Expectations and Anxieties

Lots of people have been asking me recently whether or not I am excited about our upcoming mission trip to Kenya. My wife even asked me which single thing I am most nervous about and which single thing excites me most. I found it interesting that I had the same answer to both questions. I find, looking forward, that the event I am most anxious about is also the event that excites me most: communicating with the deaf in Kenya.

Sam's Place is to be an orphanage for deaf children. The children will be deaf; the teachers will be deaf; some of its administrators will be deaf, and it is currently being built by deaf Kenyan men that we will be working shoulder to shoulder with merely days from now. So in order to really be effective at Sam's Place, I really need to know how to speak their language.

Several years ago, Katherine and I took an American Sign Language (ASL) course offered at our church by a woman in our congregation (Nancy Prince) who works closely with the deaf. We learned a lot of signs and I still remember a few of them, but I had serious difficulties learning sign language in that classroom setting. We got to see each sign a couple of times and then: on to the next one.

Anyway, I can't really communicate effectively in ASL, and they don't even use ASL in Kenya; they use Kenyan Sign Language (KSL). One of our trip leaders, Jerry Drennan, has been trying to teach us Kenyan Sign Language in a special Sunday morning class we have been attending over the past few months to prepare for our trip. But I found myself having the same struggles learning Kenyan Sign Language; seeing each sign a couple of times in class just isn't enough for me.

Recently, though, I found my salvation from this dilemma. I am finally seeing myself being successful at learning sign language, and as a result I have suddenly become 10 times more excited about learning KSL and even more excited about going on the mission trip. And what is the source of this educational revolution? The iPod.

Steven Greek, another one of our trip leaders who has spent many years living and working with the deaf in Kenya, produced a short video several years ago in which he demonstrates a few Kenyan signs. Jerry passed the DVDs out in class one morning, and I immediately converted the video into a format my iPod can read and started watching.

It was amazing! I could rewind and watch Steven do the signs as many times as I wanted. I could learn KSL in doctor's office. I could learn it in bed. I could learn it on the toilet. I could watch it with the sound off and drill the signs I had already learned. Steven's video is 24 minutes long, packed with 172 signs, and I learned them all in a few days.

So, I started putting my new-found knowledge to use by having conversations in KSL with some imaginary Kenyans, but my imaginary friends and I were quickly frustrated by the very limited number of things I was able to converse with them about. We could talk all day about "Hallelujah, praise Jesus," but I found that when I tried to say things like "put the bags of cement in the wheelbarrow and empty it next to the dormitory," I was stumped.

Not to worry, though. Steven Greek may be hundreds of miles away right now (he lives in Tennessee), but Jerry Drennan knows KSL, too. So, I figured that all we needed to do was to film Jerry signing a few hundred more signs (including important words like orphan, Sam's Place, and Texas) and we would be set.

Fortunately, Jerry was very good-natured about my request and graciously accepted my list of 400 carefully chosen new words. Another good fortune was that Mitchell Arnold, one of the teens going on the trip this year, is an avid media enthusiast, and he agreed to film the signing sessions for us with his video camera. We filmed all 400 words in two recording sessions, and as soon as Mitchell gets the video edited I'll be on my way to tripling the number of signs I know.

I'm going to post the videos on YouTube when they're done, and I'll link to them from this blog in case you happen to be interested in learning KSL sometime.

Anyway, now I am getting very excited about getting to converse a bit with the deaf Kenyans we meet and work beside. Then again, they may just watch me waving my arms around in the air and scratch their heads in consternation. I guess we'll find out.

Lord, open my eyes so that I may see my brothers as you see them, and cleanse my heart of pride and prejudice so that I may love them as deeply and unconditionally as you do. And if I yield to the temptation to view my relationships with my Kenyan brothers as an act of altruism with myself as the noble benefactor, please gently humiliate me as you see fit to heal my inflated self-perception. Amen.