International Mission Board – IMB

Dear Friend, 

Paul Yount sits outside a crowded cafeteria. Chairs squeak. Voices rise. Forks scrape plates.

He hears none of it.

Paul is Deaf, one of more than 80 million people worldwide who are. And because he experiences the world the way they do, he can walk into a room in West Africa, meet a Muslim, a Catholic, an animist, and find an instant connection with the one Deaf person in the room. That connection is exactly what makes Paul such an effective discipler. His new friends may not believe yet, but they’re far more likely to hear the gospel from someone like them, and far more likely to keep learning from him once they do.

That’s exactly what happened with a Deaf believer named Joseph.

Joseph grew up Catholic and came to faith at a Deaf school. He understood the basics of the gospel, but he couldn’t fully connect with Scripture, because he’d never been able to see it. Reading it wasn’t enough. As a visual learner, he needed the story itself.

So Paul didn’t just share the gospel with Joseph once and move on. He discipled him, story by story, using sets of Bible stories built around sign language mnemonics, hand movements that help Deaf believers commit Scripture to memory well enough to teach it to someone else. Paul walked with Joseph as he learned who Jesus is, what a healthy church looks like, and what it means to follow Christ, then kept walking with him as Joseph learned to pass each story on.

That’s the part of this work that matters most. Paul isn’t just reaching Deaf people. He’s training Deaf believers to reach other Deaf believers, in a way those who don’t speak sign language simply can’t replicate.

It worked. Joseph never let go of what Paul taught him. When he told his parents he was a believer, they disowned him. He didn’t back down. Today, he disciples other Deaf believers using the same storying method Paul taught him, and he’s now helping lead a Bible translation project of his own, teaching the next generation of Deaf believers the same way Paul once taught him.

International Misson Board is a faithful partner of The Bolick Foundation.