How I learned sign language

I started studying sign language when I was still in fourth year high school. The Dagupan Sign Language Congregation, the first and only sign language congregation in Pangasinan, offered a sign language course at Urdaneta. The Tagalog congregation there hosted the course. It ran for several months and was conducted every Monday evening, I think. Papa, me, and Kuya Julius went. As the classes went along, it was only I and Kuya Julius who went. Then, I stopped taking them, I think because I had to go to Baguio to study.

For sure, I saw the signers interpret at Summer Hill congregation when I first attended the midweek meetings there. But when I attended the Kabataan Day for the first time there, I wasn't yet a signer. I think I became a proper signer after I deepened my relationship with the youth there, enough that someone, probably Kuya Cid, convinced me to study. He led the classes. They were held every Monday or Tuesday evenings. I think I joined at the middle of the course, but just a few classes into it. We studied mostly vocabularies, which later progressed into constructing our own sentences.

When we became more familiar with the signs, we were given interpretation assignments at the meetings. We began at the easiest one: mirroring. Someone, an already skilled signer, signs the syntax of a song while sitting. We copied it as we stood in front of the group. Then, the Deaf and the other interpreters copied us. When we became better, we were given interpreting duties. We interpreted talks by ourselves. How we became better was through going out in the field ministry and talking to Deaf themselves. It is their language and when they sign, they break the syntax of what was taught at class. They don't sign the way we signed and yet we almost always, as signers, felt greater ownership of their language. These were severely underprivileged people and those who were in the ministry to help them felt that they went down their level and we were sometimes also looked down upon and discriminated by our own brothers and sisters in the congregation. Love is tough. To show love is tough.