At Asha’s Refuge, we talk about how God gives us a love language that transcends barriers that arise when working with people of other language groups, and we see that gift in action all the time. We talk about playing charades to enable communication and we really do communicate much more easily than you might expect.  We firmly believe that Love Never Fails and that God demonstrates that frequently through this unique ability to communicate.  One current example is a young man from Bhutan who has been coming to our American Life and Language classes recently.  He is deaf and mute as well as being from the Bhutanese language group.  He always has the biggest smiles and is so enthusiastic about coming to class. He seems to enjoy the experience each week although communication is difficult.  His patient teacher Kathy is teaching him to write his ABCs and says he making good progress.  He obviously feels loved, welcomed and secure by the way he responds to everyone with smiles and handshakes, so we are communicating to him through God’s amazing love language. We are concerned though that he needs a lot more educational help than we are currently skilled to provide.  

What we really need to make this man’s time at American Life and Language class more effective is a volunteer who knows American Sign Language. We don’t know that he is really using ASL now but it is the one method that would facilitate conversation with him and further his education. If you are skilled at ASL and available on Thursday mornings to volunteer in our classes, we’d love to hear from you. If you would like to do this but Thursday is not good for you, we can work on another time for you to work with this man. So just drop us a message here to let us know of your interest. We promise it will be a challenging and rewarding experience for you.

But just so you know that we are not all serious all the time and that we do have a sense of humor, I want to share a story about last week’s class.  I generally float among the classes and the office making sure the volunteers and students have what they need to have a good experience.  Last week I was checking in with the class that includes the young deaf man I described above.  He was excited to see me and was earnestly trying to explain something to me using signs.  Now I know about three signs which I learned from a praise chorus in church.  Put that with my lack of Bhutanese language skills and my chances of meaningful conversation go way down. 

I was, however, pleased to see that a Bhutanese lady sitting nearby seemed to understand his signs and reply to them with signs of her own.  That gave me the idea that we could indeed communicate with this young man by asking her to translate.  My hopes were dashed when I learned just how limited her English was. 

After apologizing to the young man that I didn’t understand, I went back to the office where I related my disappointment to Elaine.  She proposed a great solution.  She had just registered a new Bhutanese student with great English.  Surely he could ask the lady what the deaf man signed to her and tell us.  Bingo!  What a great idea!  The new student was delighted to be helpful so off we went to find out what the deaf student wanted to tell me. 

As we eagerly awaited news, the new student conversed with the Bhutanese lady who had exchanged signs with the deaf student.  He then turned to us and replied “She doesn’t know what he said.  She was just being polite to him.  No one knows what he said because no one speaks his language.”  We will press forward in trying to communicate with the young deaf man, but in the mean time we laughed at our situation.  Basically, we asked the Bhutanese man who speaks English to ask the Bhutanese lady who doesn’t speak English to explain what the deaf and mute Bhutanese man signed to me!  Pretty much like a bad game of Telephone.  

Evidently we aren’t the only ones who had this bright idea.  Here’s a funny scene from West Wing that it is similar to our experience today. I hope it gives you a laugh. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_5GpQvY-gY