December 2 2013 by
Don Graham, Baptist Press
It’s like learning to swim by being pushed off the high dive – and Mason Barrett just got shoved. The 33-year-old real estate agent sits wide-eyed in a tiny, crowded living room in Madagascar’s capital city, trying desperately to understand what anyone around him is saying. Hands fly in a flurry of conversation, mostly get-to-know-you type questions: What’s your name? Are you married? Were you born deaf? That last question might sound strange if this wasn’t one of the thousands of Deaf communities that Barrett has come to serve. He’s part of a team from Warren Baptist Church in Augusta, Ga., that has traveled more than 9,000 miles for a single purpose: sharing Jesus with the Deaf Malagasy.
Tucked away off Africa’s eastern coast, Madagascar is home to roughly 110,000 Deaf, less than 1 percent of whom are disciples of Jesus Christ. Most follow a centuries-old tradition of ancestor worship. There may be a “veneer of Christianity,” says missionary Matt Spann, a Texas native who leads the International Mission Board’s (IMB) Madagascar team, but “they fear their ancestors more than they fear God.” That’s what Warren has come to
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