cjones's blog

So why three parts? Because I had more thoughts than I had time at a time to write. And because what I wanted to say falls roughly into three points: background, what's going on now, and the obligatory abstract reflections.

Incidentally, this is Christopher writing.

In a previous post I talked about our difficulties finding an interpreter for church, and I mentioned some of the reasons why we think it's important to have one. Let me just say: thank God for the men in our church. Here's why.

We recently changed churches. When we moved from the 'burbs to the city we were much closer to another church in the same denomination. So it seemed to make sense to make a move. We were worried about what would happen with all the work we'd done with our session, but decided to at least visit the closer church to say 'hi, we're in the neighborhood.'

Amid all the searching and learning we've done since we discovered Ellis was deaf, the biggest issue for us, the elephant in the room, always was what to do about church.

Anyone who knows us well knows that we take church very seriously. J and my own experiences growing up in the church were typical of what we call "covenant children". We believe that our children are Christians, and ought to be treated as such, until they prove otherwise. That means that children are taught at a very young age to participate in every aspect of public and private worship.

It's amazing. Simply amazing. We've been agonizing over how to find an interpreter for our church services. Having made no progress, we turned the project over to Mom, and within a few weeks she has made more progress than we've made in many months.

Well, Jeannette was in Lancaster to relax. I was there to work. Ellis went off with Nick so that I could hang shelves unencumbered. Of course, I wasn't finished before E returned, so he ended up helping me with the last stages of the work. He actually was quite good with the drill. I held it and he pulled the trigger. He got the low screws and I got the high ones.