Mark Gillmore: Hello, Mark Gilmore here once again with our Go Mission podcast.

And it’s a joy to think of gathering with you all, speaking periodically to you, and I hope that you’re encouraged in the gospel advance that God’s doing around the world, and perhaps even in your life.

I’ve got a special privilege here today to be sitting here with Brother Jim Braceland, and that God is using him in the mission field of the deaf.

Sometimes we put various people group names on the unreached in our world, and we think of them maybe in categories of countries or nations or ethnicities.

But we have really a unique mission field that is every bit just as significant, the mission field of the deaf population of the world.

And as we get started here, Jim, would you just share how God connected you with deaf ministry?

Jim Bracelin: I would be happy to.

I was an assistant pastor in a hearing church and had no connection to the deaf world whatsoever.

It turns out that my mother had a deaf uncle, but I don’t know that he ever learned sign language.

He communicated with homespun signs that only the family knew, but nobody really learned official signs to be able to sign to him.

So I had no connection whatsoever.

One Sunday night I was in church, and I was an assistant pastor in a fairly large church, and we had a guest speaker come through.

He was an evangelist and a missionary, and he happened to be a missionary to the deaf.

And he signed and voiced using sign language in his voice at the same time.

I had never seen that before.

We had a deaf ministry in the church we were in, but I really didn’t pay much attention to it.

I didn’t spend any time.

I was working with youth and young couples in a camp ministry.

And that night, God struck my heart that somebody needed to tell the deaf of our area about Christ and give them the Word of God.

And so I began to try to help the Holy Spirit to choose some people from our church who I didn’t think were doing much.

And as I pointed to someone else, God kept pointing to me.

And I finally surrendered that evening, just privately, God and I.

And I said, God, I will learn a gospel track in sign language.

So if I meet a deaf person, I can at least try to tell them how to get to heaven.

I then got a sign language book from the library and began to memorize a gospel track in sign for every word, which was not the way to do it, but I didn’t know what to do, so I just did what I thought I should do.

I memorized that track and then began to pray that God would bring a deaf person into my life.

I would remind God I’m not ready today, so I want you to bring someone in my life but not today.

And I prayed that for—actually, it surprised me because I prayed that for months on end until finally about six months after I had the original burden, I was the coach for a soccer team in our Christian school, and I went out for the first day of practice, and I saw a father waiting to talk to me, and I noticed two new boys running around the field, which I was very excited about.

As he began to speak to me, I noticed a very heavy Scottish brogue in his voice, and he said, We’re from Scotland.

My family and I just moved here to your state, and this is the cheapest private school in the state.

So he enrolled his children.

I found out later that his wife was a believer.

And neither of the boys had ever heard of Christ or trusted Christ, but she encouraged him to put the boys in our school.

As he described to me, their different skill levels and what positions they had played and so on.

I was getting excited.

As he turned to leave, he paused and he turned back.

He said, I almost forgot to tell you, my youngest son is deaf.

And I looked out, and here was a 15-year-old boy.

This was the boy I’d been praying for.

And I realized very, very pointedly the Holy Spirit was letting me know, this is your answer to prayer.

And so with fear and intrepidation, about a week later, I tried my signs.

I did the best I could, and I fumbled and bumbled and did everything wrong you could do.

And I went through the gospel.

It took me 45 minutes to go through Romans Road.

And after I got done, I said, would you like to pray with me?

And he said, yes.

I said, there’s no way you understood that.

I don’t understand it, and I’m the one who signed it.

And so I went through it a second time, and I’ve often said, I don’t know whether I improved or I just cut some parts out, but I got it down to about a 30-minute presentation.

So this deaf teenage boy has been watching me for an hour and a half try to present the gospel in his language.

I asked him the second time, would you like to pray with me?

And he said, yes.

I said, there’s no way you understood.

I said, why don’t you tell me what I just told you?

Because I wanted to know that he had comprehension. he went right through every verse.

I mean, didn’t miss a verse.

I was shocked.

I honestly was stunned.

And I looked at him and I said, do you want to pray with me?

He said, I’ve already told you twice, yes.

And so there I watched my first deaf person sign to receive Christ.

And I realized some very important things that day.

And number one is that God didn’t need me because I didn’t do very well.

I failed miserably with the skill of sign language, but God knew I had a heart for deaf people.

And God brought that deaf boy over 3,000 miles from Scotland to the state that I lived in so that I could give him the gospel.

And it thrilled my soul that God used my weakness, my lack of ability, but a burden to see another person get saved.

But then that lit a fire in my soul that still continues to this day.

Mark Gillmore: I can imagine.

And I love how that, as God began to touch your heart, you still took the step to prepare.

Jim Bracelin: Yes.

Mark Gillmore: Months before.

Jim Bracelin: Yes.

Mark Gillmore: You didn’t feel fully equipped.

You didn’t feel good.

But you took that step.

Jim Bracelin: Never felt ready.

Yeah.

And that’s the other thing I learned, too.

If we wait till we’re ready or we feel qualified, we may never serve.

Right.

And so I took what I had, felt like that boy with the five loaves and the two fish, you know, and just stepped up and said, this is my lunch and I’ll give you what I have.

Mark Gillmore: What a lesson.

Praise the Lord for that.

Now, as you have, how many years ago was that?

Jim Bracelin: That was almost 40 years ago.

Mark Gillmore: Yeah.

Jim Bracelin: About 38 years ago.

Mark Gillmore: Yes.

So 38 years of ministry now among the deaf.

Where has that taken you?

Jim Bracelin: taking you to?

Well, it’s amazing, and it’s actually quite thrilling, really, and scary, to be very honest with you.

I have had the opportunity to go all over the United States from one end to the other, and thankfully been able to meet deaf wherever we’ve gone, and been able to minister to deaf.

But God also opened the door for us to go to Canada.

I tried to get into Canada for years.

There were a number of deaf ministries in Canada.

I sent emails and said, I’d love to come help you if I could.

Never heard anything from them.

And God opened the door.

I had given up on it.

And God opened the door.

A pastor I did not even know reached out to me and asked me to come to a men’s meeting they were doing.

And it involved a number, I think about 12 church plants in through New Brunswick, Nova Scotia area of Canada.

Small churches, but faithful, godly men.

And I went and the church that called me, they had a deaf ministry.

And so we went and he said, I want you to present your work to our men.

And I did.

And I had about a half hour opportunity just to present what we do.

Didn’t think much would come of it, but every one of those guys came to me and said, we would love to start a deaf ministry in our church, which took us back to Canada again for a three-week period.

We spent a week, three different weeks all together in three different churches in Canada.

And God started Deaf Ministries there.

And out of that initial meeting, we now have a couple in Canada that are serving with Silent Word who were affected during those meetings and are missionaries to Canada for us in there.

So that was a blessing.

I was then asked to make a trip to Ukraine to see if there was an opportunity for us there.

And I shied away from that.

I’m not a big traveler.

So I’m a homebody pretty much.

And I was a little nervous about the trip.

But God, we went to Ukraine.

And there was a local church there, Baptist Church Plant, that wanted to see if they could start a deaf ministry.

We went into a little town called Zhitomer, about two hours west of Kiev. and we went, the office of the church was in an apartment that housed deaf people.

And we went there and met, we had that initial week, we went just to see if we could do something.

We had a meeting of almost 200 deaf people that showed up on one night and we were going to try to present the gospel and we didn’t really even know Ukrainian sign language, but we had learned a few signs and we thought, I don’t know what we thought, But we were just going to, again, we’re going to go do what we can do and see what God does.

God directed our path to the key man in that town who housed all the deaf, took care of all their medical needs, got them jobs.

And we met that man, and he liked us for some reason.

And I didn’t offer him a gift, which is typical.

Americans offer a gift of some sort, and then it gets them in with the Ukrainians.

I didn’t offer him a thing.

And we told him we were having this meeting, and we had rented this hall.

And as we got the day before we were going to meet, he said, would you like my interpreter to come?

Which we hadn’t even thought about.

And praise God, we were using translators.

So we’re speaking in English.

We signed American Signs because we felt like it was important for the deaf to know that we knew sign language.

So we signed American Signs, spoke English.

We had a Ukrainian translator who translated for a Ukrainian interpreter.

So this was as close to speaking in tongues as I’ve ever come.

So we literally had four languages almost simultaneously going on at once.

We gave the gospel.

We gave an invitation, and God moved, and there were a number of deaf who came and said they wanted to trust Christ.

And that lit a fire in my heart for Ukrainian deaf.

And then I’ve returned to Ukraine.

I’ve been to Ukraine 14 times and helped with ministries that were already established.

We know of three deaf churches that are in southern Ukraine, which is now Russia at this point in Crimea.

But they’re going strong today.

But we would go and do camps for children and couples camps and family retreats and things like that for the deaf there.

So we’ve been to Ukraine and Canada internationally and then, of course, all across the states.

Mark Gillmore: the need for just the population of deaf worldwide could you give us a sense of just that the global

Jim Bracelin: there are there there’s uh an amazing amount you know people tell me all the time oh we don’t have any deaf in our area about two out of every three or two or three out of every thousand people in america are deaf in foreign countries that number is far larger and i think a lot of it has to do with the medical attention our children get from birth.

Mark Gillmore: Yes.

Jim Bracelin: Or even prior to birth, you know, there’s a lot of tests being done and foreign countries don’t have those kinds of things.

And we found that even in Ukraine, they were giving them a vaccination for something that was causing deafness and they didn’t realize it.

And they’d given it to generations of people and finally found out, this was when Ukraine was under communism, found out that they had been doing it and basically swept it under the rug. but there was a tremendous amount of death in that country.

Other countries that are impoverished, there’s a large number of death.

Typically in those countries, they don’t consider that deaf person a person.

They consider them a thing.

Parents will not feed them.

They don’t clothe them.

They won’t house them.

They just leave them.

And so there’s a lot of efforts made by good American missionaries or missionaries in general.

I should say American, but missionaries who are taking up these children and creating orphanages for them and raising them and caring for them and obviously giving them language skills.

Many of them don’t even have any language whatsoever.

They don’t know any sign language.

They don’t know their own written language.

So missionaries with a heart for God are taking up for those people.

And so the need is great.

There are deaf people.

I saw a statistic recently, the World Health Organization, and don’t get me mad for quoting them, But they quote, they estimate there’s about 360 million people with hearing loss in the world today.

Not in America, but in the world.

Of that 360 million, 240 million they estimate to be profoundly deaf.

That means that those deaf make up the third largest unreached people group in the world.

Mark Gillmore: Yes.

Jim Bracelin: Now, they’re not in one country.

They’re all over.

They’re in every country.

They’re in every town, probably.

In the villages, in the cities, they’re everywhere.

There’s a great need.

Mark Gillmore: Can you, you know, we live in our five senses.

God made us with those to lack one of those senses, hearing.

Think of, you know, there’s so much that goes around us that we just take in through our ears.

Correct.

Can you put us a little bit into the world of the deaf?

What’s it like to never have the sense of hearing?

Jim Bracelin: One of the things that I’ve noticed in the years that I’ve worked with them is I feel a sense of loss for them.

They don’t feel that sense of loss.

They don’t look at their deafness as a handicap.

They don’t look at it as a detriment.

It’s just who they are.

Mark Gillmore: Yeah, that’s so interesting.

Jim Bracelin: It’s like I wear glasses.

My glasses don’t define me.

They’re part of what I put on in the morning.

And a deaf person, they don’t know what they’re missing in a sense.

And so I hear music and I think, oh, my, the harmony of that song was beautiful, the four parts or the six parts or whatever.

And I think about the deaf and they don’t know what one part sounds like.

So they have adapted.

They’re very resilient.

They’re very determined in many cases.

Of course, there are some who are not, but most of the deaf I know are very industrious.

They work very hard.

They’re very honest.

They have their own culture.

They have a deaf culture.

We call it deaf culture.

They do, too.

They identify that way.

They’re very pleased with their deaf culture.

When we, I was sharing before that we’ve dealt with deaf in America mostly, but we know what makes deaf tick here, so to speak, what makes them laugh, what touches their heart, what concerns them, what bothers them.

And when I went to Ukraine, of course, I get to Ukraine, I can’t speak Ukrainian language at all.

I know, thank you, and you’re welcome, and a few phrases, but I don’t speak Ukrainian.

We arrived there, and after my initial visit there, I set about to make up a Ukrainian dictionary, basically, for sign language.

And I created a film with the help of Ukrainian deaf, and we made basically a teaching tool for hearing people who lived in Ukraine or America who wanted to work with the deaf there so they could have a way to learn the language.

As I was going through that with them, I sat with four deaf students for hours each day.

For about a month it took me to sit three hours every Monday through Thursday with four deaf students.

And as I went through what’s the sign for this word, what’s the sign for this word, it dawned on me.

The deaf that are in front of me don’t speak English, don’t know English, don’t use American signs, but the culture of these four deaf people is exactly the same culture as the deaf I know in America.

Guest Speaker: Wow.

Jim Bracelin: The same things that trigger their emotions triggered the emotions of these deaf.

And I realized very quickly they may have their body born in Ukraine and they know Ukrainian language and they have Ukrainian culture, but their deaf culture trumps the Ukrainian culture.

And so what was socially acceptable in Ukraine by normal Ukrainians, for example, it’s not I found out I was told you don’t look people in the eye when you walk past them on the street.

They think you’re up to something.

So you have to look down as you see you approach a person.

You don’t smile.

I would smile and look and nod.

And my translator said, you can’t do that.

They think you’re, you know, you’re trying to do something.

You have to look at the ground when you walk past.

I meet deaf people and they’re across the square and they see me and they’re waving like a deaf person would here in the States.

All the cultural norms are out the window.

And the fact that I know their language or that I love them and they know that they want to communicate with me.

They share their thoughts and their heart with me.

One of the things about deaf culture is they have so few people.

This is interesting, too.

In our hearing culture, if I were to ask a group of 100 people, how are you?

I would probably get 100 one-word answers.

Mark Gillmore: Yeah, exactly.

Jim Bracelin: Fine, bad, terrible, wonderful.

You know, it would be one word.

That’s because we use closed communication.

We’re bombarded by words constantly.

So we use the minimal amount of words to convey the thoughts, typically.

If I ask a deaf person, how are you?

I better be ready for a full paragraph answer.

I mean, they’re going to tell me what they had for dinner and how their stomach feels and how much weight they’ve gained.

I mean, it’s crazy because they rarely have somebody they can communicate with.

So they have what we call open communication, where they cannot wait to express themselves.

When presenting the gospel to a deaf person, the more detail we can give.

You know, many times with hearing people, it’s like, give it to me as fast as you can and let me go.

With a deaf person, you want to take that thought of every man is a sinner, and you expand that thought as far as you can with every aspect of it you can consider.

They want all that.

You move to the next point.

It might take me, literally, it might take me a good half hour to 45 minutes to explain the gospel to a deaf person.

And they’ll stay for every second of that.

They won’t leave me.

If I try that with a hearing person, typically I’m shut down within five minutes probably.

So that’s a part of that culture.

They don’t have the ability to hear a lot of information.

They want to get all the information that they possibly can.

So it’s pretty interesting.

Mark Gillmore: That is very interesting.

And to me, it feels like it just opens up the world globally to me, realizing like I can fit in alongside a deaf person anywhere with the expectation that we can know each other.

Jim Bracelin: I believe that.

I think one of the keys to that is I’ve often said this.

I don’t know how they do this, but deaf people can look in your eye and see your soul.

They hate hypocrisy, but they love people who are genuine with them.

And if someone shows a genuine concern, even though even when I was in Ukraine, I’d be frustrated because I couldn’t fully communicate when I first went there.

They didn’t need that.

They could sense in my heart that I’d come all the way from the United States to Ukraine only to see them.

And they respond to that.

And they have the ability somehow, even in that culture.

Again, it surpassed the culture of Ukraine who are typically stoic and kind of standoffish in the beginning, especially.

You have to earn their trust.

The deaf gave me their trust before I even asked for it.

Mark Gillmore: Like if I’m an American going over to Middle Eastern culture, you know, among the Arabic social norms and so forth, that’s intimidating.

Yes.

Because it’s very different.

Yes.

But if I have the deaf language and I go to that same region of the world and find a deaf person, it may just be that all of those intimidating barriers are not there.

That is very possible.

And I can speak right to them directly.

They’ll just appreciate it.

The connection could happen.

And that is exciting to think about that possibility.

Jim Bracelin: And even as we think about missions, a lot of the barriers that we face are traditions that have been handed down from generation to generation that are religious traditions, not biblical.

And we have to fight over those traditions.

With the deaf, as I’ve said, many times are neglected.

They’re like a blank canvas.

Nobody’s put anything on that canvas religiously.

Mark Gillmore: In fact, those common religions of whatever push them to the side.

They’re almost like a shame to their religion, and they don’t want them included.

And when I come with the love of the Lord to communicate, they’re experiencing something they’ve never even gotten close to.

Jim Bracelin: Absolutely, and even in some cultures, they consider them demon-possessed, and they will avoid them, not just push them off.

They will literally avoid them.

So we come with the love of Christ to a heart that’s yearning for somebody to accept him.

We tell him Jesus died for you and loves you.

That’s a wonderful message to take.

And the gospel is amazing in any form or fashion, but especially to the deaf.

Mark Gillmore: I had a privilege to encounter a couple deaf children really out in Bush, Africa of Cameroon.

One young girl who was fortunately not being so mistreated.

They call her Mumu, which basically I think in their tribal tongue was deaf, you know.

Probably.

And thankfully, you know, she was out of sorts sometimes, but she had got some love, and we tried to communicate with her.

But one time we go up into this quarter.

The quarter was called Imbequium, and we met this young boy, probably 12, 13.

His name I remember now is Maxillus.

And here we had some African believers, some American believers, and there was one American young lady who knew deaf language.

And she sat down with this deaf boy in the mountains of Bush, Africa, and immediately was connecting with him.

He had had some educational opportunity out in the town, but was back in his village, and she was able to lead him to the Lord.

Jim Bracelin: Well, and you’re making the point that I was making earlier.

The fact that she knew sign language and connected with him, all the cultural norms were gone.

Mark Gillmore: And a few days later, he was baptized.

That’s a blessing.

And, you know, here, this young, she was the only one, but she knew American Sign Language, and because of that, she could lead him to the Lord.

And that’s just amazing.

So this is a world of opportunity, as I think of the young people listening here.

How could a young person begin to learn sign language?

Is there a good way to go about it?

Jim Bracelin: There are so many resources right now.

It’s just phenomenal.

I mean, a lot of free resources that are good resources online.

There’s a number.

We, at Silent Word, we have produced a tool that we call the video vocabulary.

It’s a book along with a DVD.

We’re making it available electronically here very soon.

And that is a course that you can walk through at your own pace.

You can use it with a group.

You can use it individually.

But that will help you to get the foundation.

Of course, we can’t teach you every sign you’ll ever need, but we get you enough signs that you have the foundation to go and communicate.

And as you communicate, you learn sign language just like we learn English.

You have to be exposed to it and see it and repeat it.

Mark Gillmore: You’ll learn a new sign from the person you’re with.

Jim Bracelin: Exactly, exactly.

And I’ve watched F do that.

They’re still doing it.

This is an ever-evolving language where it’s not stagnant at all.

It’s constantly changing and constantly moving.

But there’s tremendous resources, and most countries have some sort of—I just looked up today.

We met a missionary today from Hungary, and he was saying, I wonder if there’s a sign language, Hungarian sign language.

I said, I’m sure there is.

I sat down, and in five minutes, I was on a website that I could have plugged into and seen Hungarian sign language.

We are living in an amazing technological age, and there’s a lot of resources that are right at our fingertips.

And I would really encourage, I’m imagining students listening to this would have a heart for missions.

My thought is wherever you will go, wherever God calls you and touches your heart to go, consider deaf people.

There are probably deaf people that are there.

And even if you’re called to preach to a certain area, Yeah.

You might have your partner might be the sign language person and you might have someone that has an interest that goes on your team.

Like you were mentioning, one one girl made an eternal difference in the soul of a deaf young boy.

And that’s that’s worth it.

And so it’s worth considering, you know, wherever you’re going, what what opportunities would be there?

Mark Gillmore: That’s a powerful point to make.

You say, well, Lord hasn’t called me to the deaf.

Well, you could be ready for the deaf.

That’s right.

And that’s the right thing.

Jim Bracelin: And I had no idea he was calling me to the deaf.

I just wanted to be ready in my, you know, 38 years ago.

I did not want to stand before God at the judgment seat of Christ and say I didn’t take the time to prepare myself to share the gospel with everybody that I could.

Now, I had no idea God was going to call me to deaf ministry.

And I’m not saying God will do that with everyone.

But I believe that heartbeat should be the heartbeat of every believer and especially every missionary.

Mark Gillmore: Amen.

Now, you had mentioned this resource through Silent Word.

Does that also include, like, gospel terminology that would enable you to give the gospel?

Jim Bracelin: It does.

And actually, I have a website that I give the gospel in sign language because I believe Christ could return at any time, and I wanted to put the gospel out in as many forms as I could on YouTube and over social media so that when the rapture takes place and deaf who have never heard before, obviously, are going to be curious about where did these people go.

Somebody’s going to mention the Bible.

I want them to find the Scripture that presents the Gospel.

So I have on my website, which is just myname.com, that I have how to get to heaven, and I put that on almost everything we do.

And so we have also a number of cards with a QR code on that any deaf person can see.

And we do that.

It’s in American Sign, but we also have one that’s in gestures only.

It’s not even American Sign.

So if you were, we had a group that went to the Deaf Olympics, which have deaf from all over the world come.

And we hand out these cards, and we purposely present the gospel in sign language in ways that are more gestures than actual verbiage in sign language.

So there’s a lot of tools there.

Mark Gillmore: Yes.

Well, we’ll be sure to put in the program notes for this podcast a couple of those resource websites and you as young people can click into that and be available.

I’m just going back to what you opened with, how that when God touched your heart there in the very beginning, you just got ready.

Not particularly impressed with how ready you were, but that was enough to lead a soul to Christ and young people that God can use you in the same way.

And we’re praying to that end.

So remember, the only way to stay at peace in a world of turmoil and uncertainty is to stay on mission with Jesus in his Go Mission.

Guest Speaker: Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Thee Generation Podcast.

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