BLAKE AND JORDAN GO TO
VISIT DEAF PEOPLE IN INDIA
November 19-Dec. 12/2002
Deaf Ministry Group and other leaders as they meet at Vizianagaram, AP, India. Pastor Jordan (tall) in Center, Pastor Blake to his right.
Pastor Jordan and Pastor Blake went to India from Nov. 19 - Dec. 12, 2002. They landed in Chennai, and were met by the lady who has been helping guide some of the Deaf Ministry work in India, Dorothy Watts. Dorothy Watts is the Associate Secretary of the Southern Asia Division of Seventh-day Adventists. Dorothy traveled with them for their first ten days as they were in Andhra Pradesh.
Blake and Jordan visited in four areas in Andhra Pradesh: Kakanada, Vizianagaram, Razam and Kupupam. They had meetings in Sign language in each of these areas. In these first areas, they were helped greatly by John and Muriel Reddy. John is deaf and was some time ago ordained to work with deaf as a pastor of another denomination. Since then, he and his hard of hearing sister, Muriel, have been baptized as Seventh-day Adventists. They both helped with interpreting Pastor Jordan's American Sign language into Indian Sign language, etc.
Pastor Jeff Jordan preaching to a group of deaf people at Razam, AP, India
During the second half of their trip they were accompanied by Pastor Sundaram. He had earlier been a church leader in South India, and knew the areas they would visit. The first area they visited was over in South India on the Arabian Sea at the port city of Cochin. Here they had meetings with an Adventist church group which met in the roof-top chapel of the home of the local deaf lay pastor, P.M. Baby.
The deaf church on the roof of the lay pastor's home in Cochin, India
Inside the roof-top deaf church at Cochin during the special meetings with the local deaf group. Pastor Jordan used a special set of picture rolls as his visual aids.