The messiness of "should be"

We've been in the branch for a over a year, and you'd think I'd have things figured out by now, but life is messy, and not everything has an easy solution. So I guess it's ok that I'm still wrestling with how things "should be" in life.

One thing where I'm not sure how things "should be" is in Singing time. I mean, despite hearing difficulties, music is loved by Deaf people. I want our music to be inclusive and accessible to everyone. Some of the ways I try to do this are by having good, clear signing when we perform- even at the expense of good singing, by teaching through visual games instead of aural methods, and by signing instead of talking as much as possible between songs. But sometimes, a part of me recognizes that there's a lot more to music that we're not even touching. We could sing songs in parts, we could explore voice quality, we could sing rounds...oh, there is so much to music! But most of it is....well....aural....

Do these kids deserve a rich musical experience they're not getting? Well, their parents didn't get a rich musical experience growing up, and they turned out pretty amazing :) And I really believe one of the most important thing for our branch is to be a safe place for Deaf people to not be excluded from things. They deal with that all day, every day - when they come to an ASL church, they shouldn't feel left out of things, I would think.

But still...the power of music. I just want to get it into their souls. I want them to feel those feelings that make your heart overflow with love for God - and I get those feelings when I hear beautiful music!

So, I try to balance. Sometimes, we pull out the hand bells, even though the deaf teachers can't enjoy them very much. Or sometimes we try to sing in rounds, even though it confuses everyone. I don't know if that's the way it "should be" but I think that "should be" is sometimes a compromise of lots of different needs, and everyone being patient with the times when things aren't quite the best for us personally. And I think we're doing a good job at that, anyway.

So here's to all the messy attempts to get things right and fair to everyone. And to all the patient people along with me on the journey! :)

The Yakker Trakker and other stories

Ha ha - a late post. I wrote this back before Christmas.

I think we're almost ready for Christmas! All the presents are done (knock on wood...) and we're ready to go. I was just finishing up a few loose ends and getting ready to settle into candy making when our friend from church, Michai came by. (Michai, I hope you don't mind me writing about our day!) She wasn't having a really great day and needed a place to get some space for a bit, so we decided to go over to the school and eat lunch with Sam. Every time I eat lunch with Sam, I sign instead of talking, so Sam wasn't bothered by the additional visitor. Side note: why do we sign? Due to the dreaded lunch room noise monitor, aka Yakker Tracker.

The Yakker Tracker starts on a green light, then changes to yellow (or even red!) if the noise level increases. I remember one in my school cafeteria. But this school cafeteria has concrete walls and floors, and 100 kids talking with quiet voices sounds about like a jet engine, so the tracker always seems to be sounding the alarm. Once it gets to red, everyone has to have Silent Lunch for 5 minutes. But this is ok, we aren't bothered by these things at all. 

You know how when you ask a kid about their day, sometimes they take off at 100 miles an hour and you're left with wide eyes saying, "I didn't understand a word you just said"? Sam did that today. He was literally waving his hands around without making any sense at all. Michai told him to slow down and actually spell his words instead of just wiggling his fingers around and expecting us to guess what he meant, and that helped a LOT! :)

The cutest part of the day was when Sam invited Michai to come to his school Christmas concert tonight. Then we came home and Michai practiced the piano. She has an app on her phone that teaches you how to play, and we conveniently have a piano she can use. I'm happy to report that she is learning fast - she played Ode to Joy by the end of the afternoon, which isn't too bad for 1 day of practicing! She's actually a really fabulous musician. The hardest part was feeling the rhythm, which this app enforces militantly. Finally we plugged her phone into some headphones so she could crank the sound and hear the beat, then she didn't have any more problems. I did, though - she asked me to explain a half note. It turns out I have no idea how to explain that in ASL. It took about 5 confusing tries before it made any sense. 

The school concert was fun. It was fun to introduce Michai to my friends, all of whom were there. (I mean, really, all 3 of them.) I still stink at facilitating conversations among English and ASL users. I want so badly for all my friends to be friends with each other, and I hurt a little bit that I can't make that possible. If a genie appeared and granted me a wish, I would wish for everyone to learn some sign language. 

A funny story - Michai went to the bathroom one time, and Martha decided 2 minutes later that she needed to go to the bathroom, too. And she wanted to use THAT bathroom, because the other bathroom was "too dark". So she stood outside and knocked on the door. I said, "Martha, Michai can't hear you." Martha got really annoyed at that. She still doesn't understand that some people actually can't hear. Oh well. I guess it's outside the imagination of a 3 year old.

The baptism

We have a wonderful young man in the branch, Jose, who has been wanting to get baptized for a while. His mom felt he wasn't quite ready yet, and that was understandable. So Jose waited for a bit.

He had two missionaries teaching him, Sister Robinson and Sister Crowther. They are both finishing their missions and going home this week. It was a wonderful surprise a week ago when Jose's mom said that she thought maybe he was ready to be baptized soon. But unfortunately, the schedule didn't work out for the baptism before the Sisters went home. Which was ok, because we live in the age of Skype :)

Yesterday, one of the Primary kids, Casey, was baptized in the morning. It was a lovely baptism, and we enjoyed the time with our friends. We put together a performance of "Teach me to Walk in the Light" for the Primary kids. Lige played the piano, Lillian played violin, and the Primary kids all signed and sang. The kids were so darn cute, I loved it! After the baptism, we went home and worked on Christmas presents somewhat urgently before going to a Christmas party with some friends. (This was another performance - we sang with our friends at their church Christmas concert. So fun.) We made it home, put the kids to bed, and sat down to check emails and text messages. Marriner had a message from the Sisters: Jose's mom had the morning off work, could Jose be baptized TOMORROW. We were so excited for him, and that the Sisters could be here for the baptism. But yikes - planning a baptism for 12 hours away! Out of necessity, it was simple - no talks, just a baptism. My kids (ok, fine, they were in bed already...their mom volunteered for them...) volunteered to do the same song from Casey's baptism for Jose's. Marriner texted the branch leaders, but didn't inform the rest of the branch - he didn't want to stress people out about getting to church early at the last minute. So a handful of people were at the church at 9am, ready to go.

The most amazing thing to me was Sister Nitta showing up with refreshments. Since she'd been notified of the baptism at 10:00 on Saturday night, I wasn't sure where she'd come up with Aussie bites, pumpkin bread, cookies and hot chocolate. She said, "Now I know why I bought so much stuff I didn't need at Costco yesterday morning!" And Aussie bites - I'd never had them before, and I'm now a fan. I guess they're a Costco thing, but here's a recipe, in case you have apricots, flax, chia and quinoa sitting around needing to be used up :)

Of course, as always seems to happen, problems occurred, and Jose and his mom were delayed. The branch president suggested we eat before the baptism, since afterwards we'd need to hurry in to Sacrament meeting. About 10:00 (church starts at 11) we decided to eat without Jose. At 10:15, Jose arrived and went for his pre-baptismal interview (mandatory) and we all met his mom. This is where Elder Nitta has his turn to amaze. Jose's mom is from Chile. I don't know where Elder Nitta is from, but I'm pretty darn sure it's somewhere in Asia. So we all dropped our jaws when he started conversing with Jose's mom in Spanish! We've got the coolest missionaries in the world.

The baptism started at 10:30. We had an opening prayer, the Merrill kids sang/played a song, the branch president gave a few brief remarks, then Jose was baptized. As he went to change clothes, the rest of us moved into the chapel for Sacrament meeting, where Jose was confirmed. It was so unusual, but just perfect somehow.

Funny - I played prelude music on the organ. When President Merrill came in at 11:05, his counselor stood up to start the meeting. I slipped down to the pews with my kids, and Brother Wardle welcomed us all and announced the opening song and prayer. Then President Merrill realized that the meeting had started, (he'd been getting settled and hadn't seen him start) - but Jose wasn't back from getting dressed yet. So he stopped the meeting, I went back and played another song on the organ, and we officially started a few minutes later. Ha!

Another funny - Marriner baptized Jose, and Jane went up to the font to watch. When the prayer finished and Jose went under the water, the splash scared Jane (who was protected by a sheet of glass) and she ran away screaming in terror. I don't know what was so scary about it, but we all laughed.

But all the humor aside, today was a fabulous experience for me. When you strip aside all the pomp, the ordinance of baptism is amazing all by itself. It was neat to be reminded of that.

---------------------

Back to a little humor: our Stake president had occasion yesterday to drive around the stake and put some papers the bishops/branch president needed for a training today in their offices. I don't know what prompted it, but he sent out a list of Bishop's Office Awards, including the cleanest, the messiest (no names, just "I'll call you in the morning..." Ha!) the most festive, etc. Marriner's got three awards: best Christmas decorations (we have a tree outside the office with "I Love You" handshape ornaments!), office with the best view, and "Office most coveted by the Stake president." Oh yeah.

Closed Captioning

Truth: I spent 38 years of my life not thinking much about closed captioning. I guess I always appreciated the captioning at the Doctor's office, so I didn't have to listen to whatever trashy daytime TV they had on...that was pretty much the extent of my relationship with CC.

A couple of years ago, Ellis and I made a movie of ourselves telling about an experience for our Stake Women's Conference. At this point Marriner was serving as the High Council representative for the Branch, and we'd been to the branch once or twice. So we showed up to the conference, and the interpreter asks, "Does the movie have captions?" I was like, uhhhh....no, I didn't even think of that. And I don't even know how I would go about doing that. I sorta feel like a lame-o for inclusion and technical capabilities.... Out loud I just said, "Oh, no, I'm sorry."

Fast forward to my 3rd week in the Branch, and I was substitute teaching Sunday School for the teenagers. The church had a great movie that went along with the lesson...but it didn't have captions. By now I know that YouTube can do auto-captions, but YouTube is blocked in the church building (along with several other distracting websites) so that didn't work. I tried for days to find a way to play that movie with captions, and finally gave up. No A/V for our lesson :(

This week, captions came back into my life when Marriner asked his wife and kids if they wouldn't like to have a fun little Sunday afternoon service project. Of course, the answer was yes :) He'd been sent some training videos that he needed to share with some people in the branch and guess what...no captions. Would we like to try figuring out how to add captions?

It turns out that captions are really, really, really easy on YouTube. (The part of me that passed AP English just searched for alternatives to "really, really, really" in my brain...super easy? amazingly-beyond-your-imagination easy?) Here's how it goes: you upload a video. Don't set any special settings for captions, just upload like normal. Then come back 20 minutes later, and auto-captions will have shown up. And they're pretty impressive! So then you can go into the video settings and edit the captions. They have a caption editor that plays the movie, and when you start typing, it pauses until you're done. And basically all I had to edit was adding periods and commas. It really did a fabulous job of recognizing words!

We probably spent 2 hours on the captioning, including time to figure out what I was doing. It's probably good it didn't take any more time than that, because we all had lots of opportunities for extra service on Sunday, and nobody did much sitting around wishing for something to do :) Those are the best Sundays, anyway.

So next time you're making a movie, go ahead and add captions! It's not so hard, and it makes the world a better place!

Christmas party

Saturday evening we had our branch Christmas party. The YSA (young single adults) group planned it, and they were pretty awesome. It was a Grinch theme. And let me tell you, these people get into their theme parties :) You'd have thought it was Halloween! Lillian was the impressive one in our family - she wanted to make a green nightgown for the party, but lots of other things got in the way until an hour before we needed to leave. She found a spare green pillowcase and some other green flannel and sewed herself a nightgown in 45 minutes. No, it doesn't have finished edges, but it's cute and fun, and VERY Seussian!

One of the YSA's dressed up at the Grinch. At the beginning of the party, they announced to watch out for the Grinch, because he might try to steal your food. He snuck around teasing kids He scared the daylights out of Sam when he sat by him - Sam didn't know who it was, and was sure this weirdo was going to do something nasty. After dinner, we did a service project making sandwiches for homeless people. Then they gathered all the kids to watch an ASL version of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". When the story was over, the Grinch's good-friend-who-is-a-girl ran to the front and yelled (in ASL), "Oh no, look, all the food is gone! The Grinch stole it all!" All the sandwiches we'd made had disappeared! Then Brother Filiatreault told the Christmas story, and the Grinch came back and said his heart had grown listening to the true meaning of Christmas. He blew up a red balloon to show his heart growing 3 sizes. Then he took a bag off his back and gave all the kids treat bags. It was a pretty epic Christmas party!

Hats off to our fabulous YSA's for planning and putting on a wonderful party. We all had a great time, and the kids will remember it forever.

You don't have to be big.

It was a dark and stormy night....

Not actually stormy. But really dark!

It seemed like a great idea to do service raking an elderly gentleman's leaves in November. The weather is usually crisp and pleasant, and the leaves are usually about done falling. The kids are usually ready to get outside and so something active. Bingo!

I just forgot about Daylight Savings Time...or, the lack thereof. So when we showed up at 7pm to rake leaves, it was pitch dark outside. It was also unseasonably cold, a whoppin' 30*F. Yeah, it never gets that cold here in November.

But we're not wimps. Oh, no. We put on our headlamps and went out to save the world from messy yards! I think Mr. Stan (our benefactor) was a little confused about why we wanted to come rake leaves in the dark instead of a nice Saturday morning. We didn't really have a good answer to that one... :)

I'll say, these kids are fabulous leaf rakers. They raked all those leaves in about 45 minutes.

After we were done, we sang a Christmas carol to Mr. Stan, then went and had hot chocolate. We decided it would be fun to get to know Mr. Stan better, and voted to go back after the new year to listen to stories. It sounds like he has some interesting ones!

On the way home, all the kids were full of excitement about our service, and getting to go back and listen to stories next time! I realized that it didn't matter that there were only a few kids. We have a good group of kids that support each other, and we can do a lot of neat things that bigger groups can't do. People ask me pretty frequently if we still do activities with our old ward so our kids can have a bigger group to do things with. When we were called to the branch, we made the decision to move 100%. We weren't going to have one foot in the branch and one foot back in our old ward. Do I feel like my kids have missed out on experiences or opportunities? Nope.

So hooray for my fabulous little group of Activity Days kids. I can't wait to go back and listen to stories, too.

While I wait for my drivers to install...

I know, I already wrote once today. But I've got some time to kill while I try to troubleshoot our new computer. And since the story of this computer is related to our ASL adventure, I'll tell you all about it while I wait for some drivers to install.

How, you ask, do you call a deaf person?

1.) Don't call, just text or email.
2.) Use a video chat like FaceTime or Facebook Messenger.
3.) Use a VP (video phone).

VP is an old system. It was being used by deaf people before the rest of us had any idea video chat existed. The government largely pays for and regulates the system, and it allows deaf people to have a phone number just like anyone else. When Joe the Hearing Person calls Sally the Deaf Person, Joe picks up the phone and dials, just like normal. This connects him to an interpreter, who signs to a video phone in Sally's house. Sally then signs back, and the interpreter tells Joe what she said. This is called VRS (video relay service). VRS is awesome, but if Joe the Hearing Person happens to know ASL, he'd probably rather sign directly with Sally.

As it turns out, Sally can call her deaf friends directly by video without the interpreter in the middle. So you'd think Joe would be able to get a VP phone number and call Sally directly, too. But since the government pays for a lot of things in the VP system, they only allow actual deaf people to use it. So, Joe has to use Facebook or Skype instead to reach Sally directly by video. Or he can call through VRS.

The VP system is changing rapidly - most younger people prefer video chats like Facetime or Facebook or Skype. But there are still a lot of people who use VP. And VP has more reliable quality, which we've struggled with in FB. So, we'd like to have VP access. Some fabulous branch members have tackled the system admirably, and have finally found a way for us to get VP in our home! Basically, we're forwarding calls to the branch president's office to an app on our computer.

The downside is that it doesn't run on Linux, which is our OS of choice. Of course. We have Windows on our computer...we have both OS's installed, but it takes 10 minutes to switch, and by then nobody wants to talk to us any more :)

So, facing all these complications, we decided to get a new computer. It's our VP computer. It runs windows, has a fast processor and a nice webcam. All it will do is be a VP.

But the stupid computer (woah, Sam is going to get mad at me for that strong language!) won't connect to the internet! So now i'm here, installing a new driver (with a flash drive, that I had to drive to Staples and buy because my kids have lost all of ours) for the Network Adapter, trying to get it to work so I don't have to send it back and try again.

Hmmm....I just wrote all of that before the driver finished installing. Oh wait, the computer froze.

The world of Video Chat hates me.

Another bossy-pants in the family

Yesterday in church, Jane was being a bit of a handfull - babbling along, yelling "NOOOOO!" when I didn't let her climb all over the podium, and other such disruptive stuff. You know, normal for an 18-month old :)

But she cracked me up one time. She was babbling along in a somewhat loudish voice when the baby in the row behind us started imitating her (or maybe just making his own sounds...who knows.) Jane heard it, turned around and said, "SHHHHHH!"

Things I'm thankful for

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!

My aged grandfather sent us an email this week encouraging his posterity to change their prayers from 90% asking/10% thanking to the other way around. Have you ever tried to think of 9 things to say thank you for just so you can ask for one blessing? It's definitely a good exercise, even if it's tough sometimes. But this has me thinking of some of the things I'm thankful for.

1. I'm thankful for people who help me improve my ASL. Today I was talking to another mom after church. We were both hearing - she's an interpreter - and it would have been easy to speak English, but I appreciate that she signed with me, being patient with my weaknesses. In nursery, another hearing teacher slowed down his signing when I didn't get what he'd asked me, instead of just talking. I'm grateful for that.
2. I'm thankful for the Primary Presidency in the Capitol Hill ward! Our Primary starts about 15 minutes after theirs ends. Sometimes, we feel a little harried trying to get in, get all our lesson materials together, and get the Primary room ready. They have a big Primary, ours is less than half their size. So we have to fold up a lot of chairs :) They have always been so kind about getting kicked out of the room quickly. But a few weeks ago, they noticed us folding up chairs and started folding up the chairs for us before we get there. This is what the room looks like every week when we arrive - it brings a tear to my eye when I see it, because it's just an expression of love and service. 
   
3. I'm thankful for all of my kids' teachers. Today at dinner, we were discussing some of our great lessons that we had today. Man, my kids have some awesome teachers. The teacher-student ratio is fabulous - sometimes, they get 100% of that teacher's care and effort! (Sometimes they have to share with 2-3 other people in their class.) My kids never got lessons especially for them before - their teachers were always thinking about some struggling person as they prepared. Now these fabulous teachers are preparing lessons especially for my kids and their needs! Wow, it's fabulous!
4. I'm thankful for the chance to be the "Branch President's Wife". I get to see the hand of the Lord in the branch more than usual, and it's very faith-promoting. I see the Lord inspiring and strengthening the Branch President. For example, Marriner had a stomach virus Friday night, and still wasn't feeling tip-top Sunday morning. He went off to church without having eaten much since Friday. He was the only member of the branch presidency in town today, so he kept busy. His very last appointment of the day happened to be tithing settlement with our family. He did the whole thing in ASL, which just takes more brain effort than speaking English. I watched him teaching each of the kids, helping them understand tithing and what it means and thought, "Why isn't this guy exhausted?" And I realized the Spirit was giving him strength and capability to fulfill his calling. It was pretty fabulous to see. (It was fabulous to see him eat a big dinner tonight, too!)
5. I'm thankful for the gift of tongues. A few weeks ago, Lillian's Primary class talked about gifts of the Spirit. She was surprised when her teacher used her as an example of the gift of tongues. My kids have never learned a language before, and they don't realize that one doesn't usually learn a language very well from hanging out for a few hours once a week for a year. 
6. I'm thankful for the other sisters in the Primary presidency. They are with me through my best and worst, and they've been the best friends a person could ask for.

Scouting for Food

Our family helped with Scouting for Food today! We had a lot of fun. But first, here's some background.

Scouting for Food takes place the first two weekends of November every year. The first Saturday, Scouts deliver notices to neighborhood residents, telling them about the food drive. The next weekend, the Scouts pick up food from porches and deliver it to the local food pantry. It's one of the most fun service projects - jumping in and out of cars, running up and down driveways, and often riding in the back of some leader's pick-up truck :) Often, our troop will split duties - Cubs will do it one week, Scouts the next.

Now, Lige is a member of the ASL troop (whose number is long and I can't ever remember), which meets combined with his old troop (Troop 47) for most activities. Next week is ASL temple day in Philadelphia, so it made sense to have the ASL kids do flyer distribution this week and the other kids do pick-up next week.

Only it was a tough week for our troop - there was a stake youth activity, someone was taking the SAT....so, like a lot of things when you're in a really spread-out and small group, it ended up just being Lige and his dad. This opened the door of opportunity to some of the younger Merrills, who always thought SFF sounded fun, but never got to participate. In fact, ALL of the younger Merrills got to participate :)

Since the big kids had to leave at 9 for the stake youth activity, we started at 7am. It rained all night, and at 6:30, it was pitch black and rainy still. We were nervous. But by 7, the rain had stopped and it was starting to get light enough to go out without scaring neighbors :) By 7:20, when Sam, Martha, Jane and I actually made it out the door for reals (Why doesn't Jane have shoes on yet? Sam - you need a sweater! I know it was hot yesterday, but it's cold now! Where are the flyers? etc....) it was a beautiful clear morning. Hooray for delay!

The big kids took the hilly areas toward the front of our neighborhood. The littles and I had 200 flyers and 4 long, flat streets to cover. I put Jane in the car, Sam on one side of the street, Martha on the other, and had them run down the street putting a flyer on each door (the flyers were giant post-it notes. Best thing ever.) I jumped out and opened fences and such as needed. I'd like to point out that Martha is only 3, and she did a fabulous job. By 8:45 we'd done 3/4 of our assignment (guessing from how many fliers we had left) but morale was sinking, so we went back to the house to send off the big kids and get some Halloween candy. As soon as the big kids were gone, Sam and Martha were ready to go again (to my great surprise!) Since we now had Lillian on our team, we decided to see if we could knock out some of the streets that the big kids hadn't been able to get yet. We took a bucket of Halloween candy with us. Marriner had switched cars with us, and since his car had no car seats, I let the kids ride au natural (I mean, not REALLY au natural...just car seat natural!) We were driving about 5 mph the whole time, so I didn't feel like it was terribly negligent of me :) Sam and Martha (ok, and Lillian too) enjoyed chances to ride in the (usually forbidden) front seat. You know, for the 100 yards at a time that we rode between streets! Ha!

So, equipped with our party car and a gorgeous day, we ran up and down streets for another 2 hours. This time Lillian took one side of the street and Sam and Martha teamed up on the other. If Lillian got done first (almost always) she'd loop back and work her way up the street. We always made our life easier by starting at the top and working downhill :) And when we finished a street, we ate Halloween candy while we drove to the next street. It was a great setup.

Probably the funniest part of the day to me was Martha freaking out over a cat on the porch. The most mellow cat I've ever seen in my life was probably pretty confused about why some little girl would scream like that at the sight of it! Now that I think of it, the owner of the cat was probably somewhat confused about why a 3yr old girl was screaming on her porch at 8am...

We finished at 11:00 on the dot - the kids had a well-deserved sense of pride at how fast they went. We finished every street in our neighborhood - 800 houses total. Sam, Martha and Lillian probably did half of them. We came home and looked up how far they'd run. Just going down the streets was 3.1 miles. Add in the up and down sidewalks and steps, and I'm sure Lillian topped 5 miles. But I really just feel so proud of little Martha, who ran her first 5K, including a LOT of stairs. She completed it in only 4 hours, with plentiful stops for riding in a car and eating Halloween candy. Why don't we all do 5K's that way??

My only regret of the day is that we sort of trashed Marriner's usually clean car. Jane entertained herself in the car by pulling giant post-it note flyers off and scattering them around. Martha at some point dumped out a box of pink nerds on the back seat to make it easier to share with Jane. Sam and Lillian climbed over the seats with their wet and dirty shoes liberally...but hey, when Marriner sees the carnage, he'll be reminded of his amazing kids and their great act of service to the community. So he'll think it's cute...right? Besides, I think the girls left him some nerds.

Eavesdropping, being a fan-girl and Tagalog

A few quick stories from this week...

We were eating dinner yesterday when I wanted to say something to one of my children without the other child knowing about it. You know these sorts of conversations :) My mom and dad had them all the time in French. At some point we learned that "crème glacée" means ice cream, and that cramped their style a bit.

In our family, we've naturally used ASL. And it's been so wonderful, because I can talk in secret to anyone in the family, but it takes enough effort to pay attention to ASL that nobody else usually pays attention. When we were pregnant with Jane, Marriner and I sat and signed for 30 minutes about the new baby and nobody caught it. They were just trying to avoid eye contact so we wouldn't try to make them practice ASL with us :)

Well, things have changed. My kids have started using their eyes more. Not once but TWICE this week I've been trying to have a secret conversation about someone in the room and that person has looked up and caught the conversation. So much for our efforts at secret service :) (Yes, they WERE efforts at secret service, what other kind of secrets do you think we'd be talking about?!?) And even though it was really annoying to have our plans foiled, it tickles me pink to see the change in my kids. Both that they're looking up and trying to communicate, and that their receptive skills are good enough for them to eavesdrop. Ha.

On Sunday, we had some visitors at church. One couple was familiar to us, they had both done some translating and interpreting for the church. Marriner and I laughed after church about how gushy we get when we meet some of these people - we just want to run up to these people (who have no clue who we are) and exclaim, "I love the way you translated _______!" or, "That song you did in General Conference! Wow!" We try to keep the fan-boy and fan-girl reaction in check, but when we get home, we squeal like teenage girls and wish we'd gotten their autographs.

In other language news, I got a phone call that freaked me out yesterday. The caller ID said, "Emilia Deguzman" - a friend of ours from my previous life as a Tagalog speaker. I admit, as the phone rang, I almost didn't answer it - I haven't spoken any Tagalog in so long! But I did answer, and had a great time talking to an old friend. I'm still way better at Tagalog than ASL. I wonder if that will ever change. Well, Tagalog, don't be jealous - I spend more time studying ASL right now, but you will always be my first language love :)

Sam

Today in Primary, Sam said that his best friend is Emma, who lives in "Balt-more".

I love this kid.

Happy Anniversary to us!

(We have dubbed this picture the "halo picture" - isn't it great?!)

October 22, 2017. That was the day we all showed up in the Washington DC branch for permanent. We'd known what was going to happen for 3 weeks. We'd studied ASL as hard as we could for those 3 weeks. We were so nervous! I saw a friend in the hall. Her husband was one of the new counselors in the Branch Presidency, so she knew what was coming. As soon as I saw her, I started crying, and she gave me a big hug.

I worked for days to prepare to share my testimony. When I was called on, I got up and stumbled out one sentence. The interpreter said something different than what I'd thought I'd said. My nerves just about won the battle right there, but I managed to stay and say some things, though certainly not all the things that were in my heart - I didn't have the vocabulary to even try that.

Our kids struggled with Sacrament meeting for months. I still remember the Sacrament meeting when 5 out of 6 kids left Sacrament meeting for misbehaving :) Two of them were banished from the chapel for the rest of the day.

I remember my first Primary presidency meeting. Everyone signed really slowly, and I repeated back everything as I understood it. At the end of the meeting, I repeated my assignments again, to make sure I'd understood correctly. They were so patient. I was assigned to bring the star for the Nativity pageant at the branch Christmas party and lead the Nativity Song and Silent Night. The Primary president spent an hour helping me translate the Nativity Song, and I spent days learning it.

There was a little loneliness at first. I'd left behind old friends, but making new friends takes time, especially with a language barrier. And especially when your eyes and hands have to keep track of kids!

I don't think most people appreciate what a huge life change it was for us. Our casual academic hobby of learning ASL suddenly became an urgent matter. Our kids have made some significant sacrifices, from giving up free time and relaxation to learn ASL to leaving friends. My kids have always been a little weird, but now they're even weirder - for good and for bad! In the hearing ward, I always felt very competent at whatever I did. Now I give all my service with a perfect knowledge that I'm really not very good at it. It's tiring sometimes.

But even with acknowledging all the messy realities of it, that's not what's first in my mind. The first thing I think of when I look back at the beginning is all the sweet people who loved us without reason. Every week, all the smiles and expressions of welcome. All the people who signed slowly and patiently (and who still are!) just so I could be included in the conversation. All the times people have forgiven me for my faux pas. 'Cuz you know what, there have been a ton of those :) All of the Christ-like examples that I hope to emulate.

In addition, my mind and heart are full of recognition of the goodness of God. We see His hand in our lives so often now. I see how much better I can understand people when it's important - the gift of tongues is in our lives frequently! I see me being supported through the times when Dad is gone a lot. I see my kids rising to their challenges instead of crumbling into a ball of frustration. It's real and it's present in our lives, even though it's hard to describe. We've walked to the edge of our capabilities and trusted the Savior to carry us from there, and He has.

One thing I'm proud of throughout this last year is that I consistently wrote about my experiences for a FULL YEAR! I actually have over 100 blog posts! I feel like a hard-core blogger now :) I have no idea how many people read them (nobody ever comments, cough, cough) but I hope (in addition to keeping these memories for me and my children) that a few people have learned some things about ASL and Deaf culture. I hope your testimony has been fortified a bit. And I hope you've had fun laughing at my funny kids. Because that's my favorite part to write about :)

So, it's been a great year. I hope the next one is just as great. And maybe a little less adventurous. :)