDAR), Roxy snuck up on Natalia and licked her cheek. Look at those pictures.  Does Roxy look like she was trying to get away with something there?

 

Later Natalia was seen closing herself into the classroom behind the security bars. We thank God that she was inside the NEXT day as it was rainy.  The large bull seen in the next picture frolicked in a panic through the courtyard mid afternoon. He is still in the lower field… maybe we don’t need to buy a new lawn mower after all!

For your amusement, our puppy Hephzibah (we call her Zyba) was last seen gnawing on conch shells she has removed from the plant beds. We toss them back into the foliage, she wrangles them back to the courtyard. Funny pup.

 

Give Thanks

November 9th, 2018

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.