We start this update where the last one ended… a mess in the ministry vintage infrastructure that’s taking a bit of work to untangle. We’re working on it. We want to honor our history, partners, and donors as well as honor the forward focus of reaching out to parents & building their abilities to teach their children the most important values we hold dear. (Specifically, Jesus is the only means of salvation and nobody is automatically disqualified by the unique design He gave them.) The skill sets we now have are not the same ones Marshall began with over 26 years ago, nor are the delivery mechanisms.
We’re going forward with what we do know, that more parents and deaf adults are ready to be faith mentors and gospel teachers to deaf and hard of hearing children1. We’re building supports and networks to see that happen, and to bridge the two cultures most deaf children grow up in. More Deaf adults now know God and His stories, how those should impact our lives, and how to present them. Case in point, the Jesus Movie in ASL soon to be released by Deaf Missions. It’s becoming time to shift the visible work from the visitors (hearing) to the indigenous (deaf). But we, uniquely, need to also reach hearing parents, which means including hearing workers.
On the home front, everyone’s health is status-quo, my car is running but wants attention and I need to go to the grocery store. I have a gift card to do that with! There’s another quilt top pieced together, I may add a border before it’s ready for backing & batting. I started one that’s about halfway pieced. I know there’s a baby quilt overdue, but one must be calm and un-surrounded when starting such things. I don’t expect it to take as much time and seam-ripping skill as the prior one.
I believe it’s time to head back to Ohio for parent care, starting with some respite for both of them. I’ll still be working with the ministry as well as ramping up personal efforts to minister to the marginalized and gain income. Beyond that is a reasonable downsizing of things we have in the garage, basement, sheds, trailers – yes, including mine. I think we have three copies of at least one book series between mom’s library and mine, so getting that down to one set would be good.
There’s a deaf event on the calendar up north in early March and the cataract surgery week scheduled for mid-March. Early and late April have other deaf events, TX is a certainty (as far as humans can be certain) and then there’s a choice between AL and TN on a later weekend. I’d like to extend my TX trip to visit family and friends I’ve not seen since 2019. May is allegedly the time I’ll be moving back to Ohio, but lodging considerations apply. Late June we’ll have our 102nd annual family reunion, and I expect to be in KY or OH depending on how mom’s doing. July is another big deaf event in Chicago, and I may be volunteering to reduce my attendance cost. I honestly found myself mingling better the other year I volunteered instead of simply being an attendee. In August, we’ll be one year from nearly losing mom and two years from nearly losing dad. Another reason to be preparing to move to Ohio. September begins birthday & holiday season, complete with pumpkin spice frenzy and a desire for all things apple or mint.
Between these events, there’s quite a bit to do for the ministry that is unseen. Of the 38+ hard drives, the current one is still being catalogued at over 5 million files. Thankfully, a computer program is looking through those quickly, then I can store, discard, or follow up on them. There is potential for other vocal language dubs to be made in the areas where ASL is understood, if the right files are found. We need to tidy up some more data to avoid the web adventure that hit us earlier this week, and recent evidence suggests it’ll take another 20 hours. We also need to identify which DWW episodes contain web advertisements. I’ve scanned 39 so far, 26 remain, and at least 21 will need, as Pops says, “a few small adjustments.”
There’s your update for this week – status quo & more to go!
- Unreached: over 90% of deaf and hard-of-hearing children are born to hearing households. They grow up with the notion that either they are not important or that Jesus isn’t important. Home and church reinforce the idea that they’re too much effort and automatically disqualified from salvation. Society reinforces the idea that Jesus isn’t real or doesn’t care. As James said, words mean little if not joined by action. ↩︎