‘Terrible’ pupil changed
by picture in Bible

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Teachers don’t often like to describe one of their little charges as “terrible” – least of all, perhaps, a deaf girl of just six. But that is how Patty Jones, the missionary founder of Colegio Filadelfia para Sordos (Filadelfia School for the Deaf), Bogotá’s only Christian school for hearing-impaired children, portrayed one young pupil.

But the girl’s demeanour changed completely, she says, thanks to an illustration in a Bible Society Bible.

“She was in many ways just a terrible little girl,” says Ms Jones. “She would attack other children unprovoked, she would throw chairs; she was very difficult.”

The reaction of the staff was to pray for her and to talk with her mother. But nothing seemed to work.

“Then one day a teacher brought her into my office and asked if we could pray with her. I had an illustrated Bible on my desk open at a picture of Jesus holding a little lost lamb. We explained to her that because of her behaviour, she was like the little sheep that had been lost out on the mountains but that Jesus still loved her. We prayed with her and asked her [in sign language] if she wanted to receive Jesus in her heart, and she said yes.”

They told her that they were going to ask Jesus to come into her heart, sat on either side of her and, with their hands on her shoulders, asked her to sit still.

“Suddenly,” says Ms Jones, “she just signed the word ‘Jesus’ and put her hands down. From that time until this, everyone in the whole school told me that she really did meet Jesus. Her life has changed.”

She gives a recent example. “She had a quarrel with a friend, as little girls do. She said to me, ‘You have to tell her not to keep going off with the other girl.’ She was all upset. So as we were signing, she signed, ‘Will Jesus help me?’ She really does know the Lord. And it all started with that picture in the Bible.” (WR 372/3 - 11.02)