My Testimony (continued)

AHHHHH! Has it really been that long since I blogged? I guess it has. I've been procrastinating, unfortunately. Anyways, I've typed it up for I'm also doing the "milestone" story for an assignment for school. I've done everything except the conclusion, which will come shortly. But anyways, I'm just going to paste that paper for school below. There are a few repeats of what I've said before in the last two parts of this testimony, but I believe you'll understand it anyway. God is good all the time, and all the time God is good.

God Bless
Bria

Read on:

It was Sunday in the week of July 17, 2002. The previous week I had gone to Camp with my church. There were competitions, services, food, fellowship, friends—everything. I recall using the room behind the Snack Shack as a dorm room with a girl named Alyssa and another named Heather. There were other girls there also.

It was at camp that year that I met Alyssa. I had forgotten her last name once while we were walking around the campgrounds. Suddenly, almost randomly, she suggested that we go to the skate-park thing. I stopped. We were between the volleyball court and the field.

“No way. There’s someone there I don’t feel like being around,” I said immediately.

“Who?” She asked.

“Oh. A guy from my school. His name’s Adam.”

“Adam…?”

“Cochran.”

She laughs. It slowly dawned on me, “Hey…wasn’t HER last name Cochran too?” Oops.

I experienced more comical episodes like this as the week went on. I distinctly remember one of our group competitions. It was one where seemingly random people from each team chose a paper bag with a point value written on its outside. The unlucky person then had to eat what was inside in order to gain those points for their team.

I caught the ball, unintentionally in fact. I really did not want to eat/chew anything, for braces had been put on my teeth just a month and a half beforehand. I prayed a quick prayer before choosing a bag. The point values ranged from 100 to 500. Not wanting to get the worst substance, but also wanting to help my team, I chose a bag labeled 400.

It was clam juice. I quickly unscrewed the container and moved it to my lips. I did not really know how it would taste or what to expect, but I chugged it anyways, too quickly to consciously analyze the juice’s effect on my taste buds.

I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue when I was done, as if to prove nothing was left in my mouth. I thankfully accepted the cup of water handed to me, and chugged it too. It was at this time I realized just how disgusting the drink was.

It was SALTY. Completely and utterly. Entirely salty. And it “saltified” my mouth for the rest of the week. I did gain my team 400 points, but was it worth it? I don’t know. My team still missed first place by about 50 to 100 points.

That first week passed by fairly quickly. It was extremely fun. But in the back of my mind I had this strange nagging feeling. I had a longing to know, in essence, what I was going to be when I grew up. I decided after the first couple days to ask God for a sign, like Gideon in the Bible. The trouble was, what to ask? I pondered maybe something like, “If my team wins I’ll be a missionary” or “If our teams tie I’ll do something else.” But it just didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to be a missionary. I didn’t know what I wanted to be.

In a very remote portion of my brain I usually don’t visit was “sign language.” I did not consciously consider this, but I am absolutely positive that it was there.

I had truly first been exposed to sign language as a little girl. My mom had taken it in college and taught me the alphabet when I was really little, like 3 or 4. I enjoyed it, but my memory of this wonderful means of communication soon faded, but it didn’t leave my thoughts completely.

At camp I was exposed to sign language again. I was taught movements to Shout to the Lord that were not “official” but I liked them anyways, and whenever that song was played, I tried to sign along with the words.

A year or so after that I learned the chorus to I Could Sing of Your Love Forever in “official” sign language, taught by a woman named Joyce. I also enjoyed signing with this song.

Once when I signed Shout to the Lord, many kids surrounded me, watching. I closed my eyes and felt suffocated, but I kept signing. Another time, I was nominated to go to the front of the room and sign I Could Sing of Your Love Forever. I felt very uncomfortable and out of place when the leader, actually Joyce, did the words to all of the verses where I only knew the chorus. Despite these occurrences, I felt an attraction to sign language.

I love sign language and have a sort of a knack for it. I am a visual and kinesthetic learner, and strangely enough sign language incorporates both of these things. When I learn a new sign, I first look at the picture in my dictionary and read the hand motions before signing it out. I am able to remember it very easily. My hands are somewhat huge and I have long fingers, making it very easy for me to sign. Trouble was, why on earth was I made this way? For what reason? For what purpose?

At the end of the first week I had still not received a sign of truly any sort. I went home with Heather’s family while my family (except for my dad) stayed at camp. I had an orthodontist appointment that I needed to go to. On Sunday, after church, my dad took me to his work with him. Angie and two of her friends (a guy named Chad and his fiancé) picked me up from there and drove me to camp. I had my paperback sign language dictionary with me, the only one I owned at that time, and was taking it to camp for the very first time.

Starting in my dad’s office and continuing on the ride over, I taught myself the verses of I Could Sing of Your Love Forever. Word by word, piece by piece, until I knew that I knew it.

During the drive up there, I experienced a miracle. We were in the middle of pouring rain inside a really small car. The heat inside the car began to fog up the windows. Plus, my cousin Angie was not the best driver—she was only 19 or 20 and had already been in three or four accidents, with only one not being her fault. We were desperate.

“Angie, pray for the rain to stop.” It was Chad speaking.

“Why can’t you?”

“Because you need to increase your faith.” He was speaking with an encouraging voice, not a degrading one.

She whispered quietly.

“Louder!”

She spoke normally.

“Louder!”

She was yelling now, “Lord, please make this rain stop!”

Immediately the sun came out and the rain stopped. It was amazing. Angie seemed shocked, and so did I.

By the end of the two-and-a-half hour trip, I knew every single word of I Could Sing of Your Love Forever that my dictionary actually had.

When we finally reached camp, I went to my dorm. I was in Tefteller B, the same as Kristen, my friend from prior years. I got a bottom bunk in the back of the room, one bed away from the left wall. It was the one next to Kristen’s.

After I had unloaded my bedding and organized my stuff, Kristen offered me some cookies that were packaged individually. I saved them for later. We then went to dinner.

I recognized few people and decided to sit with them while Kristen went to another table. They guessed my name was Brittney, and one remembered I had given away glow-in-the-dark start to people a couple years before. I enjoyed trying to figure out who they were.

After dinner, we had free time before service. I decided to hang out with Kristen. I had a little trouble finding her, but eventually I succeeded when I spotted her in the gazebo with a couple guys. I felt uncomfortable as I saw someone sneak her a knife. She asked me to follow her back to the dorm. I did. You see, Kristen was two years older than me, but she was still a great friend. Or so I thought.

We reached the dorm and headed to our beds. She asked me to move so that I was between her and the door. She then pulled out the knife.

“What are you doing?” I asked in almost extreme puzzlement.

“Oh, just carving my name into the bed. Hey! Please stand there so that if someone enters the room they won’t know what I’m doing.”

I didn’t know what to do. I was twelve, she was fourteen. I didn’t want to make her angry with me or get in trouble. I ended up doing nothing about it.

I quietly followed her back, after politely refusing to not carve my name too. The entire way I was in semi-shock, praying that we would not get caught. We didn’t. After that we went to service.

It was the normal introductory night; playing games, explaining the rules, introducing the staff. It was the same speaker as the prior week. During the singing, I did some of my limited sign language, for at that time I knew very little. Up near the front I recall seeing something different, though I wasn’t sure what. There was a rumor that there was a deaf person at camp, but at first I did not truly believe it. I thought it was all a joke; or someone was kidding around with a friend. But my first impression proved false.

The rest of the night was uneventful. I fell asleep not knowing anything that was about to happen.

The next morning we had breakfast and tided up our rooms for inspection. Soon after we went to the Tabernacle.

Kristen wasn’t truly avoiding me completely, but she did not invite me to hang out with her and her guy friends. I began to wonder if coming to camp had been such a good idea after all. You see, my main reason for coming the second week had been to hang out with Kristen, for she was my friend, and had been my hang-out buddy at camp for the past two or three years. But not this year.

Worship started. I was in the front row near the center but a little to the left. I knew the song fairly well. I began to sign and closed my eyes.

I felt a slight tap on my right shoulder. I thought, “Well maybe it’s just an accident. No one would interrupt someone worshiping, would they?”

Another tap. It was getting annoying. I decided to open my eyes and find out who it was.

When I turned, the girl to my right began to sign rapidly. I was in shock. I wasn’t sure how to respond. I thought I might try to sign “slow down” but wasn’t sure I was doing it correctly. When she saw I did not understand her words, she took out a notebook, sat down, and began to write. I sat down too. She handed me the notebook.

“Do you sing?” It said. I was not sure what she meant. I assumed she meant something like “Can you speak?” or “Are you able to hear?”

“Yes.” I handed the notebook back.

“You mom sing?” The notebook read.

“Yes.” I was beginning to wonder if we should continue “talking” or go back to worshiping. I continued to write.

We stopped when the singing was over and everybody sat down. I watched the speaker, listening to the same sermon I had heard the Monday before. My mind drifted, trying to ponder what the week would turn out to be. Full of boredom? Fun? Memories? Purpose? I did not know. I truly had no idea.

When we were dismissed, she followed me and we exited to the left. I signed to her the only thing I could come up with—which was “you me friend.” She nodded. I smiled. I had found a new friend.

We went outside. We had a few minutes before our next activity, so I led her to my dorm. She was older than me, fifteen as I later discovered.

After entering the room and going to my bed, I grabbed my sign language dictionary. I showed her my knitted blanket, and looked up the words for “made” before ‘saying’ “I made” and pointing to the afghan. We were in a dimly lit dorm room, sitting on a neighboring bed to my own.

The day went on. I hardly saw Kristen, and assumed that she did not care that I was hanging out with another person.

I carried around with me my sign language dictionary and she carried around with her a notebook, pen, and sunscreen. In these ways we were able to kind of communicate with each other, though often she didn’t understand me or I didn’t understand her. I finally discovered her name. It was Katrina. Her “sign-language name” was making a “K” with her hand and rotating it in the middle of her chest, a few inches below her neck.

I spent the rest of the day with her, leaving only when we were supposed to gather within our own teams during our team activities. We began to understand each other gradually more and more, and eventually resorted to finger-spelling as our main method of communication. It took a while for me to actually sign out what I wanted to say and to understand what she was saying back to me. She was patient with me, most of the time, and actually began to teach me several words in actual sign language.

I spent the rest of the week with her, interpreting for others and becoming her friend. I met the people who had brought her with them and their church, and they revealed to me several things I had not yet learned from Katrina. First of all, they told me how they had come to camp without anyone who knew sign language at all. They were able to communicate through pen and paper, but were not sure how the teen program would work with Katrina. The reason they had brought her was because they believed that God would provide a way for her to interact with the other people at camp without their help. Later, in a letter about a month after camp, they had told me that I was the answer to their prayer.

Another thing they told me was that Katrina was a foster child. She didn’t actually go to their church, but they knew her and found out she wanted to go to camp.

Bits and pieces of ideas and thoughts began to form together in my mind about the second or third day. I recalled how I had asked God for a sign the prior week. I thought about how it was highly unlikely that I would ever see or interact with a deaf person at camp. I pondered how Katrina had come despite the odds. I remembered how close I was to not coming to camp, and then how I ended up not hanging out with the person I thought I was going to, causing me to be available to hang out with someone else. I remembered that Katrina had been sitting next to me, and with at least one or two hundred other seats around. Then the puzzle pieces finally created a picture, through God’s help, of course.

Katrina was the sign I had been praying for! And through this God told me one thing, giving me my much wanted piece to the puzzle of my future: In some way, shape, or form, I am going to use sign language as a part of my future. Only God knows where this puzzle will fit, but I am willing to trust Him. He will reveal another piece when He knows I am ready, though I do not know when or how.

Through the rest of the week, I expanded my sign language vocabulary more than ever before. And I had a great deal of fun doing it. Now, I must admit, there were some difficulties along the way, but they were soon solved. During services I took notes on what the speaker was saying in Katrina’s notebook, so that she could also understand the message he was trying to get across every day.

At the end of the week, we had to go our own ways, me back to my house—her back to her home in Virginia. I have not seen her since then, nor do I expect to see her again. All I possess as memories of that week are a couple pictures of Katrina and my notebook for that week, which I used to talk to her once or twice. Nothing else remains, yet I still remember what happened two years ago as clear as if it was last month.