Mission Update – June 2013

Dear friends and partners, 

   We now feel we have sufficient direction and affirmation from God, and information and consensus from our co-workers to share our future priorities for 2013-2016 with you. An inclusive community development proposal for Arua, is included to illustrated this.

    As ever, the last three months news were fairly full on. We are still passionately committed to our vision. Following repeated requests, we are currently planning some marriage enrichment workshops for local couples where one is deaf.

    Your support, be it prayer, financial, wisdom and/or skill, have all been vital for helping our vision materialise. We want to thank you, and our co-workers here in Arua for that. We invite you to invest further into our mission.     Cheers.      Adam & Helen 

In This Key Update..

Weekly sign workshop for improvers

More specialist USL resources uploaded Eruba’s deaf improve communication Austin Reeves’ team visit us

Head teacher’s house dedication

Knitting/Tailoring Course Graduation

Six more deaf building/carpentry students

Signs & Wonders: White Rhinos

In the Refiner’s Fire: Darts

Inclusive Community Development Plan

Community Projects DC is co-developing

News from the family.  Future Plans 

More specialist Ugandan Sign Language Resources uploaded

graduates, Andrew, hearing and Godfrey deaf  and USL co-developer Twalib have been  helping to film, subtitle & upload more USL resources. Several key technical difficulties were solved. Thanks again to partners Gibbons & Kwan. More news in Sept

Weekly sign workshop for improvers

For the past three months we have supported local teacher, Jonathan Alemi, to run this weekly sign workshop for improvers in Arua town. We are also exploring with Jonathan how to improve access to one of only two national weekly TV news programmes that are interpreted simultaneously into  sign-language. More news next month.

Eruba’s deaf boarders equipped & excited to help improve communication with their hearing family members and friends..

..over the holiday period. That was what Teacher in charge of Eruba’s  Deaf unit Feti Stephen’s a beaming face, said to me! He asked us to thanks all partners who have enabled us to co-develop our illustrated sign language book-let for family life, and who have instructed deaf boarders in using it. Each student fluent in USL was given a copy to use at home and spoke of home life with fresh hopes on their return, now that their families can understand and use their signs more.

A YWAM team from South Africa also encouraged us

1. ..with a powerful new  drama idea about anger and relationships and the biblical character Tabitha. They also taught us a  new sign-song  to go with it . 
   
   Such teams are opening the eyes and hearts of us all to new nationalities and cultures and how they can work together.
   
   Thank you Rachel and Seung and your team so much.

Our deaf UK friends and Austin, Anne and Rita, and a YWAM teams from Rwanda

 Our deaf UK friends and  Austin, Anne and Rita,  and a YWAM teams from Rwanda and
Eruba Primary encouraged us ..
..with more practical support, powerful new
 drama ideas and a readiness to pioneer
new ideas. Their desire to unite for the
common good and to give what they can
is spreading understanding of what builds
trust and hope. Thank you all so much

Head teacher’s house dedication by Austin Reeves

First Deaf/Hearing Weaving/Tailoring Course Graduation...

..also took place on May 2nd We celebrated  the  pleasing marketable products our team of students right learnt to make. In addition to learning to make everyday clothing they also made overalls for the deaf building & carpentry students we support(PTO) . 

The deaf unit teacher, Feti Stephen,  overseeing the day to day running of the project, the assistant instructors and a pair of professional consultants all contributed to this promising project which is intended to be increasingly self-sustaining with each successive course. High team integrity and cooperation has been key. We plan to accept a fresh intake in late June.

Current Clothing Range Produced For Sale By Eruba’s Vocational Training School

Six more deaf amongst 45 building/carpentry students who enrolled at WNEVTC in February

Signs & Wonders – White Rhinos

 Adam: Its hard to pick out particular memorable moments over the past three months because their have been so many. YWAM Arua marked its ten year anniversary with a large gathering of people who have been a part of its development over the past decade. 

A slide presentation charted the development of the staff community, the base and its ministries. And it all materialised from nothing from several verses and pictures a small team of YWAM staff felt God impress upon them back in 2001. 

Thank you John & Vikki, Sharon, Sam and Agnes. When we met Sam & Agnes in Uganda for the first time in 2007, Helen and I felt God was calling us to be a ’bridge of healing’, between the mostly separate worlds of W Nile’s deaf and hearing.

         Related, obliquely perhaps, is the plight of mankind’s relationship with the white rhino, mistakenly described by a colour rather than correctly by the fact that it has a wider mouth than its cousin the black rhino. Both animals are in fact grey! 

The word ‘wide’ was mistaken as ‘white’ by a prominent public figure and has been used ever since! I and Austin’s team recently visited Uganda’s White Rhino Sanctuary on our way back to Entebbe. The Sanctuary,  is midway through a twenty year plus project to breed them for gradual re-integration into parts of Uganda where they hope they will flourish. 

For me, there seemed to be some interesting parallels between the Rhino Sanctuary’s re-integration work and ours. In both cases ignorance been a major cause, but the near extinct ‘animal’ in our case has been interdependence. 

Our breeding program therefore is to co-create communication and D/H sensitisation tools that foster opportunities where D/H are happy to live, learn and earn serve together.

In the Refiner’s Fire: Darts

Adam: Our dart board gets used most when male visitors come! And a few Sunday’s back was no exception when two deaf students, Amos and Isaac came to have supper with us. The game fascinated them and their experimental powerful, throwing techniques were funny to watch.

   However, what struck me even more forcefully was the difficulty they had in calculating their scores. What I’d experienced with Aisha our trainee tailor instructor earlier this year was  highlighted again. We need more effective ways of teaching deaf people numeracy.

   Numeracy skills are  key to the counting, estimating, accounting, budgeting, comparing and forecasting of not just money but quantities and time. I can see they also affect what impact deaf vocational trainees gain  from the courses we support and their future career progression. So, I feel we can no longer ignore this funda-mental issue, just as our guests can’t ignore the rules of how darts scoring works, if we want to make a real and lasting impact. Initially the thought that we need to refocus our efforts onto more effective ways of teaching deaf numeracy skills, made me wince - now I know we just must.

    

I started to demonstrate some techniques they had not been shown before. Eruba primary staff have said more effective tech-niques would also benefit their hearing students as well. I am starting to contact other co-workers locally involved in training maths teachers and with a passion for primary teaching.  

    

Helen’s Story Time programme that seeks to address literacy challenges also seems to have been motivated by her conviction of  the far-reaching impact that programme could have. Back a step to then go forward again more effectively! That is what our inclusive community development proposal asserts.

     

We also learnt that a cultural exchange visit we were helping to arrange to the UK for a local deaf instructor in July was not possible. Opportunities are like beauty are in the eyes of the beholder. In the eyes of others they can be seen differently. Again, the Lord showed us all there are  more important issues to be worked through first. Thanks LORD.

Inclusive Community Development Proposal