Friday we woke up super early! Brittany and I were going to the Special Ed School in Poptun, which was about 45 minutes away. The school day here in Guatemala is from 7:30 to 12:00! Isn’t that nice!! Brittany was extremely tired so she slept the whole way there…pretty amazing…while I was freaking out trying to learn as many signs as I could from the book that they had given me. When we got to school, we found it practically deserted. My heart sank, and I was bound and determined to find someone there. So I jumped out of the truck to see what I could find out…stupid me who doesn’t know any Spanish…well, Jimmy was a step or maybe a few steps ahead of me and called the principal of the school. She said that the school was at the Sports Complex preparing for the Special Olympics in August. I also found someone, who came with me to speak to Jimmy, and confirmed where they were at.
When we got to the Sports Complex, Brittany and I jumped right in! We did all the exercises with them, it was a sight to see :- ) Okay, and apparently there was a miscommunication when we were there last time, but instead of having 16 deaf students, they really have 6. Sadly only 2 came to school that day! I was able to sign my name to them, and ask them theirs. The deaf girl, Perlita, went through the book with me a little and showed me some other signs too! After they had gone over all the exercises, it was time to go back to the school. We weren’t quite sure how we were getting back, whether it would be by a moto, tuk tuk, or a taxi! It ended up being 11 people including the driver all piled into a small taxi! That was definitely an adventure!
I was able to talk a lot to the teachers there thanks to Brittany! There really isn’t much structure that goes on in Guatemalan schools. Students can walk in and out whenever they please, and there really isn’t much learning going on. The learn how to read by copying the same sentence thirty times. Well, seeing that the hearing students don’t get very far on that education, it is even harder for the deaf students. The deaf students I met were both 12 years old on a kindergarten level. They have so much going against them, but they only need one person to believe in them.
Leaving the school, I had a lot going through my mind! All I could think about were all the mountains I was going to have to climb in order to do anything to help these deaf children. Then out of nowhere God reminded me that He is big enough to move those mountains! That morning I had read Jeremiah 1 and was so encouraged that afternoon, when it finally made a connection!
On our way home, Jimmy pointed out all these roads that lead to about 70 Kekchi villages that are still unreached! Talking with the teachers at the school, they knew of more than 50 deaf that were Kekchi. There is such a need there too!
We spent the rest of the afternoon working on preparations for our girl’s day!! We made egg salad, chocolate brownies, caramel dip, and popcorn balls!! We even got to make some extra pop corn balls for us to have that night!
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