Leader at Book of Acts Church called to Deaf Ministry

As a twentysomething hearing person, Deborah Lawrence was attracted to the rich and separate world of the Deaf when a missionary came to her home church in Philadelphia and told about Deaf Missions in Africa. He gave her a book called "Talk to the Deaf" and captivated her imagination. She began learning American Sign Language (ASL) and started teaching songs in both ASL and English to children at her church. She says, "I received a divine calling from God to minister to deaf people," although she had never known anyone who was deaf.

After that she was overtaken with viral encephalitis and became temporarily blind and deaf. She says "it was a truly a miracle of God that not only was my hearing restored, but my sight, balance and memory as well." Her own personal experience of deafness deepened her calling.

Now, this energetic, hearing woman is completely fluent in American Sign Language, is knowledgeable in Kenyan, Zambian, Danish and Finnish Sign Language and has earned a B.S. degree in Deaf culture. And she shares her knowledge with hearing infants and their parents, as well as with childcare professionals, in her preverbal infant signing classes. "Her heart is in ASL," said one enthusiastic participant after a class with Lawrence.

A few weeks ago Lawrence called the Southside Pride to let us know about her church, Book of Acts Church International, a small multi-ethnic congregation which has been meeting in the chapel at Calvary Lutheran Church (3901 Chicago Ave. S. ) for about eight years. She said the pastors, Dr. Kurtiz F. and Mrs. Grace Boudoir, present marvelously entertaining and down-to-earth marriage enrichment seminars, and the church also puts on a special men's conference, a family life conference and an all-out youth jam every year where they have praise dancing, Christian rap, mime, puppetry and drama, snacks, choirs and preaching. Lawrence is director of church relations and heads the youth group, young people between the ages of 3 and 14. She teaches them songs in English and American Sign Language. One of their projects is to support Deaf Missions in Africa, which they do by filling shoe boxes with school supplies and sending them to Kenya through the Books for Africa program.

As I was talking with Lawrence on the phone I was naturally curious about her engagement with Deaf Culture. Also, I realized that here was my chance to get the answer to a question that had been hiding out in the back of my mind for 15 years. You know how you sometimes hear one sentence on the radio and then you walk into another room or somebody starts talking to you and you never hear the rest? Well, in 1987 I heard a solitary statement on the radio: "Deaf children don't go through the terrible twos," and since then had wondered why.

We met in Lawrence's light-colored living room, brightened further by a large mirror, a large picture window and Lawrence's large, lively presence. Surrounded by piles of video tapes and books relating to deaf communication, she shared with me her life of immersion in Deaf Culture.

I began with my question, why no terrible twos? Debbie explained that a signing baby is able to express his/her wants, desires and needs. With signing there is "reduced frustration for children and adults, because you are taking the guess work out of what a preverbal child is trying to communicate, plus you are able to fulfill their requests by responding appropriately, thereby reducing aggressive behavior." I surmised that the higher IQs Debbie describes in signing babies could be attributed to the mental freedom and relaxation they enjoy because they're not spending all their energy on getting their basic needs met and they're not frustrated about trying to communicate by using words. The skill it takes to make gestures is less complex (very natural to a baby right from the beginning) than the skill of forming sounds using the lips, tongue, throat and teeth (which babies don't have a complete set of for quite a while). Also, to communicate through signing, the listener(s) and the speaker have to look at each other. With speech, it is possible to communicate with little or no eye contact, but with signing, eye contact is necessary, and produces a special bond between babies and parents.

Lawrence's journey is fascinating to contemplate. "When I received a divine calling from God to minister to the d/Deaf people I struggled with this because I did not know anyone who was deaf or how I should prepare for this divine assignment," she told me.

Jumping right in seemed to be the best way to prepare. She had three significant messages that confirmed her calling. The first occurred after she attended a Deaf Ministry seminar at a Young Adult Christian Conference in Milwaukee when she "experienced an all night dream of hands signing."

When she shared the dream with a former pastor she was led to Philadelphia Community College where she could take evening sign language classes. After her sixth class a hard of hearing person visited the church and "was so impressed that I would use any means to communicate with him . . .writing, signing, lip reading. . . Pretty soon there was a Deaf section of nearly a dozen Deaf people with different ranges of deafness depending upon me to communicate the service."

In 1986 Lawrence married a man who was hard of hearing and who later, as the result of radiation for a brain tumor, became completely deaf. ASL was their language. They volunteered at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. They took in three foster children. ASL became part of the curriculum for the child Lawrence home-schooled. The two hearing children learned ASL at 10 months. Even the collie understood and responded to ASL.

During the time that her husband, Derrick, was at home convalescing, the littlest children liked to crawl up on his bed. Once, when he went into a painful spasm, the then 14-month-old was able to get help by running to Debbie and clearly gesturing the signs for pain and medicine.

When her husband died in 1992, Lawrence stopped interpreting for church services. Her second significant message from God was a scripture from Isaiah that reminded her of her calling. From there she began to volunteer again at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. She helped with classroom math and taught students to read in English. "Many Deaf people want to be able to read so they can help their hearing children with their homework, or just read newspapers, the Bible, or literature in general," she explained. American Sign Language is their first language so English is kind of like a foreign language to them.

In 1994 Lawrence came to Minneapolis to study at North Central University, where she was one of the first four students to earn a degree in Deaf Culture. She did her senior class project in service learning and language acquisition in Kenya Sign Language and Kenya Deaf Culture.

She then received a third calling which was a vision of "a clear globe in front of me where I could see myself communicating in a foreign country before large groups of people, then all the sudden I was breaking through this glass globe and traveling to another country once again being sat before another large group of people communicating. Later as I revisited this vision in my mind I came to realize that the continent that I was traveling around in was Africa."

Her engagement with Africa started in 1997 when she went to the Deaf Olympics in Denmark. In attendance was the general secretary of Deaf Sports in Zambia who invited her to Zambia. She followed in the footsteps of Dr. Andrew Foster, the first African American Deaf person educated at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., (the only Deaf university in the world) who had worked with Deaf Africans throughout Africa until his death in a plane crash in 1985.

Lawrence took sneakers for the Deaf Sports teams, books, books and more books, and TV and VCR equipment to show Bible stories on tape. The Zambian government met her at the airport and did a VIP interview. "I was a star before I knew it," she laughed.

In 2000 she went to Kenya for three months to work with children in some of the 41 schools for the Deaf that exist in that country—where the Deaf are the most marginalized of the marginalized. She explained that "in African society every person has to be able to contribute something to the family. If they can't, they are considered useless. They are a total liability, it's worse than being blind or lame." Often parents bring their children to the schools and leave them there, abandoning them to the care of the state. She says that Deaf people are kept oppressed, especially in Africa, where they have no tools, resources or role models.

There is one school, at Kisii, about eight hours from Nairobi, where Lawrence especially likes to lend support. Most of the children are deaf orphans whose parents have died of AIDS and it is the only school run by an NGO (most are run by the state). It is stigmatized because, contrary to other Kenyan schools for the Deaf, all the teachers, including the headmaster and headmistress, are Deaf and all use Kenya Sign Language.

She says the lively way Deaf teachers teach and engage their students is head and shoulders about the teaching style of hearing teachers who know sign language. She deeply admires the children and teachers at this school. They have nothing in terms of material wealth and no concrete hope for future employment—although they train for trades they have no hope of being employed because they are deaf and they have no means to buy any equipment to start their own businesses. Yet, their gifts and abilities are highly developed. Children who begin between the ages of 4 and 8 learn English, signed English (not ASL), Kiswahili, Kenya Sign Language right away. Four languages! Their relationship abilities and capacity for joy are great. Lawrence showed me a video of a dance performance at the school which was nothing short of stunning. She says, "They are successful against all odds."

Lawrence is obviously excited about Deaf Culture and languages. She explained that ASL is the third most used language in the United States and went on to describe some of its characteristics that don't exist in English. For example, the idea of "finish" is a gesture that indicates the end of an idea and the beginning of another. There are a lot of variations to "finish" that demonstrate to what degree ideas are separated. It's like a very nuanced period. Another concept in ASL is that the word "wrong" has many subtleties. The degree of mistakenness and the way something is wrong can be easily expressed.

She laughed as she depicted the stoic, almost unnoticeable movements of Finnish Sign Language as opposed to the huge, flamboyant gestures of Zambian Sign Language. She chuckled with delight at the difference between the word for bath in Kenya Sign Language—splashing oneself—and ASL—scrubbing oneself with circular motions.

Lawrence's integration into the little known culture of the Deaf has enriched and blessed her life beyond measure. She exudes buoyant joy. She is also a champion for Deaf Culture and defends it with a little bit of an edge: "You're calling it [deafness] a handicap, and they're [Deaf people] calling it a cultural group of people," she states."In Europe and the United States deaf people are called deaf and dumb. Well, it's their language that's causing hearing babies who learn American Sign Language—ASL—to have higher IQs."

Lawrence's vast experience within Deaf Culture bespeaks her integration, love and respect. Her involvement includes traveling extensively with Deaf drama mission group The Tenth Coin; producing a TV documentary for Kenya Deaf Culture and language acquisition; developing a hearing curriculum for the Minneapolis Chapter of the American Red Cross; studying health care interpreting at the College of St. Catherine; pioneering an HIV/AIDS prevention class to deaf Zambians; volunteering at a Deaf nursing home and acting in a video, "Signing in the Workplace."

For further information about Book of Acts Church or about preverbal infant sign language classes, Lawrence can be reached at 612-521-SIGN (7446) or signsofbaby1@aol.com.