A Tender Mercy

Last night we went to a baptism of Sumalar.  She is 29 and happens to be deaf.  A wonderful member has translated for her for numerous years now, but has never talked religion as she didn't feel it was professional.  Another friend she made is the one who began to talk to her about the church, gave her a Book of Mormon and then found the missionaries for her when she wanted to know more.  This is where the interesting part is.  Elder Cluff and Elder Heywood are the two missionaries in that area.  We dont know of any other deaf people being taught by any of our missionaries-at least during the time we have been here-and we are not aware of any of our 200 missionaries that sign.  BUT-Elder Cluff has a deaf brother and Elder Heywood has a hearing impaired sister (we didn't know any of this before).  Neither of them is fluent in sign, but both are very familiar with the deaf community and certainly in interacting with them.  I dont believe its a coincidence that the two of them were put together and just happened to be in her area--lets just call it a tender mercy.

The ward she is in is a singles ward.  The young members are all so excited to support Sumalar that they have started a sign class, and those who spoke or offered a prayer at the baptism had all learned to sign while doing it.  There was such a great feeling there.  During the time when they were changing after the baptism, different people got up and shared the experience of Joseph Smith's vision in different languages---Korean, Portuguese, sign, Spanish---then someone talked about how the language of God is not a certain language, it is the language of the Spirit.  And we all felt it speaking to us.