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! :)
Sunday, December 30, 2018
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.
Sunday, December 16, 2018
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.
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.
Monday, December 10, 2018
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!
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!
Monday, December 3, 2018
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)