The DMI blog aims to let people know about the deaf kids, teachers, pastors, schools and churches that DMI supports in developing countries, and encourage support for them by telling their amazing stories. Please share this blog with your friends.
It’s a funny thing, what we want.
It seems to be human nature to want what we can’t have and to have what we don’t really want; to see and long for (covet, really) the qualities we find in others without seeing the qualities in ourselves that others might find and long for. The grass so often seems greener on the other side.
This was the case with Faith.
Faith Marineas was born with a genetic anomaly. Yes, she was born deaf but that’s not the anomaly that was of primary concern to her. In a country where everyone has brown eyes, Faith was a Filipino born with blue eyes. She was bothered horribly by this for most of her life, feeling that this condition ostracised her from her community more than her deafness.
Not surprisingly, many of her friends and acquaintances thought Faith’s blue eyes were stunning and any of them would have loved to have had such an ‘affliction’. But for Faith, having blue eyes has been like having a visible disease, and she felt embarrassed whenever people looked into her eyes.
Her anxiety only increased one day when an ABS-CBN TV crew came to the school to investigate ‘the girl with the blue eyes’. There had been no call. Just one day a TV crew was there at the gates. The teachers were very wary about this because there had been a rumour at the time about a van driving round ‘collecting’ people for organ transplants. The school was sure to get parental consent for the TV interview and then everyone had to wait an hour for her father to arrive to oversee it. The whole event and focus on her eyes made Faith feel even more self-conscious than she had felt before.
But Faith has overcome.
Through the church and school community at DMI’s Fishermen of Christ Learning Centre in Ligao, God has taught Faith that He made her just the way He wanted to make her, and that the colour of her eyes is a gift from God just like all her other attributes. So she has finally come to be happy with her blue eyes because those are the eyes that God has given her.
With a new-found confidence, Faith has gone on to make many friends, to excel in her studies and to grow in her faith. In fact, she is now one of the student leaders in chapel time. She used to feel nervous doing this but now she is used to it and loves to stand up the front and lead the worship in sign-song.
Faith loves signing and the bond it creates with others in the deaf community, and has become very proficient at it. She recently entered a regional signing competition where she came in 4th. She said she could have come 3rd but she was too embarrassed to give the answer to the final question (which she knew) so had to settle for 4th. I’m kicking myself I never asked her what that question was and now it’s one of those things that keeps me up at night.
It’s funny how our perspective can distort what is important.
This is true of Faith. For a long time she was consumed with differences in her outward appearance rather than looking on the inside. The colour of her eyes appeared as a much bigger obstacle to her than her deafness, and this inhibited her whole learning progress – educational and spiritual. Once she gained a right perspective, she was able to become the person God always intended her to be.
It’s funny how our perspective can distort what is important.
This is true of us as well. We might be tempted to look at the external at the expense of the internal – the physical appearance of a person and a cursory knowledge of their background, and be ‘deaf’ to their real needs. And this might lead us to decide that one child is more (or less) worthy or in need of support than another.
Faith has enjoyed the wonderful support of a loving family, is beautiful, popular and clever. We might be tempted to think that somehow Faith needs support less than others with a more dramatic past like Little Neville (Blog #10) or Marcelino (Blog #14) Yet without support from her sponsors and DMI’s school in Ligao, Faith would be left unable to communicate with those around her, uneducated, without hope for meaningful employment, and most of all, without a knowledge of the gospel. Potential gone horribly to waste.
Know that all deaf kids in developing countries, regardless of their appearance or background face a very empty, lonely, frustrating future unless they are sponsored and given the opportunity to learn, to work and to know Christ.
DMI is for all deaf kids and gives them all the chance to fulfil their God-given potential educationally, vocationally and spiritually.
Update on the fence at DMI’s school in Myanmar.
Back in Blog #8, I shared how DMI’s school for the deaf in Myanmar was in desperate need for a new fence (https://www.testimonies.deafmin.org/8-pa-lian/). Thanks to supporters of this blog, the funds came in and the fence will be built. The materials are now all in and when the kids break for holidays in the coming weeks, the fence will be built.
I’ll post more photos of the fence once it’s finished. Thank you so much once again to all those who contributed.
If you would like to know how you can support Faith, any of the kids or teachers, or help meet any of DMI’s needs, please click on the donate button on the top right of the page, or mail to info@deafmin.org
Comments