January

January has been a wonderful month for us. We enjoyed the visit of a "two-in-one" team from Baltimore. About half the team were seminary students, and the other half Sign students from a Baltimore college. All could communicate in Sign. Their leaders, Mark (from the college) and Peggy (from the seminary) are experienced Signers of many years.

The children are always excited to meet new people who can speak their language. They crowd around, and ask with interest what each person's name and Sign is, and other pertinent questions.

The visiting team presented crafts, Bible stories, fairy tales, and just fun in general for our students at both schools.

The team brought an extra blessing in bringing a gift from the church of one of the team members. This was a great help. We were able to buy a much-needed cabinet to store our supplies securely. (We were carting them in and out daily with a suitcase!) It also is helping to pay the salary of our new deaf teacher, Yulissa, and for some needed supplies. We received ASL books, which we will use in teaching ASL classes for workers and parents. The deaf students are very interested in the books as well. Thank you!

The team brought in supplies and a special treat of some toys for our deaf blind student Alexa, to better develop her skills. Alexa is having lots of fun with them, as are the other students.

I joined the team on an out of town trip where we visited a children's home, and later a school for the deaf. The team was saddened by some of the conditions they saw at the school. We spent the night in chilly Jarabacoa. I've never been so cold in the Dominican Republic!

One of our greatest needs is for teachers. It isn't just a matter of putting an ad in the paper and hiring some more. It is very difficult to find qualified teachers. As a result, many schools must hire teachers without Signing skills, and hope that they will learn on the job from the children. This is especially difficult when the children themselves are not usually fluent in Sign, and may not know Sign at all.

We may need to consider a solution for the immediate present of temporarily using foreign teachers until adequate teachers can be trained. Please pray about this possibility.

Meanwhile, we are making plans for teacher training and workshops for this summer and January.

I have a couple of college students who are helping in Sabana Perdida classes from time to time. They are both in the process of learning Sign Language.

The church there is planning to begin a deaf ministry on Sundays, beginning in February. Yulissa will be heading this up. There has been no church available for deaf people in the area up till now. They will meet at a separate time from the hearing congregation, so that they may worship in their own language.

Visitors from afar

We are looking forward to a team coming in Wednesday from Baltimore. They will be visiting a local deaf church, a school in Santiago, doing some cultural studies, and best of all, spending three days with us at the schools in Sabana Perdida and Ozama, in Santo Domingo! The children are excited, of course.

School restarts tomorrow, after the long holiday. Dominican children get their gifts on Three Kings Day, January 6th, so they always get those extra few days off. Usually when school restarts after any vacation, especially an extended one such as at Christmas, the children trickle in over a week's time. By the second week, most everyone will have returned. Many of the children go to their parents' home towns, or out in the country for the holidays.

During the break the teachers came to my house for one-on-one computer instruction. We also purchased a much-needed supplies cabinet for the classes in Sabana Perdida with a donation that came in. I was able to get quite a lot of errands done, that are hard to take care of during school days. Our older emac is at the mac store for possible repairs. They said they would look at it, but tentatively pronounced it dead--as in not worth fixing, suspecting the power supply was bad. We are still waiting on confirmation, but very blessed because we were given a new imac the same week the emac broke down.

The weather has been very strange lately. It's been cooler than it has been for years. At night, the lows were actually down to 66, which is quite rare. We still have hot days, but when the temperature here gets down to 70, we all put on jackets!

We've also had an unusual amount of rain in the last few months. Rain always affects school attendance. Even the teachers have a hard time getting to school during torrential rains, because none of us drive to school. Many roads flood. Public cars (shared taxis on a regular route) often have broken or leaky windows and doors, and get off the road when it begins to rain, leaving passengers with insufficient transportation. The plus is that the temperature is much more pleasant during these bouts of rainy and cloudy days.