By Zee Gimon.
When Moscow First Church of the Nazarene, Russia, began welcoming deaf and hard-of-hearing people into the congregation, members became later aware that deaf and hard-of-hearing children in a local orphanage were not adopted as readily as the hearing children, and couldn’t even communicate with their caregivers at the orphanage. Tatiana “Tanya” Cantarella, pastor and missionary in the CIS Field, decided it was time to do something about that.
To more effectively communicate with the 15 or so hearing impaired people attending Moscow First, Tanya and several other church members had taken sign language courses until they became fluent in the language.
Some of their deaf and hard-of-hearing friends volunteered at this local orphanage where 14 hearing impaired or deaf children lived. Tanya learned that none of the caregivers knew any sign language, and there was no special teacher for these children. This caused problems and miscommunication issues within the orphanage, in particular for the older boys and girls. They did study at a special school, but besides that, there was little communication with their caregivers.
Since Tanya and her husband, Davide, were actively involved in the adoptive parenthood field, Tanya became interested in helping with a trip planned for potential adoptive parents and children from that orphanage to Kazan, Russia. The idea was for the adults and kids to travel together, get to know each other in an informal setting and, possibly, new families would be forged as a result. There were kids with hearing problems in the group, and so Tanya and two other people from Moscow First Church joined the team to help with interpretation and making a video.
“After we got back from the trip and I had a chance to get to know these special children, I thought that if they get adopted by parents who don’t have problems with hearing, this would only solve half of the problems, and there will be miscommunication issues still,” she said.
There is a common myth that if one teaches sign language to the child, he or she won’t be able to learn spoken Russian. The statistics and facts reveal just the opposite. Nevertheless, because of this myth, parents in Russia (and other CIS Field countries) don’t feel it is necessary to learn sign language to communicate with their children, even if that is the standard practice in other countries.
Another myth that deaf/hard-of-hearing people believe is that they cannot legally adopt children. Which is just that: a myth, not supported by any laws.
So, Tanya developed a dream: “It would be so amazing if deaf parents could adopt children with hearing problems.”
She contacted an Internet portal for deaf and hard-of-hearing people called gluxix.net (literally means “there are no deaf people”) and they did an interview with Tanya, in which she spoke in sign language about the rights of deaf people, particularly the fact that they can be adoptive parents. They also interviewed five deaf/hard-of-hearing children in sign language.
This interview was the trigger for the deaf/hard-of-hearing community to begin exploring adoption.
“There was a lot of feedback as well as many questions. Since the questions were similar in nature, I invited everyone who was interested in coming to a meeting to discuss all concerning issues,” says Tanya.
The meeting took place December 2015 at the orphanage, and 16 deaf people came. The questions discussed included volunteering at the orphanage and what kind of help is needed.
“Simply going to the orphanage once in a while to bring kids presents and to organize some fun events for them isn’t just not helpful, it’s actually harmful. The only real help for these children is to place them into families,” Tanya said.
As the result of this meeting, some people have volunteered to teach the orphanage caregivers sign language and the orphanage director has agreed to hire a special teacher for deaf and hard-of-hearing children.
By Russian law, people who want to take in children have to go through a certain training before they can adopt. The orphanage regularly conducts these classes, but they are always geared toward the hearing people.
One of the great results of the December meeting was the organization of the first school for adoptive parents for deaf/hard-of-hearing children, which took place in spring of 2016. In the summer, a couple from the school adopted one of the boys. Another lady, from the Moscow Bible Church, who took the adoptive parents’ classes before, adopted a 16-year-old deaf girl from the orphanage, as well. All but two of the other deaf/hard-of-hearing kids were taken by hearing families. Of the two children left, one boy is waiting for his birth mother to recover her parental rights, and another girl has turned 18, so she is technically old enough to live on her own.
Such were the results of a year of hard work. Currently, a second group of deaf/hard-of-hearing people is taking the adoptive parents class. Since all the deaf/hard-of-hearing kids were adopted from the orphanage where it all started, right now the team is looking for other orphanages that have children with hearing problems who are available for adoption.
Doors open to the deaf: how it began
It all began a few years ago, right before Christmas, when the leaders of the Moscow First Church of the Nazarene were getting ready for an annual community outreach event.
One of the things the church traditionally does is invite people who are not members for the evening. Usually the invitations were done through a social welfare organization. The church prepared gifts for those who were in the at-risk group, such as people with disabilities, low-income families, and people with other needs.
The social welfare service mentioned there was a group of deaf and hard-of-hearing people who were interested in joining the event and even had their own interpreter.
“Can they come?”
“Of course, they can,” the Moscow church said.
On the day of the event, 10 people sent by the welfare organization showed up to the gathering and they loved it. They started coming to Sunday worship services; the sign language interpreter came, too, to help them understand what was being said. They invited their friends, and sometimes there were up to 15 deaf or hard-of-hearing people who joined the morning services.
Going deeper
After a while, several challenges arose. First: the interpreter could no longer help out. The second, a much deeper issue, was that even though the church tried to visualize as much of the service as possible, Tanya realized that to serve these people better as a pastor, she needed to understand what they were saying without an interpreter as a mediator.
So Tanya decided to take sign language classes. After a while, two more young ladies from Moscow First joined the class.
“I fell in love with the sign language,” Tanya said. “As I studied it deeper, I dived into the world of deaf/hard-of-hearing people. Before that, I only knew those who came to our services, but these classes have broadened my horizons beyond the church.”
Altogether, it took Tanya three 10-week courses and a lot of practice over a two-year period to learn to “speak” the sign language fluently.
“As I got to know the deaf culture, their daily lives and struggles, their way of life, I realized that it’s not even enough to have a ministry for the deaf people. What these people needed was a ministry of deaf people to other deaf people,” says Tanya. “All our efforts in trying to translate everything led to the understanding that for these people to truly feel a part of the community, to grow strong in faith, they needed to ‘hear’ it from someone who knew what a life of a deaf/hard-of-hearing person was like.”
Over time, this group of deaf/hard-of-hearing people, one by one, has disappeared from the church. The reasons were different – some moved to another city to live, some simply stopped coming, some died (since there were a lot of older people).
This saddened the church leaders.
“But, Lord, we have spent so much effort and time on preparing ourselves to serve these people, and now they are all gone?” they asked God, wondering what happened, why did it happen, and what could be done.
God, however, was busy at work on something greater: When the door to serving deaf/hard-of-hearing people in the church was closed, another door opened to serve those people outside of the church.
