Service project!

Every September, our stake participates in Day to Serve. In the past, we've harvested potatoes and green beans for a food bank, cleaned trails, fixed up sick people's houses and photographed head stones for genealogy work. I'd say that in general, our past projects have been mostly manual labor, and more the type of thing where the men are useful.

This year, we did something totally different for me!

A big need in the Deaf community is for early language and literacy. Since most deaf kids don't have deaf parents, and since most doctors giving parents advice don't know a lot about what it's like to be deaf, deaf kids tend to get a late start on language. Think of all the stories your mother read to you - but what if your mother didn't speak English very well?

So for our Branch service project, we filmed children's books in ASL. One of our very talented youth, Freddy, has a green screen and filmed us signing the story. He will paste in the pictures from the story behind us and create a children's book you can watch.

Some sisters did really looonnngggg, beautiful stories. I didn't plan on doing a story, since I'm not a native signer, but with some encouragement, I chose a simple toddler story named "Let's Go Visiting" by Sue Williams, illustrated by Julie Vivas. The story is a number and color story with a lot of repetition, and I had fun teaching my imaginary friend in the camera. There were a couple of times my hands forgot what they were supposed to do next, and I probably had a little bit of a panicked look on my face. Oh well....

So that's our service project this year! I'll show you the videos when they're done.

Signs that help me think deeper

A favorite cousin (no names mentioned) recently commented on a really old post (no, I'm not subtly teasing my cousin there...):

I had a Deaf companion for a short while as a missionary, and I learned that the sign for repentance and the sign for change are the same motion, just with different letters. Am I remembering that right? I love that reminder that repentance is change. 

This is correct! The sign for "repentance" is just the sign for "change" made with a letter R. (This is called initializing - it's when you use the first letter of a word in the sign) Actually, sign language has a lot of signs that make you stop and think. One really interesting thing about the language is that there isn't an individual sign for every word in English. There is one sign for a concept. The way you use the sign can show variations in the concept. Here's an example:

There is one sign for all of these words: need, should, must, ought to, have to. If you sign it casually, it's should or ought to. If you sign it emphatically, it's must. But it's all the same sign.

Or, for another example, all these are the same sign: control, manage, administer, reign, manipulate, and handle. They all have their basis in the same concept.

A big part of learning ASL is learning to think about what the word you want to use really means, deep down inside.

So here are some signs that help me remember some important principles of the Gospel.

Repentance: same as the sign for change.
Atonement: it's the sign for substitute, or in exchange of.
Ministering: same as service.
Reverence: there are two, one is the sign for peaceful or calm, the other is the sign for honor.
Prayer: the same as asking.
Sacrifice: letting something go.
Unity: connected together.
Jesus: touching the prints of the nails in your hands.

Church friends

A friend from our old ward, the Capitol ward, remembered us and invited us to their Labor Day Bash/Kids' Birthday party. Woot! Woot!

There were a lot of old friends and familiar faces there! It was great fun to catch up - and a little annoying too, like when you find out your friend you THOUGHT you were pretty tight with is like 30 weeks pregnant, and never got around to mentioning it. Yeah, you know who you are :) Ok, so maybe I didn't call in the last 6 months, either....

There were a lot of unfamiliar faces, too. Most of them were neighbors and co-workers. One time, I introduced myself, "Hi, I'm Christine. I'm a friend of (the host family) from church." The guy I was talking to looked surprised and sorta sputtered around a bit. "So, uh....you're in the Capitol ward?" I guess he was their friend from church, too :)

Marriner and I joked that what I SHOULD have said was, "No, no, I'm their friend from their OTHER church...."

Man, life could be so fun if only we didn't need to be honest all the time...

Just kidding. Really.