(Photo courtesy of Kevin Yudhistira Alloni via Unsplash)

Rob Myers of DOOR International explains how statistics show many people born deaf face challenges in communicating with their families already.

“What you may not realize is that 90% of Deaf people are born to parents who are hearing, which typically means that they don’t know any sign language. Of those parents, about 85% will never learn to sign with their deaf children,” Myers says.

“That means about 80% of Deaf people, even here in the U.S., have almost no language access when they’re at home. That’s hard for us to understand.”

Communication Challenges

This language deprivation is very problematic for the learning and development of children.

“We’re learning more and more that how essential it is for all children to have language access at an early age. Particularly for deaf kids, if they don’t have sign language access early on, it actually creates language deprivation for them,” Myers explains.

Since written language is sound-based, this deprivation can make learning to read difficult as well. Many children only begin to learn when they attend Deaf school. This makes the holidays away from friends, especially during the pandemic, especially difficult.

“If you think about sitting around a dinner table in the evening, [there’s] lots of talk and chatter going on. It’s hard for a Deaf kid to figure out who’s talking, much less what exactly they’re saying, so many times they’ll just sit and keep their head down and eat at the table and not bother to try to even follow the conversation because it’s just too difficult,” Myers says.

(Photo courtesy of Kevin Curtis via Unsplash)

“When we think now of the holidays and COVID, most families have their kids at home. Kids are isolated from their friends. In the case of Deaf kids, even Deaf adults, that becomes really, really challenging over the holidays. We have to exert even extra effort to try to overcome some of those language barriers.”

Deaf people are excellent cross-cultural communicators, as they live in societies where the majority of people don’t speak their heart language.

Through gestures and writing, Deaf people are often able to communicate with those who don’t know their language. Unfortunately, COVID-19 has disrupted some of these coping mechanisms as well.

“Imagine having multiple people on a video call, and, thankfully, many of these video calls are beginning to offer captioning. However, that captioning can lag behind the actual video, and if Deaf people are struggling to keep up with the captioning, they don’t necessarily know who is saying what,” Myers says.

Helping Hands

For this Christmas season, DOOR has several resources to help people connect with those in the Deaf community. Visit their website and Facebook page to learn basic signs related to Christmas and see the Christmas story in sign language.

“The more effort that people can make to begin to learn sign language, the more that draws Deaf people into a conversation, so even just learning a few basic signs is a is a real step toward showing the desire to connect with Deaf people,” Myers says.

You can also help by raising awareness. While many think of deafness only as a disability, it is also a minority language group. This means that there is a great need for translating the Bible into sign languages.

“Out of the over 350 sign languages around the world, only about 10% of them have the Christmas story translated in their own language. That means 90% of the sign languages that are out there don’t even have access to the Christmas story in their own heart language,” Myers says.

To learn more about how you can support and pray for this ministry, visit DOOR’s website here.

“We are so grateful for Jesus and for this incredible Gospel message. We’re looking forward to more and more Deaf people around the world also having access to it.”

Header image courtesy of Chad Madden via Unsplash

(Map courtesy of VOM Canada)

“The Colombian project has been around for a number of years [and] has really become a flagship project in the world as far as having a strong team,” Bucklew shares. “Our desire is to support indigenous projects. We have no intentions of coming in to run a project. We want to see local leaders equipped and empowered to do Bible translation and Scripture engagement among their own people. We want it to be locally sustainable and reproducible.”

Each Deaf people group has their own culture and social norms and experiences. And in certain countries, including some Colombian communities, deafness is viewed as an embarrassment to the family, a curse, or even demon-possession. Because of this, Deaf children in these types of communities are often isolated. And sometimes their parents aren’t even aware that sign language is a viable language option or that it even exists, so these Deaf children are also language deprived.

The Deaf Bible field coordinator and staff members were able to travel to Colombia to connect with the translation team there. During their visit, they met some of the local Deaf believers and visited a small community in the mountains outside Bogota.

There, they met a skilled woodworker named Jose, a Deaf Christian with a powerful testimony.

Bucklew shares, “Jose, until he was in his 20s, never signed. He never really could read or write, so [he had] a huge experience of what we call language deprivation. So you can imagine, you have no language, there’s no communication. You get up in the morning [and] you sort of do what you do. In his case, he just learned to do woodwork and worked with his father, but that’s it.

“So Jose one day met another Deaf man as he was moving through town and was really sort of intrigued at what the other Deaf man was doing, which of course was signing.”

At first, Jose didn’t know that signing was actually a language but a few years later, Jose learned Colombian Sign Language. Then not long after that, he met a Deaf evangelist who shared the Gospel with him.

“Jose, of course, is telling us this and he’s starting to weep as he says, ‘I didn’t know how to talk to anyone. I learned what my language was, I was given my heart language, and because of that I came to know who this precious Jesus is.’ He became a believer, he became active in his community, a wonderful man of God.”

(Photo courtesy of Deaf Bible Society)

Jose’s story goes to show just how much Deaf individuals value the gift of communication and language, and the desperate need that still exists for God’s Word in every sign language.

“This amazing idea that God chose in the creation of the world to speak and to say something into being is incredible. The idea that with Jesus on the cross, in spite of their intentions when they nailed above him ‘King of the Jews’ in three different languages, that this Gospel proclaimed in multiple languages happened right away. This King was proclaimed to be King in multiple languages.”

There are around 70 million Deaf people in the world today. But Bucklew says there are approximately 50 million Deaf people who still don’t have access to God’s Word. And, as he points out, “It’s very easy to be lied to when you have no access to the truth. And that should cause us to fall to our knees.

“Think about this. There are more versions, revisions, and so forth of the Bible in English than there are sign languages that exist — and there are around 400 different sign languages in the world…. And yet today, still, there is not a complete Bible in any one sign language.”

That’s why this new partnership with Deaf Bible Society and Wycliffe Bible Translators is so critical for the acceleration of the Great Commission. They are now able to empower Deaf people to translate the Bible into their own sign language and hopefully make complete sign language Bibles available for the first time.

“That will then result in pastors and evangelists being equipped with God’s Word so we can continue to see more lives like Jose’s changed in making His name great among this Deaf people group in Colombia and of course the rest of the world.”

The Colombian translation team is currently working with Deaf Bible to finalize next phase of the translation project. “Please be in prayer for the project as they continue to bring on signers and bring on the correct people they need on this translation team,” asks Bucklew.

“Then also be in prayer for the funds. You know, we mention this every time we get to talk with you, but it really is a huge need. Resources are a huge need for sign language Bible translation. Keeping the lights on in a normal translation project is one thing, but when you have to use a video camera, keeping the lights on is really important. So we need prayer, we need resources, the Colombian team desperately needs these so they can continue to impact lives.”

If you’d like to support Deaf Bible Society in this Great Commission work, click here to give!