Deaf Initiative Update, October 2021 - From Initiative to Ministry

We are thankful for you! All of you—our individual supporters, as well as the churches and organizations that partner with us—are making it possible for the Christar Deaf Initiative to move forward.

Several years ago, God gave Christar a growing concern about the Deaf, especially those in least-reached communities. Most of our workers were ministering among hearing people, yet the Lord brought Deaf people across their paths. Some of our workers were burdened to reach out to the Deaf in their areas of service, but most of them did not know how. So Christar staff began to pray, which eventually led to the birth of the Deaf Initiative.

Some of you have prayed along with Christar and have been supporting the Deaf Initiative even before it fully took shape. Some of you are new prayer partners and supporters of this project. We are deeply grateful for all of you; your prayers and support mean so much to us.

I’d like to share with you about a Christian organization that supports ministries like ours in a special way. The BLESS Foundation partners with businesspeople to raise funds to reach the unreached with the gospel. Each year, they choose five ministries’ projects to support. We are so thankful that in 2020, BLESS selected Christar as one of the ministries to receive a substantial grant, which was given to further the Deaf Initiative.

In September, BLESS held an event called the “Bond Fire” at which their donors could meet people from the ministries they support. What a privilege it was for me and a few other representatives from Christar to go down to Austin and interact with some of these donors in person!

Although COVID-19 delayed progress in several aspects of the Deaf Initiative, we are praying that we will move ahead in each of them soon. One of these initiatives is translating the Bible study Through God’s Eyes into American Sign Language (ASL). We’re currently in talks with three Deaf believers who are interested in working on this project. Two of these men worked to help create the American Sign Language Version Bible and translated large portions of Bible books into ASL: One did Numbers, 2 Samuel and 2 Kings; the other did half of Isaiah. When they worked on those books, they didn’t just convert the text word for word from English. Instead, they intensely studied those books and memorized the content so they could translate them into ASL, using ASL concepts and grammar. What a huge task! They have a good understanding of the process of translating books into ASL on video. In addition, one of these men as well as the third Deaf believer with whom we’ve been talking are also pastors. We value their expertise and their Bible knowledge as we seek to produce a resource that will help to mobilize Deaf believers to take the gospel to the least-reached Deaf.

We are so thankful to the BLESS Foundation for their grant, which includes funding for translating Through God’s Eyes into ASL. We are also grateful to all of you who are individual supporters as some of your gifts will enable us to complete editing process of the resulting videos. This will be a long project as we work to produce a professional-quality resource. When it’s completed, our goal is to not keep it for ourselves, but to share it with Deaf churches, Deaf individuals and other Deaf ministries to use as a Bible study on God’s heart for missions. Please pray for us as we undertake this huge endeavor. Thank you!