Emergency Need for Donations!

Happy Easter, everyone! Well, our building excitement was put on hold for a few months while we dealt with City Hall and a building permit. That is a long story that I won't get into, but I'll just say that they were intentionally making things difficult and we never found out why. It was many months of back and forth, during which time we could not continue with the construction. I did keep quite busy during those months, however, working with the Dominican National Association of the Deaf (ANSORDO), the University of Rochester, Deaf Worlds, and a Dominican university called Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra on a Deaf census project. I had been interpreting virtual meetings with this project for nearly a year, and it was finally time to do the field work. We traveled to six randomly chosen provinces and surveyed nearly 3,000 households in different randomly chosen sectors of each province. It was such a cool experience that allowed me to see so much of the country, including extremely remote areas. We even got stuck in the mud in the middle of no where one day. This was the first population-based census of the Deaf population in the Dominican Republic, and quite possibly the world. The papers reporting the results are currently being written up for publishing. 

In December, we had our annual Christmas celebration. Because we have been raising money for the church construction, we were thinking about having a small celebration this year. We were going to prepare a few small food bags and just have a gathering with those who had been regularly attending church (a growing number, but still recovering from the pandemic) without serving lunch. However, God basically slapped me on the wrist for my lack of faith when He began to touch people's hearts both here in the DR and in the States to donate money, food, clothes, and shoes. We ended up having one of our most amazing celebrations to date with really big food bags for every family, a prepared lunch with so much food that many people took seconds home, toys for each child, and enough clothes and shoes that each individual left with 2-5 articles of clothing. It was absolutely incredible and so much fun!! What an amazing blessing and testimony to how faithful God is!!

Finally, in late January, we got our building permit and were able to start building again! Things have been moving so fast since then! I have been in awe watching each step of the building process. The way these guys have such a well-oiled system to work quickly and precisely is amazing. The next step is to pour the concrete for the ceiling of the first floor. Unfortunately, building anything right now is crazy expensive. Building materials have nearly doubled in price in the last few months. Numbers that we crunched just two months ago are now not even close to the prices we are having to pay. When we priced concrete a couple of months ago, it cost about $80 per cubic meter. Now it costs $120. We thought we had raised enough money to get the first floor to a point that we would be able to use it for our church services, but we now find ourselves quite short. It took a month to get the wood and rebar structures ready to pour the concrete. The wood belongs to the people who put it up, and they are saying that they are going to need it back very soon. If any of you have considered donating but have been waiting for the right time, or if you have already donated and might consider giving something more, now is the time.  You can donate by clicking the "Donate" button on the right hand side of this page. We have some Dominican donors who have committed to donating toilets, windows, doors, etc., but we need to get that concrete poured before we can do anything else.

I know that God's timing is perfect and that if He wants this church built now, that He will touch hearts in order to provide exactly what we need and exactly when. I have been told that God is never late, but He is rarely early. He is always exactly right on time.

Check out these pictures of the building process so far!

As always, I thank you all for your interest in this ministry and for all of your prayers and donations. None of this would be possible without each and every one of you.

Breaking Ground

We broke ground! We are officially building! As soon as we had the blueprints for the first floor in hand, we found a contractor (after going through a few) and he got started that very day. God really does work everything out perfectly. The contractor we settled on is married to the woman we are currently renting the church from, and they live right around the corner. Some of our Deaf church members have experience in construction, and he has agreed to include some on his work team. This church that will be such a blessing for so many has already become an economic opportunity for a few families. 

We are currently starting work on the foundation, which is the most difficult and most expensive part of the whole construction. This will be a 2-3 story cement block building in a country where earthquakes and hurricanes are pretty common occurrences, so we want to make sure we build a strong foundation with good quality materials. Once the foundation is ready, we will focus on the first floor, which will include the church sanctuary, an office, a kitchen, bathrooms, and a couple of small storage rooms. With this, we will be able to move our church services into the new building while we continue fundraising and building the second floor, where we will have classrooms. 

We have been raising money for a while and had some funds for the initial costs, but we now have some immediate needs. I made a table breaking down the material and labor costs required for the foundation of the church, and I am reaching out to all of you to see how you can help. Every little bit helps. Every bag of cement, every rebar, every cinder clock gets us closer to having our own church building. 

If you would like to donate, you can do it through the “Donate" button on the right hand side of this blog. All donations are tax-deductible. You can even set up a recurring donation. Please note that this button does not show up if you are on a cell phone. You must access the blog on a computer. No idea why that is, to be honest.

As we get close to finishing the foundation, I will be sending out another table breaking down the costs to finish the first floor. If everything goes well, we will reach that point in a few months.

Material	Quantity Needed	Cost per unit	Total cost
Bags of cement	600	$6.63	$3,978.00
Rebar 3/8	296	$3.85	$1,139.60
Rebar 3/4	96	$16.00	$1,536.00
Rebar 1/2	98	$7.15	$700.70
Cut wire C-16	200	$2.12	$424.00
Square meters of sand	36	$36.00	$1,296.00
Square meters of gravel	28	$31.81	$890.68

Labor cost

$7,068.39

Grand total for foundation

$17,033.37

A Dream Come True!!!!!

WE DID IT!!!!! We finally got the land for the church!!! It has been a long and often frustrating process, but it's ours! This is the most exciting, most important day of my time here so far. I almost can't even believe it. I have to admit, this whole process has gone on so long that it sometimes felt like some far-off dream. But we also knew that if this was the land that God wanted for His church, that He would be faithful and deliver in His perfect time. And that He did. Soon, we will start construction. We have raised enough money to get started, but we will now be looking for more donations as well as mission teams who want to come down and help with the construction. If either of those requests touch your heart, you can e-mail me at ashelamer@yahoo.com for more information.

While we have been sorting everything out with the land, we found a little place right across the street from the lot available for rent. We opened church in-person in late April. We have continued to do our Friday afternoon Bible study online, but we are holding Sunday morning church in that small space. I have to be honest, I thought we were going to have a hard time figuring out how to fit everyone in there. However, we have had a much harder time than expected encouraging our members to develop the habit of coming to church again. We have a strong group of faithful Deaf leaders who have really stepped up to lead the services, supervise the protocols (COVID numbers have peaked here once again), and encourage their friends to come back to church. A large part of the problem is that the van broke down...again...and we have not been able to pick up the young ones or those who live further away and can't afford public transportation. Not to mention the risk of packing a bunch of people into a small van. We are strategizing and praying for solutions.

For the Bible translation, we decided to work on Luke 22-24. No, we haven't translated chapters 6-21 yet. But with this section, we will at least have the birth of Jesus, the start of His ministry, five of His teachings, and His death, resurrection, and ascension. A good overview for people to use while we continue to work. As I have mentioned before, it is a slow, complex, and extremely interesting process. We have an amazing team, and I am so thankful for the opportunity to be a part of this project.

When the COVID numbers started to go down for a bit and after we got vaccinated, we started to take some short trips to different places around the country. The DR really is such a gorgeous country with so much to offer. It has been a real blessing to see more of it this past year or so.

On a personal note, these last few months have been very difficult. My grandfather got very sick in late March, and I went back to the States for six weeks to help care for him in the hospital. Thankfully, a lot of my work is still virtual, so I was able to be with my family without having to abandon everything going on in the DR. They actually opened in-person church without me! Our amazing pastor and group of fantastic leaders moved us into the new space and opened church the same week that I left for the States. That was very encouraging to me because it showed that all of our work up to this point has paid off. That they can do it without me!

My grandfather started to improve significantly, so I returned to the DR. A couple of weeks later, he got another infection and his heart gave out. This has been a very difficult loss for me and my family. I am so thankful that I was able to travel back to the States for his celebration of life and to spend a couple of weeks with my family and especially with my grandmother. 

Now I'm back in the DR and we were immediately able to purchase the land. As always, I thank all of you for your prayers and your support. None of this would be possible without all of you. I am so ready to get started building this church!!! If you are interested in supporting with your gifts, you can donate online (tax deductible) by clicking the "Donate" button on the right hand side of this page. If you are interested in supporting with your service, you can contact me at ashelamer@yahoo.com.

Our 2020 in a Nutshell

Happy New Year, everyone! Well, here we are on the other side of 2020, tentatively hopeful. It has been a long year that has been interesting, sad, blessed, different, difficult, wonderful, infuriating, and maybe if we keep adding all of the adjectives we can come up with, we'll be able to describe it. I will try to summarize the important topics and events to catch you all up since I've been so undisciplined about writing.

COVID:
The pandemic experience was quite different here than it was in the U.S. for many reasons, but let's not get political right off the bat hahaha. Things here never got as bad as they could have. The government acted quickly and decisively. There were maybe 100 identified active cases in the country when the government shut everything down: borders, businesses, schools, government institutions. Pretty much everything. The total shut down lasted a couple of months, and since then things have slowly gotten back to "normal". There are still many restrictions in place, including mandatory masks and a nightly curfew nation wide. There was a two week period during the first peak when the hospitals here in the capital and in Santiago were completely full, and it has been a problem again since the holidays as cases and deaths have risen dramatically. 

As for the impact on the Deaf community, infections have been surprisingly low, and there have been very few serious cases. I have heard of a few that passed from COVID and COVID-related complications, but none that I know personally. Seeing how the virus has impacted the country, it is honestly a miracle the way that God has taken care of the Deaf community.

Education:

The country has opted to start the school year virtually. I personally think this was a wise choice because a lot of the public schools do not even have running water. Most families can't afford to buy masks even weekly for the students. Keeping things clean and safe would be very difficult.

However, the virtual option has also proved difficult because of the large number of students who don't have access to electronic devices or internet. This digital gap has been somewhat dealt with by a government program that started two years ago in a school by school process of providing tablets or laptops to each student and teacher in the public school system. Almost every student and teacher in the country has received their devices at this point, including the schools for the Deaf and where Deaf students are mainstreamed. The internet is still an issue. Those who have a device and internet receive their classes via Zoom. However, many families do not have/cannot afford to install WiFi in their homes, and others live in areas where there is still no infrastructure to support internet connections. To address this, classes are being recorded and televised daily. The classes for hearing students are also played on the radio. The classes for the Deaf students started late (for many reasons, but let's stick with because they require certain adaptations that took more time), but they have turned out beautifully. A wonderful step towards making an effort for accessibility for the community. The elementary level classes are created separately and completely in Dominican Sign Language. The middle and high school classes are being interpreted using the classes for hearing students.

Each student receives a workbook monthly and must use their classes (Zoom or televised) to complete the workbook and turn it in at the end of the month to be reviewed by their teachers. It certainly isn't a perfect system, but I think it has been a very creative and appropriate solution to the difficulties and barriers of keeping education alive this year.

Living conditions:

Not much has changed for most of the Deaf people I know personally in the way of living conditions. Those who work for the government as teacher's assistants (many of our church leaders) have continued to receive their salary normally throughout the pandemic. The ones who don't work haven't been very affected. The government has provided multiple programs since the start of the pandemic, and some members of the Deaf community have been beneficiaries of these programs (delivering food bags to millions of low-income homes on a regular basis, a $30 USD budget for food monthly, programs to support employees who were sent home, etc.)

The current church:

Early on in the pandemic we had to turn in the keys for our old location. The owner was being (well, always has been) very difficult and it just wasn't feasible anymore. We are currently storing the church's possessions in an empty house owned by a family member for a low monthly price. We maybe could hold services there, but the house is not very big, not in great condition, and is a pretty good hike from the main roads where public transportation routes run. We have been reluctant to open because of this and also because of health concerns for our pastor and our church members. Another factor is the difficulty of organizing our members in groups to limit the number of attendees. This is much more complicated than it may seem...

We still hold our church services via Facebook Live on Sunday mornings and Bible study via Zoom on Friday afternoons. We get pretty good attendance, but a lot of our members and regular attendees have fallen away because of connection issues, electricity issues, loss of interest, and the like. Many of our members really enjoy the Friday Bible studies because they are able to participate, sing, pray, and ask questions. Doing church virtually has also allowed Deaf people from all over the country to take advantage of and participate in our services and Bible studies. In the capital, there are a good number of church options for the Deaf community where sign language is included to differing extents. However, in the other provinces, there are significantly fewer options. Most of the provinces are lucky to have one church. Many Deaf men, women, and children have no knowledge of or are unable to get to the nearest church that is accessible for them. The pandemic forced us to do things virtually, which made church accessible to so many more people! We can never doubt that even in the darkest of times, God is still working in and through it for the good and the glory of His Kingdom! If you are interested in seeing how our services have functioned, you can visit our Facebook page: Fundación para Sordos Manos de Dios.

The new church:

We have our eyes on some land and we have the money to buy! All we would need would be four walls and a roof to start holding church in person again, and we should have enough money left over to at least lay the foundation and get started. We are just waiting on the owner of the lot to get all of the legal papers together. This process has been slow because of the pandemic, but we are hoping and praying to have land very soon! We have a Deaf architect who has agreed to draw up the plans for the new church. We are very excited to construct a Deaf created, Deaf friendly space! If you are interested in donating to the construction project or would like more information, you can e-mail me at ashelamer@yahoo.com.

What I've been up to:
I have been crazy busy this past year. Thankfully, most of my work was able to be transitioned to virtual. I even decided to set up a little studio in my room with a ring light, a white background, and a green background. We continued working on the Bible translation project. This year, we completed our translation of Luke chapters 1-5. We did everything but the actual recording virtually, which was a challenge because sign languages are visual and spacial languages. We were only able to get so much done this year because the pandemic had us all working from home, which allowed us more time to focus on the translation process. 

Doing things virtually also allowed us to include the Deaf Christian leaders from every region of the country in some steps of the process. Much like spoken languages, sign languages have regional dialects. Including the Deaf leaders in the process of standardizing name signs and checking the intelligibility of the translation for each of the regions was very important. We are organizing the distribution process of the DVDs and USBs now!

I also did a lot of virtual interpreting for many people and institutions, including the National Association for the Deaf of the Dominican Republic (ANSORDO). For the first four months of the pandemic, the Minister of Health gave daily press briefings and they were not interpreted. I decided to record a signed summary of the daily information and post it on the church's social media. This was a perfect hook to bring people to our page where we transmit and post our live services and Bible studies as well as short weekly devotions. The following on our Facebook page has increased dramatically, which means more people are being exposed to the Word of God.

If I started to list all of the things I have done this past year, this post would become a novel. I will mention that I was contacted to work as a psychologist for a new crisis hotline that was created during the pandemic to counteract the psychological impact of the pandemic as well as mental health concerns in general. I was hired specifically to work with Deaf people looking for mental health services in Sign Language, but I work with hearing clients as well. It has been such a wonderful and also difficult experience. I receive calls for a whole range of mental health concerns from "sometimes I feel a little anxious" all the way to suicide crises and domestic violence. It has been such an honor to be chosen to take part in this groundbreaking project. Up to now, the country has never had a service like this.

In summary, things haven't been easy, and sometimes it feels like there is no right answer. We are doing what we feel is within our grasp and possibilities to do, but it often feels like it falls short. We could use a lot of prayers for wisdom and direction! I promise my next post will be sooner, shorter, and will include pictures that aren't from Zoom meetings!