Ministry Spotlight - Al Proo

Al Proo is Executive Director of Happy Hands, a Oklahoma-based Christian school for children with hearing problems. He joined the Ministry Spotlight to tell us about Happy Hands and their outreach. Below are the "CliffsNotes" of his segment.

Tell us about your ministry.

We serve children from birth to age 6. This is something the Lord showed me I needed to do when I was pastoring a church.

Many of the deaf people I served didn't bring their bibles to church, not because they didn't want to read it, but because they couldn't.

Why do you start so young?

Statistics have proven that 99% of all deaf children are born to hearing parents.

Here's the real gist of the whole matter, is that the child's brain is being mapped. Most parents do not find out their child is deaf until age two and a half.

By that time, the brain has been mapped already.

How do you teach deaf children?

What we do is no different than what we would do with hearing children, except that we make it visual.

How early can they learn sign language?

I know some infants at 8 months who were signing before they can talk.

Science has proved that the children who can sign before they can speak have higher IQs and better reading skills.

Have you seen successes later on in your children's lives?

Some of the children who have graduated high school and gone to college are actually on the student council with hearing students.

Some of them are on the marching bands, and the football and swimming teams.

How can churches do a better job of serving the deaf?

Churches can be familiar with the deaf, make them feel comfortable.

Give them an opportunity to sit close to the pulpit. If they can provide an interpreter for the service, that would be fantastic.

The problem is churches serving children our age, that's where it's more difficult.

That's where Happy Hands comes in. We're not here as Baptists or Methodists, we're simply here to tell them about Jesus.

How do you stay afloat?

90% of our income comes from donations. We are always working hard to get scholarships for our children.

We don't take government funding. We're living in a Red Sea miracle here at Happy Hands.

One reason Happy Hands is here is for us to say, "God did this."