A Trip to Tacoma

This weekend my mom and I took a trip up to Tacoma, a few hours away from our home. On Sunday morning a Deaf evangelist, Ronnie Rice, spoke at Faith Baptist Church up there. When I went to the Bill Rice Ranch in Tennessee last summer and the last for sign language training, Ronnie preached each evening. This last summer I was excited when he told me he was coming to my state! I was hoping to bring some of my friends from sign language class with me, but none of them were able to come. Ronnie Rice is an awesome speaker. He is very expressive and hilarious and literally acts out his sermons.

The Deaf pastor, Les Leckron, did the voice interpretation for Ronnie Rice. He was a very skilled interpreter and did a very good job of putting excitement in his voice to match Ronnie’s exuberance.

A Deaf choir did a wonderful performance. They had some really creative actions, such as while the introductory music was playing, they took turns swirling their hands around, so it was kind of like wind going up and down the choir. The performance was beautiful and a lot of fun to watch.

After the service a Deaf husband and wife accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior! Praise God!

Since I don’t have my driver’s license quite yet, and it is a long drive by ones self anyway, my mom was so kind to drive me up there. Even though she doesn’t know any sign language she enjoyed Ronnie’s sermon, too. A Deaf family that we know from our home town, also was there, so it was fun to talk to them. The husband didn’t loose his hearing until he was nineteen, so he speaks quite well. And there were a number of other hearing people there, so mom didn’t feel entirely like she was in a foreign world! Lol

Mom and I didn’t want to have to get up really early in the morning in order to get to the church for the service, so we drove up the night before. We met some friends of ours who now live in that area for dinner. Sarah’s family and our family have been close friends since I was about ten, though we don’t see them much anymore. At my oldest sister’s wedding, Sarah met my brother-in-law’s brother, and about a year later they were married! So my sister had a girl’s dream come true--one of her good friends is now her sister-in-law! It’s awfully fun for me, too, since I get to see Sarah at my nieces birthday parties and such. So anyway, we had a really good time at dinner with Sarah and her husband and their toddler.

The hotel mom and I stayed at looked quite nice in the internet picture. What the internet failed to say, was that it was next door not only to the freeway, but also a train track. We lay on the rock-hard beds, listening to the trains and trucks rumble by, shaking the whole hotel. But, we only had to stay there one night and we did get some sleep.

I am writing this blog account from my laptop computer in the car on the way back home, listening to the soundtrack of Fiddler on the Roof--mom‘s and my favorite traveling music. We just passed through a blinding rainstorm, but thankfully it is only sprinkling now.