A day in New Amsterdam...

I recently took a trip up the coast to our sister sister sign language group in New Amsterdam to join them for some ministry. We dont know these guys too well, as we only see them at a monthly combined meeting and at the assemblies. I thought it might be nice to spend some time and experience their ministry.




N.A is a very different territory to ours. Whilst we spend most of our time on public transport travelling up and down the coast, they are able to use bikes to get around, saving a huge amount of money. I am not sure about turning up everywhere more sweaty than one must, but for the fiscal benefits, I can see the merits. They do this thing called 'towing' here, where two or more people share a bike. Kortel managed to convince me to do it for part of a walk as we were late - so weird!








In addition, their deaf are quite different. Whilst none of our deaf have ever attended school nor learnt any formal sign language, the deaf in N.A are a mixed bunch. Many have been through the 'special school' in the town, which says it teaches in ASL, but in reality they just write on the board and the deaf copy in English. This results in many of them signing ASL but not having a clue what they are really saying. This is dangerous as foreigners look at them, think they are competent in ASL and teach them as they would back home - which doesn't work!

Below is a picture of Robin preparing his Bible reading for Thursday. He doesn't own a DVD player, so has to watch the film and copy word for word in a drawing-hieroglyph notation. Poor lad didn't have a clue what he was signing sadly.





This was a call of Nikki's (girl from Ireland) in the English. Miss Patsy is her name, thank you very much. Very proper lady who hd some really deep questions. In one conversation we discussed the Seventh Day Adventists, tithing, the Anti-Christ, the rocks crying out and what happens to the sun when it goes into the sea...! Yes really. No disrespect meant, it just highlights the lack of education out here. We had to give her a demonstration about the earth moving and prove to her that the sun stays still - she still isn't convinced.


A great day had. I'm going to try and go up once a month or so to give a different element to my ministry and maybe to try and help give ideas to the brothers on how to teach the younger ones with ideas from work and bethel.

Fun day.