Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sa.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Jessi Fox. Welcome to the Code Red studio. It's so great to have you today.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Thank you for the opportunity.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Yes.
And I'm Julie. I am, of course, Zach's wife. And chiming in today as he's a little under the weather. And I love you. So this was an easy yes.
I would love to just talk to you about so many different things, but just to let everybody get to know you a little better.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: Get.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Can you tell us about your faith journey? Just as a child, how did you come to know the Lord before we get into all the amazing things that he's used you for as an adult?
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
So I grew up in Colorado, going to church every Sunday, every Wednesday, did all that.
But my faith never really became my own until actually at a summer camp and went to a Christian summer camp. And that was the first time I really felt like I understood about the sacrifice that Jesus had made for us and wanted to follow him and give my life up for him and whatever I could do to serve him. I really had no idea what that meant when you're 12, but I think that's just part of God's faithfulness in the journey.
So I was grateful for parents that had taken me to church at a young age and gave me just the opportunity to learn about Jesus love and his love for people as well.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: That's awesome. Because I grew up. I grew up in a Baptist church in rural Alabama, and camps had the biggest effect on me. Excuse me.
So I was about 12 when I went to a camp, and I was already a believer, but I just knew God is calling me to do something, and I wasn't even sure what. But I had such a peace just knowing that God has a plan for me. And it just went beyond what my church, you know, taught me. And I was so thankful that they provided that opportunity, you know. So I love how the Lord uses ministries like that.
So then as a. I think I understand that somehow someone in your church performs sign language regularly. Is that right?
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Yeah. So when I was growing up at that same church then I grew up in, there was a woman that interpreted, and it was a Presbyterian church. So a lot of the liturgical things, which I really do appreciate to this day, but as a small child, that was kind of boring. And so I would watch the sign language interpreter flapping her hands around, and from that young age was just interested in sign language and that kind of thing.
Then in high school, we had to take a foreign language, and I signed up for Spanish, and I took two semesters and Hated it with a passion. And I feel like God's kind of laughing at me because now we've been 15 years in a Spanish speaking country. But I did everything I could to get out of that Spanish class. So I went to the local University of Colorado University and took sign language there, where I had a deaf professor and just learned so much from him.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: So this was in high school still?
[00:03:36] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. Wow.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Yeah. And then when it came a time to choose a degree in a college and that kind of thing, Baylor University in Texas, which is a Baptist university, they had a really good deaf education program. And so I was able to go there and study and brought a lot of my sign language credits and experience with me already.
And Baylor really focuses on what is your calling in life. You're not just here to get a degree and you're not just here to have a piece of paper so that you can get a job and make a lot of money and live the American dream. They really believed in you have a vocation. God is giving you a calling on your life. And how can this be not just a job that you're working towards, but a vocation for your life? And so they offered short term mission trips, depending on your degree. And there was one to Africa to help at a deaf school there.
And so I went and did that and served there. And that was kind of my first experience overseas with missions and learned a lot through that.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Oh, I'm sure.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Okay. So did you know in college that probably you weren't just going to be an interpreter, but you were probably going to be a missionary?
[00:04:47] Speaker A: It was, I guess, my junior year in college, I went to a Passions conference with Louis Giglio in Atlanta, Georgia, and they had one of their breakout sessions. You could go and they had this room and they had these giant photos of different people groups from around the world. And there was something. I walked in that room and just burst into tears like there was just something. And I felt like God saying, these are the people you're going to go for. These are the people I want you to give your life to.
There are people that will never know the name of Jesus unless someone goes and tells them. They're the unreached people groups of the world. Many people don't realize that one third of the world's population has no access to. There's no radio station, there's no podcast, there's no Bible, there's no Christian, there's no church that they could even go and try to learn about Jesus from. And that just Broke my heart that there could be so many people like that around the world, especially being here in the Bible Belt south or even just the United States in general. We have access to the Gospel everywhere we look. How many Bibles do we have in our houses? And most people around the world don't have a single one.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: So one third how many people, roughly, would.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: That's about 3.2 billion people in the world have never heard the name of Jesus and probably won't before they die. And so I think as Christians here in the United States, where we have the Bible on our phones, we have five Bibles sitting on our bookshelves, it's hard to imagine that. But at the same time, like, those are the people we need to be reaching, and those are the people that I think God has an extra heart for to know his name. So, yeah, that experience at that Passion Conference was really profound for me. And so I felt called specifically to unreached people groups from that time, but I didn't actually think it would be the deaf. I didn't realize the deaf were an unreached people group. I just felt like God was calling me to overseas missions to those that had never heard his name before.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: So, yeah, that is something that you have taught me is that for one thing, there's a different sign language for each people group of the deaf people. But there's also.
Well, I guess that's basically the main thing.
We'll probably want to edit that.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: There's actually 300 sign languages around the world, so even more sign languages than there are countries.
And so the language, language is so tied into culture, and there are so many different cultures around the world, and so the language develops within that culture.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Yeah, because I love your illustration about a window.
Something about if you. If you have the sign of a window in one, in one country, it looks totally different because people's windows are just different.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: Yeah, that's really interesting. And so what about. I know that at some point you got married.
So tell me about Daniel's calling. Was it how. How did you know that your callings were coordinating so well that it would be a perfect fit?
[00:07:54] Speaker A: Well, it's actually a funny story. I came back from that Passion conference that same weekend and I told him I feel called to overseas missions to unreached peoples. And he says, I don't. And I said, okay, that's a deal breaker. And we broke up.
I knew as, you know, as you're looking for a partner in life, having someone for something, a calling like that, that it was really important to me that he would not be going overseas or would be part of that. For me, it was a calling that God needed to have on his life individually. And so we broke up in that summer. I went to Honduras and served with the ministry that I now serve with full time.
Signs of Love. And I was there for three months. And so he was working at a Christian camp that summer and we could only talk on the weekends because that's when they got off from being a counselor.
And so we kind of spoke back and forth a little bit, but not a whole lot. And so when I got back from Honduras that year, we met up and he said, I feel like God's calling me to support you in the ministry. I don't know what that looks like, but I feel like that's what my call is. And I was a little weary if that was really he was hearing from God. And that was my mistake for not trusting that. But yeah, we moved forward and he took a short term trip with me to Honduras to kind of know about the ministry and that kind of thing. And yeah, ended up getting married, I guess about a year later. Wow.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Okay, that's awesome. Well, it definitely takes, you know, the calling for both to just do anything in ministry. I mean, as I well know.
But it sounds like, it just seems like you guys have really had a unique and beautiful support of each other all these years.
And so tell us about your move to Honduras so when you actually got started in ministry.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: Yeah. So the church we were attending at the time was in Austin, Texas, and they cast a vision to send 100 people to unreached peoples for two years or more.
They call it the great divide, because unreached people groups represent, like we said, one third of the world's population. Yet only 1% of money that is donated towards mission goes towards unreached people groups. And only 3% of missionaries go to unreached people groups. And so there's this huge division of the need versus what's being provided and that kind of thing.
And so our church decided that if they were going to send missionaries, they were only going to focus on those that were going to specifically unreached people groups. They wanted to focus their finances and their time and their people to those specific groups because there was such a big need there. And I remember seeing they called us by our numbers, number one and number two, we're sisters and they had sold their life and were moving to China. And I remember having already had that call in my life, but not really knowing what Steps to take to get there. I remember watching the video and thinking, they can do it, we can do it. And so we kind of started moving forward with that and finished off our jobs.
Dino still had another year of college, and I finished out my job at Texas School for the Deaf working there and just sold everything we owned, except for a small amount that we moved into a little storage unit, which then actually, two years later, ended up getting auctioned off at a. Because our credit card didn't go through one time. And so I get this email, and it was one of those moments of God was like, are you really in this? Like, literally every position that I owned was gone.
And so that was kind of an interesting moment of like, you said you were gonna give up everything and move overseas, but you put this little bit apart, and are you really okay with giving everything up for me, in the physical realm of things? And so that was a funny story. Looking back on it at the moment, it wasn't very funny. But, yeah, we kind of packed what little we had and headed overseas and, yeah, moved to Honduras and served with Signs of Love again.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: Well, I love this story you have shared with a group that I was a part of a little while back about how you find the deaf, how you found them first in Honduras. Because in that culture, at least at the time when you first began, the families often don't. They almost hide away, people who cannot hear for some reason.
And so how did you even know where to look?
[00:12:25] Speaker A: Yeah, and we still to this day do this in Argentina. It's how we start. And it's actually what drew me to Signs of Love was the humble beginnings of it. And so we call it treasure hunting. And we go knocking door to door and we just ask, hey, do you know any deaf people?
And oftentimes we do have to really rely on the Holy Spirit because like you said, in many of these third world countries, there is a stigma with disabilities. And so people are afraid to admit that they have someone that has some sort of disability in their family or they're ashamed of them. In some cultures, they are seen to have evil spirits in them, or because they're deaf, they are a curse from God. And so that has played out in many different ways in the various countries that we've served in. But, yeah, we're out on the roads knocking door to door and just following the leads that the Holy Spirit gives us to find these people.
But it's been really neat to see how God's led us to so many people over the years.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: Well, can you just tell us a story about somebody that you just really resonates with you even today that was in Honduras that you really impacted. Just saw God work in from the beginning all the way to hopefully salvation and you know, church membership in there. In your church there for sure.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: Yeah. I think actually one that comes to mind is more there were tons of stories in Honduras, but I think because Argentina is more fresh on my mind and her story is just absolutely incredible. So she's in Argentina and we found her again knocking door to door in this area and they said she was from Paraguay.
That's how everyone. So she lives down by the train track. So we're, you know, I've never been in this area before. So we're trying to find the train tracks and we finally get there and it's this 40 year old woman, Maria Lisa. And she lives with her mother and her cousin are the only two that live in the house. She's the sole provider. She works at another house cleaning and ironing and doing housework. And so she provides for her family in that way. But we got there and we're meeting with her and we're talking with her and before we leave she asked us to pray for her. She just knew that we were God people. She says that's what she calls us before we left. And so we went to pray for her and she puts her hands together and she closes her eyes and she bows her head and we were like. She's never realized how deaf people pray. And so I had to like tap her on the shoulder and I'm like, look at me. And so she had no sign language. So a lot of people don't realize. A lot of deaf people's people don't have access to education. 80% of the deaf don't have access to education worldwide. So she had no formal sign language.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: And she's 40 and she works a full time job. Somehow she manages without language. Yeah.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: And so I had her look at me and I in very basic gestures we've kind of learned that's like a whole other language itself is how do you reach these people that don't have a formal language but they have a gesture or home sign that they tend to use. And so did you know the best that I could, a very simple prayer.
And she just like tears come down her face of like it's the first time she had a prayer that she could understand. But her story is really neat because she had been going two doors down from her house as this little tiny church that she had been going to, for, I don't even know, 15, 20 years of her life by herself. No one on her family went with her. No one interpreted for her. No one explained what was happening, but she went out of obedience. And I just think that that's. Her story is so powerful to me. Also, she went every Sunday. She clapped her hands looking. She was looking for something.
And she ended up a couple years later with a huge tumor in her stomach. And the church prayed for her, and God healed her. And so she knew from personal experience who God was.
If you asked her about theology or anything like that, she couldn't share any of that with you, but she knew the person of Jesus who had healed her.
So we brought. We used this illustrated Bible, the Action Bible, by David C. Cook. And it's like comic book style, but they do really good about following Scripture. And so I opened it up to her, the page of Jesus on the cross, just to see what she understood. And she described the plan of salvation and how we're all sinners in need of a Savior and how she. She had put her sin, her badness in her heart. She had given that to Jesus, and he had taken that away from her and he had freed her. And still, this is in very basic sign language. Like, it's not even.
And so it was just really neat how the Holy Spirit had prepared her heart for us to be there before we got there. Like, the idea of God going before missionaries and preparing the way for us before we even got there was really neat to see.
And so I talked to her mom several months later.
Her mom said, yeah, she's gone to church for all these years, and. But her life has never changed until recently. And I said, well, when did that happen?
And she said, right about the time y' all started coming. She's kinder. She's more patient. She's more helpful at home. And so it was neat. She knew Maria, Lisa knew all these things about this God in this book that healed her, but it hadn't really internalized in her and hadn't made a difference in her life until we started coming and sharing about that.
So then it was also neat because she said her pastor wouldn't let her get baptized. And I said, why not? And she said, because I'm deaf. And I was like, okay. Like, I don't understand. And so I said, where's the nearest water?
She's like, the river right down there. And I was like, all right, let's go.
And so she actually. We had another good friend that she wanted to be present. And so I asked her, why do you want to be baptized? And she fully understood the significance of. It's my public declaration of a faith that I have in my heart, and I want the world to know she knew that. And so a couple months later, we walked down to the little river that only had about this much water in it. But we. You see the videos of people in China that are, like, splashing water on the very, very little water they've got. But we were able to baptize her, and just the moment was so special for her. She said she felt the Holy Spirit in a new way. And then to even continue her story, she now travels with us to a nearby village. I pick her up on the way, and she goes with us. And so she's sharing her faith with other deaf people that don't know language as well. So it's been really neat to see the full circle moment with her of God preparing her, God changing her life, but then giving her words and language to that so that now she can share her faith with other people.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: Wow, that's amazing. And it sounds like we talked a little bit earlier about how anyone can relate better to people who kind of see life the way they do or who understand them. Maybe it's just where they're from or some, you know, just common ground. And so the best people to reach the deaf community are the deaf community.
So tell us about how you. How you have helped equip the deaf community to reach each other.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I'm really grateful for technology and social media can be used for good and for bad, but we're grateful for the ways that God's allowed us to connect with so many deaf people around Argentina and other countries.
And so, for example, last year, we did a zoom class called the Nuevo Camino the New Way. And it was just basic discipleship material for the deaf. But I worked with three deaf leaders that I had been training over the past couple years, and I would teach them the lessons. I'd prepare all the visuals and the materials, and then they would actually teach the class. And so we had about 30 deaf leaders from all over Argentina that participated in that and really shared that that was the first time that anything had been taught directly in their language, as opposed to it being interpreted. And that that was something really significant and powerful for them for their ability to understand and process that, and then to be able to take what they learned and share it with other people, which was a really important part.
There's a lot of focus on church planning these days, which is awesome and great. But Jesus never commanded us to plant churches. He commanded us to make disciples. And we always add make disciples that make disciples. And so that's always our focus. The churches naturally come out of making disciples that make disciples, but Jesus told us to make disciples and the churches just are a natural result of that, and they come out of that. But training the deaf, there's a lot of it's kind of fun because we're in Dr. Rich's class and hearing Pastor Zach preach on Sundays. And the topics they're preaching are things that I've taught on, you know, theophanies, Christophanies. I'm like most of the hearing people in Argentina, probably don't even know what a Christophani is, but my deaf people do because we're teaching these same high level theology type things to them. And then they're able to take the materials that we create, the visuals that we spend a lot of time on, and then share that with the other deaf so that they're growing and learning and sharing their own life experiences with one another.
Their testimonies are powerful.
[00:21:31] Speaker B: Yes, I think about someone like John Wycliffe, who was responsible for directing, translating the Bible into an easier language and easier English so that so many people could have access.
And that's basically what you're doing now to the deaf community is just of providing something that they can understand, that they've never had before.
And so I hope that people just understand how valuable it is and innovative that God's using you to do something new and important.
I just heard someone, Wes Huff, he said there are four gospels, but really there are five. There's Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and you.
And when it comes to you, that has a really special meaning because you have.
You're the gospel carrier to people who there aren't very many people like you that have the ability to, I think not just translate and not just sign, but you have an empathy with other people that I think people in that community. God's giving you that the calling to reach those people because you're easy to show mercy.
You display such an empathy toward them, toward me. So I know that you would toward them. That I think that really opens a heart door for them to understand, for them to believe that you are there because you love them and that the God you're bringing is trustworthy. And so I think that's so awesome.
And tell me, I know that you've done some video translation now, I know in Honduran sign language and that I'M not sure how it's going yet in Argentina, but can you tell us about that and how people can have access to it or if they, if they know someone in those, in those countries even who might, could use it?
[00:23:38] Speaker A: Yeah. So we never claim to be translating the Bible. The Bible translation process is one that's very formal. You have to have a certain number of local believers that it's their language and their customs. And then you have the Greek and Hebrew scholars that are coming in and training them and working with them. And so the Bible translation process is very, very laid out and a very strict one.
And we don't have that and we don't claim to be translating the Bible, but the word of God is so powerful. And so when we got to Argentina, there were no portions, well, I'm sorry, there were 12 to 15 stories of the Bible that had been translated into their language, Argentinian Sign language. And I could just see the power of the Word of God and how these deaf people were, did not have access to that and how this life changing power, they weren't able to even begin to understand or process because there was no access to it. And so I started working with a deaf man that I had been discipling and so trying to, rather than translate, create summaries of Bible stories so that at least there was something out there. There is a Bible transition team that's working with Wycliffe that we work with very carefully. Because one thing that's really interesting, in these sign languages that are not fully developed, there's a lot of signs, for example, Messiah or Trinity or Communion. These, the signs are so different all over the country. They don't have a common sign for it. And so this group is getting together with Wycliffe and they're working on, okay, how do we work with all these deaf people around the country to come up with a common sign? Because the goal is to produce Bible translations.
And so they're working on that and we pray for them regularly and we stay in contact with them because we want to be sure we're using the signs the they're using so that our people eventually will be able to watch their translations.
So in December of last year, this group that had been working for five years finally produced the Book of Mark as a formal, you know, accredited translation of the Bible in Mark. Five years to get the Book of Mark.
And so they're doing amazing work. We support them, we love them, we'll do everything we can. But it's a very slow process. And so we've been trying to work really hard to. To produce as we can. So we use images that go on the back of the green screen. So a picture of what? Because the deaf are so visual. A picture of the Bible story, and then we have the deaf man that is putting it into his language, creating a summary so that at least there's parts of the Bible that the deaf can start to be consuming and using and understanding and studying from.
[00:26:16] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's more like maybe you're more like a Sunday school teacher for them, you know, so, like, you're giving them the first foundation that they can, you know, that they can build on as they grow, that sort of thing.
So how many years have you been in Argentina now?
[00:26:33] Speaker A: This summer will be four years.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: Okay, so how do you see your mission seems to be that you lay a foundation in a country or in a community, and then you kind of pass that on and move on to another place. So how do you know when your work there is ready to pass to someone else and move to some new field?
[00:26:59] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question.
I think the process is slightly slower for the deaf because their whole lives, especially those that have grown up overseas, their whole lives are in developing nations. More specifically, their whole lives, they've been told what to do, when to do it, how to do it, when to eat, what to clean, where to go. And so they've never had.
They've never been taught how to make decisions for themselves. So if they can't decide. I remember in Honduras, I taught in a classroom the first year, and we were having a party, and I asked them if they wanted Pepsi or orange soda, and none of them could answer. And I was like, it's just pick one. Like, I don't understand. But that moment really helped me realize, if they can't choose between Pepsi and orange soda, how are they ever going to choose between the world and God? And so having to or make a decision for Christ or any of those things, like, on their own. And so we focus a lot on teaching just cognitive skills and reasoning and that kind of thing so that they're able to make decisions that are ones that are theirs and they take ownership for and they receive the consequences, whether negative or positive, from and seeing that as a choice that they get to make to live for Christ.
And so there's definitely a process that I think goes that's a little bit longer also than other missionaries have. And also the idea that a lot of the deaf we work with don't know their own language. They haven't gone to school and they don't know other deaf people, and so they didn't have the opportunity to have any kind of formal language. So we have to teach that also. So I think the process is a lot longer than I think a typical missionary would go through. But, yeah, I mean, day one, the deaf. I found that he was traveling with me to the villages from the beginning. I'm like, I'm not going to be here long. This is like, he knew from day one my goal was not to be there long term. It was to train people up so that they could move on. I guess our job as missionaries is to work ourselves out of a job.
And so that's kind of.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: Kind of like parenting.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yep. Send them out and let their wings fly away.
And so, yes, that's very much the case. And so I think it depends on the person that you're discipling and training and how much. It's hard to put a time on discipleship, you know, like, how long that's going to take for them to be in a place.
But Argentina is a huge country and there's a lot of provinces that don't have a single ministry to the deaf in them. And so I foresee, who knows what God's plans are, but that will probably be in Argentina for a while. Just maybe being in different provinces, setting up different ministries, finding deaf to train and turning things over to them to keep doing it, because in reality, they can do it better than we can. It's their language, it's their culture. They just need a little bit of training and theology and Bible knowledge and a relationship with Jesus, most importantly.
[00:29:52] Speaker B: Well, tell me about making friends in another country as a missionary. As a missionary to the deaf, are most of your friends that you spend time with in the deaf community, or do you have other missionary partners close to you that you spend time with and recharge with?
How does that go?
[00:30:12] Speaker A: I probably don't have the healthiest relationship in that way, but, I mean, I am so poured into the ministry and the work that having any friends outside of the ministry is quite challenging.
We're one of only.
I think there's about five couples that speak English in our city, and we've all kind of got our different ministries and doing our different things. But I mean, we collaborate on some projects when they come up. But in general, we kind of just stick to the vision that God's given us and moving forward with that. But one thing that when we left to move, to go overseas this time four years ago to go to Argentina.
It's not typical to go just a couple. In general, most mission agencies want to send with a large team and a large group of people. And that's just how things are usually done.
And we really felt called to just go on our own.
And it's been neat to see how God has used that because it's requiring local individuals to see step up to the ministry. Oftentimes when you send this huge team of North Americans somewhere, people are in that country are less hesitant to participate because they're like, oh, you've got it, like you've got it covered, like you don't need our help. And I'm like desperate of like I need your help.
[00:31:28] Speaker B: And our church, they may not want to take ownership of what's happening as much if there's a whole team of people who maybe consider the expert.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: Right. And so it's been really neat to see how God's kind of used that to get people, I think involved sooner than they would have and for it to hopefully the ministry to become more self sustainable, long term, quicker. Because we do have people. The church that we got to be a part of, they have, they actually started as a ministry for people with addictions. And so they have a home where people can come. It's one of the only Christian free resources in the, in our province. And so they already have a heart for the marginalized. They already have a heart for people that are kind of pushed aside in society. And so they have welcomed us and they, we have volunteers. That's where we have our. The deaf church meets in their church on Mondays, they have their church on Sundays and we meet on Mondays and it's all the deaf. And so I'm really grateful for this church and how they've surrounded us and, and so it will become more locally owned and taken care of quicker than if we had a large American team that's there doing those things. Right.
[00:32:36] Speaker B: So do you have a sort of a protege, someone that's coming up behind you in Argentina right now?
[00:32:43] Speaker A: Yeah, there's always deaf people. We try to find one or two in each area that has just. We are always asking Jesus to see with his eyes. I think oftentimes in the world we, we see the most powerful leader, the most well spoken.
And so I'm always asking Jesus for his eyes to see people because he picks out these people that will be able to lead his church and grow it in ways that I may never be able to understand fully. And so I just love the story of the Samaritan woman. A lot of times, ministries are so focused on the masses. Like, how do we reach the most number of people? And that's kind of just the culture that we live in of, like, the masses are what's important, and the numbers are important. And so the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman, like, he specifically went out of his way for a woman that was marginalized and reaching her. And in reality, in John, it says that many people in the town came to accept Jesus as their savior because of her testimony. And so Jesus focused on that one, and he poured all that time into that one, and he went out of the way for that one one, so that she was then going and sharing her story. And many came to know Jesus because of that. And so we oftentimes in our villages and stuff, we'll go four or five hours away, we'll cross these little teeny, tiny bridges, walking and hiking for one.
And a lot of people, they look at it from the eyes of the world and they say that's not using the resources appropriately or that's not using your time efficiently.
But looking at how Jesus so often was interruptible in his ministry and he stopped for the woman with the issue with blood, and he, you know, and so that's kind of how we see our ministry as well.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: And so it's like leaving the 99 to go find the one lost lamb.
[00:34:40] Speaker A: And those are the people with the testimonies that will turn around and be leading these.
These ministries that we have. And so, yeah, we're always keeping our eyes open for new people that may not be who the world thinks should be leading a ministry, but that Jesus transforms, transforms their lives, and it's powerful.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: And tell me about the book that you wrote in for children here in the States. You have a really great way of connecting with people back in the States, keeping us informed with what's going on with you personally and with your ministry. But I love that you're trying to help other people understand the deaf community, even here in the States.
And that oftentimes starts with children.
So I love that you wrote a book just for kids. And so tell us just a little bit about that and maybe how people could find it. Yeah.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: So it's called Enrique Speaks with His Hands. And actually a man named Benjamin Fudge wrote it, and he is a longtime supporter of Signs of Love. Even before I was part of Signs of Love, he was supporting the ministry.
And he took a trip one time to Honduras to visit the ministry and was just so touched. The Director of our organization, Robin. She's really good about seeing each person and the gifts that God's given them and pulling those out of them to be used. And so this man had talked about wanting to write a children's book for years. And so when he came and experienced it, she kind of was just encouraging him, how can you apply, you know, what God's given you, the skills he's given you for the kingdom. And so he decided to write this book, Enrique Speaks with His Hands, about one of the deaf boys that lives in Honduras. So it's a true story and just his life of being different and lonely and how he didn't have any language and was able to communicate until signs of love Robin came and was able to give him language and the self esteem that came from that and the healing that came from that and just the man that he is today because of that experience. So you can find that on Amazon.
Enrique Speaks with His Hands by Benjamin Fudge. Benjamin Fudge. Okay, awesome.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: Well, if people want to learn more about what you're doing and just keep up with you, how can they find you online?
[00:37:00] Speaker A: Yeah, you can go to signsoflovefox.epistle.org and that's our blog that we have. It's private, so you can subscribe and I'll be able to let you in to be able to see all the amazing stories. But I just, we have such incredible supporters, people. We would not be able to do what we do without the people that support us, whether it's financially or prayerfully, people that help, you know, do things for us here stateside and that kind of thing.
I'll never be able to communicate how grateful we are for them.
And so I feel the responsibility to try to communicate a little bit of what God is doing overseas and how. What their, their sacrifices that they're making for us to be able to be there and share the gospel are truly making a kingdom impact. And so I try my best to communicate all these stories that God allows me to experience firsthand so that everybody can kind of in a small way experience the way that what they're doing is making a difference in the kingdom. So.
[00:38:00] Speaker B: Well, I'll tell you, even people that I know, I've heard people say that you minister to them just by sharing what's going on in your world. So thank you for all that you do. Not just for the deaf community around the world, but even for Christians here that just want to support your ministry and follow your journey.
[00:38:21] Speaker A: Yeah, God's doing some pretty incredible things around the world. And it's so easy for us to, especially here in the States, to be in our little boxes, but to be able to open the eyes to all that God is doing and his character of how he's working around the world is pretty, pretty powerful. So I'm grateful for the opportunity to get to do that.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: Well, thank you for coming today.
[00:38:40] Speaker A: Thank you for the opportunity.
