Yesterday at Church

Yesterday's Sacrament Meeting was probably one of my favorites I can ever remember. It was a missionary homecoming, which are always unique and fun, but this one was extra special. Elder Jacob Frost returned from his mission in NYC. And you might be thinking, what is special about this? He didn't even leave the country?! But allow me to explain...

Jacob is part of an amazing family- the Frosts- who have become our adopted family as long as we've lived in Columbus, so we've gotten to know them on a semi-different level than most. Jacob is in the middle of 5 children and when he was 19 months old, he got a bad case of meningitis and lost almost all of his hearing. He started wearing hearing aids right away, but even with that help Jacob was left at a crucial developmental stage in his life and could not learn how to talk because he couldn't hear.

His parents, obviously distraught, had no idea what to do. Their son was deaf and less than 2. How were they going to handle this? Pam, Jacob's mom, was at the library looking at books about deaf children, trying to get some idea as to what to do and she came across a book which gave instruction on a breakthrough, new and radical, system for teaching deaf children how to talk. Now remember, this is before the Internet where she can look at message boards of mom's dealing with the same thing, and before cochlear implants, so the idea of teaching a deaf child to speak was about as probable as teaching a penguin to fly. But Pam, so faithful, had an overwhelming impression that this was the right move for Jacob.

Then the work began. Since this was a very new idea, only a few speech therapists in the nation knew about this treatment. This meant that Pam traveled with Jacob (a toddler) and with 2 more children as they came along to places like NY and Pennsylvania to meet with therapists who gave them instructions on how they could teach Jacob to talk, doing exercises at home. Hours and hours were spent at the kitchen table to help Jacob learn how to talk. And each new word that Jacob learned was added to a list on the fridge. A big day came when they tore up the list because Jacob had learned so many words, they couldn't keep track of them anymore.

During Jacob's adolescence, he was able to get a cochlear implant to help him hear a little better. By reading lips and learning how to talk, Jacob, for the most part, has lived a very normal life. And then Jacob turned in his mission papers and was called to the NYC mission, with one catch. He'd be signing American Sign Language. Now remember, even though Jacob is technically deaf, he has never learned ASL, and has spent his whole life learning to talk so that he wouldn't have to learn ASL. And Jacob went on his mission and learned ASL and loved every second of his mission.

As a tradition with retuning missionaries, many bear their testimonies in the language they spoke on their mission, so Jacob signed his testimony. Cortney and I both looked at each other at the end with tears in our eyes. There were just so many moving things about this event. First, the sweet irony of a deaf boy who fought through his whole life to be "normal" and then to to be called on a mission teaching in ASL. Second, it was just so sweet to have proof that an entire family's efforts (and more likely an entire community's efforts) had paid off and all those hours and hours at the kitchen table were worth it. And third, as a parent, you can't help but want your kids to do right and to accomplish great things in their life and what more could you ask for than Jacob- his disability had been a blessing to him in requiring so much dedication to overcome such obstacles and he is destined for great things, partly because he can only hear "the still small voice".

Cortney and I just love this family and I think we'll tear up every time we think of Jacob Frost at church yesterday.