Teaching Makes Me Smile

This is a picture of me teaching Glenford.  He is 4 years old and deaf.  He has a wonderful mother who continues to teach him during the rest of the day and rest of the week when I am not in his home. (He also has a terrific father who loves him and aunts and brothers and sisters and cousins who are quick to give him a hug.)  Glenford likes to tease and laugh.  He loves "hiding-can you find it?" games.  Glenford started out in the preschool at St Peters but he could not follow the directions and was destructive, throwing things, breaking things and laughing about it.  It was also hard for him to sit for the circle time like the other children.  After giving it a try for about a month we decided that maybe I should teach him in his home and help him to learn the skills that are needed to be able to function in a classroom.  We got him a table and some toys to help him learn to sit down to do an activity and to put it away when he is done with it. He still has destructive tendencies... and is easily distracted, scratching an "owie" or his head, or his leg or looking outside when we try to get his attention. But, he is showing improvement in signing words in imitation. Sometimes he shows he understands the sign when I sign a word like I am signing "One" in the photo.  Then he finds the picture that I sign.  He is just beginning to show this kind of "receptive" language. He also has a few signs he can make without a prompt (bird, fish, "gimme").

The steps and progress are slow, much slower than I expected from this very alert child. Yet, I think once we get him to focus on the teaching activity instead of a multitude of distractions (both real and made up), he will begin to learn more quickly.  Please pray for him and his whole family.
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Just a note about God's hand on this family.  One day in December I went to the house and saw the father was there. He was laid off from his job a few weeks before Christmas. Money was already tight and this meant the family was really stuck...with no food for several days. Literally, their cupboards were bare. The father had tried to find a job looking at the usual places but every place was full.  The next week when I went to the house to teach Glenford, the father was there again and this time he was reading a Bible.  I asked him what he was reading and he said he was looking for a verse to help him.  I had just read Psalm 37 in my devotion and told him to look it up:

Commit everything you do to the LORD. Trust him, and he will help you.  (Psalm 37:5)

We prayed briefly and he left while I taught Glenford with the mother.
The next time I returned, he said that when he went out, he walked the street to find a road crew.  When he happened on one, he asked if he could work with them.  The foreman said, "Yes." and from that moment on he had a job.  He has even been moved from "temporary" to "permanent"... which means he can keep his job even after the pre-election road clearing blitz.  Praise God for his compassion, mercy and love on all of his children.

Merry Christmas!

What do YOU do when the electricity goes off?

 

The electricity goes off in Belize quite often.  Sometimes it is for a few minutes and other times it is for 6 to 8 hours.  Last week the electricity went off at 7 PM just after we had finished eating. It was total darkness.  Sulmi and I felt our way to the bathroom where I keep flashlights and candles on the shelf.  While I got busy lighting candles... Sulmi did the dishes "by flashlight".  The picture doesn't really portray the moment because the flash in my camera made it look bright.  Imagine this with just the light of that little blue flashlight under her chin. I laughed thinking...who does dishes by flashlight?

Later we tried to sign in the darkness by the light of the candles. Sulmi liked the smell of this "Christmas Cookie" candle and held it up to her nose.  It lit her face in the darkness.  About ten minutes later the power came back on.  I thought, ah shucks...this was fun :-)  Sulmi thought I was weird and walked into the living room to watch TV.  Hmmmm... I wish they would cut the power in the evening more often.

An-ti-ci-pa-tion It's making me wait!

 

When the girls came home from school I had their Christmas presents wrapped and under the tree. They noticed them right away and sat down under the tree to look at them.  They started shaking them and trying to guess what was inside.  Because Gineli was leaving on Friday for the island with her sister, we decided to open presents on Friday morning.  I made French Toast and we invited Kristel to come over to open hers at the same time. 

Gineli and Sulmi sign, "What's this?  What's inside?"

When I was a little girl my mother used to keep the presents in the attic, where my bedroom was. Once or twice I went into the storage room to see them...to gawk at the shopping bags and to wonder...but I never peeked. Surprising, huh?  I like the anticipation, the guessing, the waiting and the surprise.  It was fun to watch the girls guess... and to each guess I replied, "Hmmm could be."

Farewell Hipolito

 

Today we prayed for Hipolito and said goodbye to him.  He got a Visa stamp in his passport and will be going to the US to live with his father and older Deaf brother who are already there.  We prayed that he will continue to seek God.  I also pray that he will be able to attend the Texas School for the Deaf in San Antonio.

We will miss him terribly!

Just a side note, we can't figure out what the light is that is shining on him.  It's in all of the pictures we took while he was sitting in the chair.  We were under an overhang and the sun was directly overhead.  Hmmm.

Angels!

 

The Angels on TV do miraculous things and try to set people on the right path.  They look like people until they speak God's words.  At that point they glow. Then they walk off into the distance and disappear.

The angels in the Christmas story are a little different.  Angel Gabriel is a messenger from God. He comes. He glows (with the glory of God, we imagine). And he tells a message from God.  Then he leaves. A whole slew of angels appear to the shepherds.  Only one tells a message from God while the others sing praises to God. In our imaginations and paintings...they also seem to glow.  The thing that is different is these Christmas angels always look like angels...not like people who transform into angels at some opportune moment.   For Girl's Night we talked about angels, our perceptions and the angels we encounter in the Christmas story.  The we made these cute (simple) angels from coffee filters.   *(see note)

*Just a little more info...There are also angels in the Bible who look like men and women.  Abraham and Sarah were visited by three men (who didn't glow..smile).  Abraham recognized them as angels.  Hebrews 13:2 says, "Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by doing so you may be entertaining angels unaware."
Hmmm Angels... I think they come to share a message from God...something important...to grab our attention.  Their purpose seems to be to make us know definitively something God wants us to know in a way that is much louder than the still, small voice in our heads.

Thank you Father for being a God who wants so much to communicate with us, to guide us, and redeem us that you send angel messengers and even your "son", your incarnate self.

Decorating the Christmas Tree

On Monday night Gineli, Sulmi and I had fun decorating our Christmas tree.  My old tree had been in my classroom for 6 years so it was showing a bit of wear and was kind of small. Impulsively we decided to use the money that my sister sent me to buy a new one on the way home from school.

Sorry this is fuzzy...but it captures exactly what the girls think of our old Christmas tree.

...and what they think of the new one they just decorated :-)

Misperceptions

This is "Sweetie" our 6 year old cat. It makes us laugh when we see her try to circle around and get comfortable in this much too small basket.  It's as if she doesn't know how big she really is.

I had a similar experience at the spelling bee. As we were all waiting for the bus to come and take us home, I sat on the bleachers.  I was holding Sulmi's trophy and other stuff so she could talk "hands free" to the other students.  A young boy entered the gym with his class to prepare for a holiday program practice.  He came over to me and said, "Was there some kind of competition here?"

I said, "Yes, a Spelling Bee for the Deaf."

He thought a moment and looked at me with the trophy and said, "So did you win?"

I pointed to Sulmi and said, "That girl with the white shirt, signing with her friends, won."

He nodded a few times,but didn't dismiss the conversation. I could see another question was brewing and thought he was going to ask about deafness, but instead he said, "So, are you her grandmother?"

Ha! GRANDMOTHER, wow! I was not ready for that one :-)  Do I look like a grandmother? My perception is that I am still more like a mother. Hmmmm.  Maybe not.