Scriptures for all at Bogotá’s school
for the deaf

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The Bible Society publications used at Bogotá’s Colegio Filadelfia para Sordos (Filadelfia School for the Deaf) have won approval not only from pupils and teachers but from the pupils’ parents as well.

Students at the Colegio Filadelfia para Sordos (Filadelfia School for the Deaf) enjoy conversation through sign language on a sunny day in Bogotá. The school was the first in the country to use sign language as a means of instruction. Bogotá, Colombia. Photo: UBS/Larry Jerden (COL01DJ-46.JPG)

“The Bible Society has provided us with a lot of good materials,” says Patty Jones, the missionary founder and principal of the school, “but we are especially interested in those with illustrations. We use the Bible with pictures that look like comics because it is easy for the students to go from the illustrations to the text and so gain a better understanding of what they are reading.”

“We use a lot of Scripture Portions and Bibles from the Bible Society,” adds Assistant Principal Solange Prieto, “and they are making a difference. We use the series Let’s Learn and Heroes of Faith, a New Testament series which allows children to learn while they paint, and we are planning to use the David video with a painting competition. The parents are very happy with the academic instruction, the spiritual formation and the biblical instruction.”

The 186 pupils attending the Colegio Filadelfia para Sordos range in age from two to 17 years old. Finance is provided by parents’ fees (US$30 per month), the sponsoring church and Christian supporters from both Colombia and the United States.

The school started from a vision. Ms Jones felt called to Colombia while attending Christ for the Nations Institute, a missionary training school, in Dallas, Texas.

Serve the deaf

“We undertook a mission trip to Colombia, and while I was here I really felt I would come back, but I didn’t know in what way. I really didn’t have any idea of working in a church or school. I just wanted to see how I could serve the deaf.”

When she arrived in Colombia, she found that sign language was not allowed in the schools and that they used lip-reading instead.

“We started a pilot program to show that sign language was a viable – and we think the most effective – way for the deaf to be educated,” she says.

“We started in a church building, with six students and a faculty of three – a deaf person, a hearing person, and myself!”

The sign language experiment proved a success and today the school is the only institution for the deaf in Colombia to be registered for children from kindergarten age to the eleventh grade.

Its work does not end with 17-year-olds, however. The principal emphasises the school’s total involvement with its students’ families – most of whom are very poor.

“Every Saturday from 9 a.m. until noon we have a workshop for parents,” she says. “For two hours we give them information and lectures, then we have an hour of sign language. During the two-hour session we give them all kinds of information about family life and Christian living.”

Patty Jones, a Texas missionary who founded the Colegio Filadelfia para Sordos (Filadelfia School for the Deaf) in Bogotá, shows the Illustrated Bible that helped change the life of one of her students. Bogotá, Colombia. Photo: UBS/Larry Jerden (COL01DJ-43)

Bible Society publications play their part at these sessions, too: because many of the parents have reading skills no better than their children’s, the Bible Society’s illustrated Scriptures again come in useful. And the teacher who runs the parent program contacted the Bible Society about the possibility of presenting the parents with a copy of the Bible at their graduation ceremony, and the Society gladly agreed.

“They were all very grateful for the Bibles,” says Ms Jones, “and since then several of them have become Christians. That was very special to all of us.”

She is especially gratified by the readiness of the Roman Catholic parents to accept the Scriptures.

“The Catholic parents have accepted the Bibles very well,” she says. “Even though we do not use the Apocrypha, they know it is the same Bible. We have seen a lot of parents beginning to read the Bible, too, and this has brought them into a better relationship with Jesus, whether they are Catholic or evangelical. We have even used the Bible House for our high school dinner. It is a very nice facility.”

It sounds as though the Colombian Bible Society and the Filadelfia School for the Deaf will be working together for a long time to come. (WR 372/2 - 11.02)