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.
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