5-1-08 D.O.O.R. Updates
Bringing God's Word and Christian fellowship to the Deaf of the world
EXCITING RESULTS
DOOR continues to hear of new places where our DOOR graduates are using CBS and DOOR ministry tools. Many of the established sites are growing. There are places, we did not even know our graduates have gone, that now have Deaf Believers' Fellowships.
Just a few examples ...
CANARY ISLANDS
DOOR just learned that one of the DOOR-Europe graduates from Bulgaria, with the help of a DOOR graduate from Denmark, taught all 32 Evangelism stories to 10 Deaf in the Canary Islands.
CONGO
On a follow-up trip to Burundi, the DOOR-Africa staff person visited a remote location in DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) where one of our Deaf-Africa graduates has 60 Deaf meeting. DOOR did not even know he was there.
INDIA
A few years ago, all the Deaf we met in India were either in a cult or not Christians. Today DOOR has 139 Deaf in CBS (Chronological Bible Storying) classes; 16 Deaf moved on to teacher/leader classes. There are 20 places where Deaf are meeting for fellowship and using CBS.
URUGUAY & BRAZIL
Recently, DOOR's Deaf couple in Argentina traveled to Uruguay to renew their visa. While there they attended a Deaf conference, sponsored by an International Mission Board (IMB) missionary. 33 Deaf attended from 6 provinces in Uruguay plus a few places in Brazil. 5 Deaf received Christ. 3 Deaf were baptized. The IMB missionary wrote us about the DOOR couple (Argentina), "They were great and jumped in to help every time they were asked. I was very impressed with their preparation. I hope they can help us some more. We asked Allan to do our baptisms with the help of two of our Deaf leaders; plus they helped teach storying .."
KENYA
In addition to the many Deaf attending about 15 fellowships using CBS, the DOOR Kenyan staff regularly teaches CBS to over 565 Deaf kids in the Kenya school system. The Deaf church association (Mission Deaf Fellowship of Kenya) just met and has a goal of sending 2 member teams to 6 Deaf schools to teach CBS.
ETHIOPIA
Ethiopia has several Deaf fellowships meeting, and the translation team is working hard on community testing of the Evangelism Series.
SWAZILAND
Remember just five years ago when the DOOR-Africa staff could not find a single Deaf Christian in Swaziland? As a result of the DOOR-Africa training several Deaf from Swaziland, this past fall, over 160 Deaf Christians showed up for an anniversary of "church celebration" (6 Believers' Fellowships; 9 Deaf leaders)
GOD HAS BEGUN A GOOD WORK!
Because of the communication issues, DOOR has a hard time gathering statistics from 302 graduates in 49 countries. But, I would estimate there are at least 3,000 Deaf believers studying God's Word, or attending a Deaf Believers' Fellowships using CBS. Praise God for this great "start" to our ministry! The reason we are even more excited is because we believe God is going to do a great sweeping work across the Deaf communities of the world. This will enable the DOOR graduates and staff to use the DOOR ministry tools to evangelize, disciple, develop fellowship, as well as train and equip Deaf teachers and leader through the Sign Language Bible translations, Translator's Notes, introductions and key points being developed in local Sign Languages.
The whole process is somewhat complex and complicated, so a summary of what we are hoping to do follows:
Is it the mark of success when you get big enough to start dealing with initializations?
1. CBS
Chronological Bible Storying is the heart of our program. However, now we see clearly we cannot depend on the memory of a hand full of Deaf graduates to pass God's Word on to huge Deaf communities.
2. NATIVE-HAND TRANSLATION TEAMS
These teams are made up of:
- 1 Deaf person who can read well
- 2 Deaf who are "pure" signers
- 1 Deaf artist
- 1 Deaf person who is not afraid of technology
We hope and pray that by the year 2010 we will have 10 to 12 translation teams working to complete all of the DOOR story sets in their Sign Languages.
What is the key to getting a good Bible translation into their local Sign Language?
3. CIT - CONSULTANT IN TRAINING
The only way to get these stories accurately translated is to have trained Bible Translation Consultants who can do the exegetical checks. Wycliffe International is partnering with us to train many of our DOOR staff - Deaf and hearing -- to be consultants. Wycliffe cannot check all these translations; therefore, it is crucial that DOOR become a recognized translation agency.
4. TN - TRANSLATOR'S NOTES
This is probably the thing that created the most excitement in January at the DOOR 2008 Translation Summit (Kenya), as we worked with Deaf from 10 countries on translation principles. The Bible stories contain a lot of difficult and confusing words and concepts. There are also cultural and religious terms that need explanation. There are many new people and places. Sometimes physical objects, plants, animals, food or other things are talked about that require explanation.
A Wycliffe Bible translator has a huge computer software program called Translator's Workplace that has Hebrew, Greek and other language helps. It shows how other translators around the world dealt with the word or passage. It contains illustrations, maps and pictures.
At this point, the Deaf have nothing in Sign Language to help them. We have formed a team made up of 5 of our associates, assisted by a Wycliffe consultant, to develop a Sign Language Translation's Notes program. These notes will be an incredible blessing to Deaf translators around the world. We will be signing them into ASL (American Sign Language), KSL (Kenyan Sign Language), ISL (Kerala - India Sign Language) and, hopefully, LESCO (Costa Rican Sign Languages). Why? Most of our graduates around the world know one of these languages, and so can help any translation team.
5. THE STORY SET
The DOOR "curriculum" consists of 3 series of stories:
- Evangelism 32 - This is a foundational series to help the Deaf understand God, creation, relationship, sin, Satan, human nature, Jesus, heaven, church, Holy Spirit etc. By the end of this series, a Deaf person should be able to make an informed decision for Christ.
- Discipleship 77 - This series repeats all 32 EV stories and adds 45 more as a spiritual formation class teaching the students how to become obedient followers of Christ.
- Believers' Fellowship 35 - This series goes from the establishment of the church to Revelation. It is designed to teach believers how to minister in the church, relate to other Christians and how to interact with the world.
The translation teams will be working towards creating a DVD and storyboard for each one of these stories. These stories represent just over 9 % of the Bible. Each story will have the following 4 components:
- Introduction - This is where maps, drawings, illustrations and pictures will be used to explain many of the places, things and people in the story. Explanations will be given for cultural, religious or geographical terms and concepts. The goal is that when the story is actually told, the Deaf will already understand the bits of information in the story, and will concentrate on the meaning of the whole story.
- The Bible Story - We want to give a CANA" story (Clear, Accurate, Natural and Acceptable). We will work very hard at making it a true Sign Language story.
- Key Points - To facilitate discussion, we will develop 3 to 5 key points for each story that the teacher/leaders can make sure are discussed.
- Story Board - Each story will also have an accompanying storyboard to go with it. This will be a simple black and white frame-by frame recreation of the story to serve as a memory tool. Teachers can use the storyboard as a memory tool when they go to villages where no DVD player exists. It will also be an inexpensive handout in churches, classes and schools after the story is told.
6. ILT - INTERNATIONAL LEADERSHIP TEAM
We have formed a team of representatives from Africa, Thailand, USA, Peru, Argentina and India to work on developing teacher and leader skill training. As this team gains experience, they will also assume more and more of the responsibility for annual planning and budgets, as well as long range strategy for D.O.O.R. International.
7. INTERNATIONAL SIGN LANGUAGE BIBLE TRANSLATION AND TRAINING CENTER - NAIROBI, KENYA
This facility will become the "synergy" hub for almost all of the development and training activities for each of the teams mentioned above. Working together with staff, Wycliffe, translation teams and the Deaf of Kenya, we will learn quickly what is working, what is not working, what we need to improve, what we need to do more of, and how to share that information with other teams around the world.
We are confident that God has determined that this is the time to "bring in" the Deaf! We believe He wants to use DOOR in a mighty way as a part of this movement of the Holy Spirit across this large, but scattered, people group. We are humbled to be used by Him as a small part of this effort.
Michael Buus, President D.O.O.R. International & Linda Buus, Director of Support Services