Last week Dewayne Liebrandt arrived to work with the deaf church. The hearing church where they had been meeting needed the space and so we had to relocate them. So the deaf church is currently meeting in a school. It is rather awkward as they have to set up everything Sunday morning then tear it down after the service, but at least they have a place to meet and things are going well.
With brother Dewayne I attended the deaf church this past Sunday. There is not translation as the entire church service from start to finish is conducted in Colombian Sign Language. I thought it might be boring for me as I would not understand anything, but it was fascinating to watch and to see how they had organized their own services. The attendance was good and we had about forty persons there for the service. That is down some, but then that was to be expected after the move. The new location has much more difficulty with transportation so it is harder for many of them to get there.
We are now looking forward to the future and making the important decisions as to our next steps. We are looking at the possibility of renting a store front for them to use or in searching for a new church that they might affiliate with and where they could use their space. It should be a busy week as we will be deeply involved with this project. Keep the deaf church in your prayers as we are excited about the possibilities and aware of the difficulties. But we trust that God will bless this new outreach into the deaf community here in Colombia and we are excited to be a part of this new work.