Egg Hunts

Pictured above is one of His precious Deaf ones!

Sometimes we’ll go into a village with one goal:  go door-to-door looking for deaf people.  This always proves to uncover those who are hidden, isolated, unwanted, or shamed. Society has its way of telling us how to respond to certain situations. Often, in our work, we see an unspoken shame in having a deaf child. It’s ridiculous. Reality is the deaf child is all too often the blessing in the family. Jeff Harter started terming these times of searching for deaf people, “egg hunts.”  He said, “It’s just like Easter egg hunting. One searches and searches for this prized treasure – a beautifully decorated creation that excites us, and there are no two alike.  When found, there’s such excitement, and everyone celebrates.”   It’s true – our scouting for deaf people brings us indescribable joy when one is found!  You see, we know God gives us favor in finding these deaf ones because He’s got plans – great plans – for their lives.  He wants His love to be known and manifested in EVERY life.  How awesome it is that He left this sharing of His love in our hands…the church.  May we be diligent in loving, and to some extent remember that we all need to be about Easter egg hunting!

The following is the retelling of Chris Scearbo's experience with us on an egg hunt:

On the first full day in Honduras, the Signs of Love (SofL) staff, Alissa, and I went on an "egg hunt." This was something I had never done before. An egg hunt is where SOL staff go door to door, asking if there is anyone in the community who is deaf. Upon finding deaf kids and adults in a community, they will then bring the gospel and love to these people. The plan for the day was to go to the neighboring community of La Ceiba. It was Alissa and me, Rachel, Kathryn, and Jessie, as well as Orlan, Yenny, Nancy, Marvin, Eduin, and Leo.

We pulled up to a gas station/convenience store to park the cars. We must have been standing around for 10-15 minutes discussing who is with who, and what side of the street people were taking. Who is going with Orlan? Who is going with Jessie? Who is going with Kathryn? No one could make any decisions. I had nothing to contribute to this discussion, so I just stood near the side of the road and watched.  Coming from a business world of such structure in each day, I was used to more pre-planning.

While decisions were still being made, this older Honduran man came up to me on a bike and reached out for my hand, so we shook hands. He then made a finger sign and didn't say anything to me. I was super confused, and he then started signing and I realized this dude was deaf! The rest of the group saw this and came over to start talking with him.

Jessie said sometimes they can walk around a neighborhood for hours without finding any deaf people, and here we were on the side of the road and this man came to me! At this point, this whole egg hunt thing seemed pretty easy. Their problem before was that they didn't have me on their team!