UMHB grad uses art therapy in ministry to deaf in Honduras

Rachel Lewis graduated from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in May with a major in art, a minor in psychology and a passion to use what she learned to share the gospel and make disciples for Christ.

Next spring, Lewis will move into a full-time role with the Signs of Love ministry as it serves the hearing-impaired in Honduras. Now, she serves with Signs of Love as a volunteer, and she returned to the UMHB campus for the recent missions emphasis week to tell students about her work.

Rachel Lewis will use art therapy as she works with the deaf in Honduras.“I’m going to be doing art therapy with the deaf to help them deal with the hard emotional issues that all of them have but that are very difficult for them to express with language,” Lewis explained.

Overcoming superstition

The culture in Honduras can be unkind to the hearing-impaired, she noted.

“People are not educated about deafness, and there is a lot of superstition around it,” she said. “Parents think they must have done something wrong to be cursed with a deaf child.

“They don’t see their kid as a normal human. They don’t think they can learn, and they don’t give them any kind of opportunity to learn.”

Give the deaf art as a tool for expression

Language training is almost nonexistent within Honduran communities, she added. Many deaf people grow up with a handful of invented gestures they use to communicate immediate needs, she explained.

Rachel Lewis leads an arts and crafts activity at a camp for the deaf.“Most of them don’t have the language capacity to be able to express the hurts and emotions in their life, so I want to be able to give them art as a tool to express those hurts,” Lewis said. “That way, they can experience the Lord more.”

As a volunteer with Signs of Love, Lewis encountered deaf people her own age who didn’t know their own names.

“We’ll ask their parents, ‘What’s your son’s name,’ and they’ll just look at us blankly because they don’t know it. They haven’t used it in 20 years,” Lewis said. “They’ll say, ‘I have a birth certificate somewhere, and I can go and find it.’”

Provide the gift of language

An important part of Lewis’s work will involve developing a curriculum to help teach Honduran sign language.

“Whereas many outreach ministries begin with, ‘Learn the language, that way we can reach people and share the gospel with them,’ we have to give them language first,” Lewis said.

Demonstrating the love of God

Lewis was moved by the level of openness she witnessed while ministering to the deaf population in Honduras.

“The beautiful thing is that the Holy Spirit still moves in them,” Lewis said. “They just understand the love we show them is different than the love that they’ve gotten from their family or anyone else, and they really see it is from the Lord, and that’s the gospel.”

Lewis learned about Signs of Love in high school when her church partnered with the ministry.

“I was able to help be a leader in the youth missions team, and I just really fell in love with the organization,” she said.

God had other plans

While she planned on pursuing a master’s degree after graduation, a mission trip during the summer before her senior year convinced her God had other plans for her life, Lewis reported.

“They have a lifetime of built-up hurt that they don’t know how to express, and I wanted to be able to do art therapy to help them express that,” she said. “Signs of Love mainly seeks to share the gospel with them, and you can’t do that if they don’t have language.”

Lewis attended missions emphasis week activities as a freshman at UMHB, and she was inspired to get involved in the event. As a sophomore and junior, she served on the missions emphasis week committee. During her senior year, she was co-director. This year, 40 missionaries led dozens of seminars and special events.

Use skills for God’s work

“My hope is to encourage people to use their skills for the Lord,” she said. “I used to think the only kind of art that could be used in missions was graphic art or photography, and I never thought any other kind could be useful.

“As a fine artist, I didn’t really think thinks like paint or clay could be used in the mission field. But Signs of Love has utilized all of my skills to glorify God.”