All signs point to success
By Jackie Perrone jacper@juno.com

Richard Waddell laughs with one of the Jamaican children at The Caribbean Christian Center for the Deaf in Kingston, Jamaica.Waddell was part of the Cornerstone Presbyterian Church mission trip to Jamaica to teach deaf children sign language.

Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Irmo has very special reasons for sending missionaries to the schools for the deaf in Jamaica.

Two young people in this community church are profoundly deaf. Their families and fellow congregants have made it a project to learn sign language, making church life inclusive for their young deaf members.

So it was a natural gravitation to church work among the deaf for this group of dedicated Christians. The deaf children at the school in Jamaica were amazed by an entire group of visitors who are fluent in sign language, which made their Vacation Bible School has been a big success.

Rick and Missy Waddell of Irmo, along with their three children, made their first trip with the group to Kingston, Jamaica, last July, to present Bible School under the auspices of the Caribbean Christian Center for the Deaf.

"Jamaica has a very high percentage of deaf people," said Missy Waddell. "Not always from birth, but many lose their hearing because of poverty and lack of medical care. Signing is the way we can communicate with them."

"We live on campus for the week, and the children come stay with us. The cost of riding a bus everyday was out of reach for many. We have chipped in to make it possible for them to spend the week with us."

The Cornerstone group of about 15 will be back in Jamaica July 21 - 28, 2007. This year they are bringing along a water pump to help with one of the basic equipment problems at the school.

"We focus on Bible School," said to Missy. "The Caribbean Christian Center for the Deaf does a lot of wonderful work there. They sponsor three schools for the deaf, and other groups assist with medical care and other needs."

The Waddells see providential help developing in their lives. They were attracted to Cornerstone Church, where signing is a way of life, before their daughter was born deaf. And Missy Waddell had lived near a deaf educator, Barbara Porter, in her childhood. When they faced the realities of rearing a deaf child, Waddell knew immediately where to go for help.

"Barbara taught us sign language in regular lessons," she says. "You work on a few vocabulary words each week, and she taught us to do the signing all the time whenever we were speaking, in order to make it second nature for us."