Halfway....

Wow! I've just finished week 7 and have 7 to go! Thank you for all the encouragement you've sent my way this week! I've had phone calls, emails, blog posts & FB posts. It's refreshing to hear from you and it's reassuring to know you're praying for me.

There have been some HUGE changes at Sorenson this week. If you aren't involved in the Deaf community, you  probably don't know what Sorenson does. So let me explain briefly. They are a company that uses video phones (where callers can see each other and thus use sign language) to allow deaf and hearing callers to communicate through an interpreter. The service is called VRS - Video Relay Service. VRS providers are compensated from a fund that the FCC oversees. Over the past few months the FCC has proposed to lower the rate they reimburse VRS providers. They decided last month to lower it more than $1/minute. Sorenson fought the change but lost last week. So this week they have been laying off workers and closing some call centers. They have thousands of employees and hundreds have been laid off. Since being here, I have come to know at least four of those who were laid off this week. The one that impacts me the most is one of my deaf language mentors. I have been meeting with her an hour a week to review and improve my work. She has been awesome! It's my favorite part of the program! So I'm really sad to see her go. I have two deaf mentors -- I haven't heard from the second one so I don't know if she still has her job or not. We were told the language mentor program will continue. I hope so as it is extremely beneficial. Please say a prayer for all these people who have lost their jobs. It is effective immediately.