Tuesday, August 18, 2009

I had the coolest moment today


I talked to a guy on the phone today. He's interested in volunteering where I work, at Water Street Ministries. Water Street's vision is transformed lives as they work with the poor and homeless in our area.

His daughter is one of the employees here, and he wants to support this.

Here's the only thing. He's deaf.

Yep, I did say that I talked to him on the phone. There's this awesome video phone translation service where my call to his house gets routed to a translation center. One of the translators picks up the phone, sets up a video feed with their deaf client, and then proceeds to translate between the two parties--signing on video to the deaf person, and relaying their signed message in speech back to the hearing person.

How awesome is that!?

The situation almost brought tears to my eyes. It just felt redemptive somehow. Here's this guy who's been dealt crap, but he wants to give back to others and there are others in the world partnering with him so he can do things hearing folks do, like talk on the phone.

Sweet.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And just think Pearl you get to be apart of this!!

Matthew Bellis said...

It's funny, my immediate thought was.... "WOW, what a great solution to a problem using the technology of the day! Is this service non-profit? Does it make money? Who is this guy? I want to call him. What company is this? Do they have stock shares that I can buy and support?" Man am I a business nerd or what? Yesh! but I love it.

Also who the hell is this london character? That link is dirty, you might want to delete it.