Say Hello to Alisson and Dana! They are our two 6th graders this year. We started the year with three 6th graders, but one of our young ladies stopped coming after 3-4 months. We miss her and I’ve been told she will be returning next year and repeating 6th grade.

Alisson is 11 years old and is the oldest of 2 girls. She is a sweet young lady and loves helping her mom at home and being independent. She is very friendly but gets very nervous and self-conscious doing anything publicly. She is in 6th grade for her age and because her parents didn’t want her to repeat a grade, but she is not up to 6th grade level. She knows quite a few signs for things, but is learning now how to spell the names of those signs. She is a little stubborn and finds memorizing spelling boring, so it is slow going, but she is improving! She can do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division with some help sometimes. Unfortunately, word problems are not within her ability to do right now. Because she is “officially” in 6th grade, she technically would continue on to secondary school next year, but we are still waiting to see what is decided. She would not be able to advance in secondary school due to the language barrier, but I’m praying that God directs what is best for her.

Dana is a very social and friendly young lady for the most part. She is deaf and has some other issues, but we have not been able to obtain an official diagnosis for her. I believe she has some residual hearing and would benefit greatly from speech therapy and properly adjusted hearing aids. She can speak some words and lip reads to a degree. She tries learning for the most part but absolutely never accepts being corrected. Dana has a very strong character and issues with following rules. Unfortunately, I often need to deal with situations of an inappropriate nature in her classroom. She has the habit of covering her face and turning away from me the second I try to correct her which blocks me from communicating with her. She completely understands that what she did is not correct, but refuses to acknowledge it and mocks me instead. She has such potential and ability to learn, so it frustrates me when she does this. Unfortunately, her parents pity her disability and do not support me or enforce many rules with her. Because she is officially in 6th grade, we also do not know what is going to happen with her next year. I would prefer she return to us and repeat 6th grade so she can continue learning, but it completely depends on her parents. Please pray for Dana and her family.

#Peru #spanish #deafministry #missions