My message today is for the person who wrote a message for me on my car’s rear window, the person who doesn’t understand how hard it is to park a van with a wheelchair ramp.
There are never enough spots, and there are almost never van parking spots with eight feet of slash lines to let me get out of the van. When I have to circle the lot again and again, I wait until two regular spots open up and I park across both of them at an angle giving me two things: 1 enough room to get out of the van and 2. to prevent anyone from parking next to me so I can’t leave when i want to. Did that today at the grocery store where there were plenty single slots. This tells me that I didn’t prevent anyone from getting a space, but that the man who wrote on my window is a grump.

Since sitting low makes me invisible to drivers, I took my life in my hands wheeling through traffic coming and going. When I got back to my car,  someone had written, “Great job parking” on one side of the window and “Wash me” on the other.  Had my car detailed three days ago, you know, the day before it rained.

I have a suggestion for the man who didn’t like my parking. Instead of getting your finger dirty on my window, try writing the owners of the malls to get them to provide more parking, and get city council to regulate how the stripes and slashes can be painted. Wouldn’t take much time. Maybe two years. There is a lot to be said about it, and many ears are closed on the subject.

While I’m on the subject: the worst parking is Houston Town and Country Post Office that has absolutely not one van parking place. Forest Park Westheimer Funerals have a few parking slots, but no place to park your wheel chair in the chapel or the mausoleum except the aisle. (Guess who goes down the aisle.) Additionally, there is only one, crude ramp to make any graves or services accessible.  How do people get by with this?  I chose not to buy burial plots there, but I think they didn’t notice.

Just finished my Christmas shopping, so I’m thinking of going down to Car Masseusse to get my car cleaned up again so as not to offend anyone.

If you interact with persons with disabilities and you are Christian, this message is for you.

Sometimes you see spiritual change and discipleship happening; sometimes you don’t, but take heart, you are making a difference. You are a witness to the light of God through your actions and by way of teaching and interacting with others.   https://naomimitchum.com/special-needs/worship-information/stories-of-spiritual-growth/ During this season of the year when the light of the world came, why not take time to thank God for your participation and celebrate what you do?

Shhhhhhh

He came quietly

No kingly trumpets

No fireworks,

Only light

The heavenly hosts

The angel

The star

So it is with our students

Jesus comes quietly

Week to week

Day to day

In ways we cannot see

Or hear.

Celebrate with thankfulness

Your role as God’s model

And helper.

I’m clearning out the office to make way for a new project, a book to help volunteer first responders safely aid persons with disabilities. Got my ISBN and bar code and the book will be out soon by Ramps’nthings Press. Look for QUICK LOOK FOR VOLUNTEER EMERGENCY RESPONDERS. If you’re not a responder, you should get it anyway to help your comfort zone, and your church and CERT group will surely need it. We all think emergencies don’t happen to us. but they do.

Cleaning involved sorting and throwing away 50 years (count them!!! I may  be old!) of materials I wrote for teaching workshops of many kinds. Things like how to use music in Christian education, teaching practices, teaching children with disabilites in mainstream classrooms, the use of drama in teaching, and my then specialty, how to work with middle school students — the list goes on. It was like a walk in time as I remembered where I taught it and some of the great people who attended my  classes across the country. It was also a walk in time through educational practices and the terminology we use. Progress has brought us in full circle as  in my church where the children’s groups are converting from rotation system to the contained classroom with team teaching. In nomenclature, we have gone from saying “disabilities” (My book, YOU CAN DO IT, HOW TO TEACH PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES) in the seventies to “special needs” in the nineties and now we are back to saying disabilities.  All of this is about intentions: How do we help them learn about and experience God and how do we call it a comfortable name.

This file and box cleaning included throwing out three big boxes of the Texas Methodist Conference job I did for so long, some of which I kept for reference. All you guys who worked with me on that, I will say, “We made a slow but radical difference!”

I shared information with the Heights CERT group this week. As usual, I learned a lot from this group of volunteers who have trained themselves as first responders as well as community activists for emergency preparation. A few already had experience with caregiving or disabilities. Main pitch of our discussion was around how to meet a person with a disability and let communication give you clues to your assessment of what is needed. This lets you respond quickly in the correct manner. I stressed the importance of immediate post emergency care in keeping everyone together at the evacuation point or caring for persons who are hunkered down.  There was a lot of interest in how to aid shut ins, and we discussed some of the ways to find shut ins and help them prepare for an emergency. I took with me a prototype of a booklet I am making for first responders, and the group made suggestions for improving it.

Perhaps your neighborhood has a C.E.R.T group: Community Emergency  Response Team. They may be on the job and you never heard about them. They offer basic training in disaster survival and rescue skills. They train ordinary citizens to first take care of themselves, their families and home, and then, if possible to help their neighbors.

Sign language interpreters at our church are placed in good visual lines to both read and see what is happening. More than one interpreter is needed, and they trade off, sometime with specialty in music for which they have been given words to an anthem or Bible reading for which they have been given advance references. Theological terms are different from regularly signed words, and references are available to help with this. Our church had several signing classes, and about eight persons became minimally proficient and some went on to do advanced study. If you hire interpreters, it costs from $100 up for a few hours, so this becomes a budget item for the general church rather than the worship budget. We also had a speech reading class that helped persons learn to place ideas under a topic for clues to what they were hearing.

Our minister uses big screen power point phrases and verses as illustration of his sermon. This helps speech readers understand categories and idea tags. Make sure the ministers face is well lighted and not in shadow.

A big need for persons with hearing impairments of any kind is socialization. Invite a group of persons who use sign language to lunch. Laugh at yourself at the awkward mistakes. The act of caring enough to do this sends a message of its own. Teach Sunday school teachers to use white board idea words and other visuals to help persons in their groups who are losing their hearing.

I hope this helps the persons who responded with questions on this topic.