THE CHURCH IN ACTION

Cross and crescent
By Fr, Ronald S. Roberts
We have 50 deaf boys here at the Father Roberts Home for the Young Deaf at Sehaile, Lebanon, and not one of them pays a penny for anything.
In all the 14 years since started it we have never once asked anyone for anything. and everyone is most impressed — especially by the happiness of the boys. All the boys (not all Christians) are boarders. The nonChristians come to chapel each day, though it is made perfectly clear to them that they are free not to. At night the little ones come to me one by one and I make the sign of the cross on their foreheads, for the Christians.
One night, without thinking, I made it on a Moslem forehead. The youngster stared at me and pointed his finger to his forehead to say: "I'm not a Christian." I hurriedly apologised. pretended to rub off the cross and made a crescent instead. He was quite happy then.
For most Moslems now I trace the crescent, but there are two or three who ask me to make the sign of the cross.
I wrote in my latest newsletter — there were good, generous friends who had been waiting over a year for a "thank you" letter that with prices going up (our bills for food have more than doubled) and the dollar going down, we were not able to keep our driver, or an extra teacher we had taken on.
So in between training our teachers I have to do the shopping, and the nearest real shops are at least five mites away. We have built a fourth and very attractive house which will be for trainee teachers of the deaf.
Our training centre will not start to function for teacher trainees until October. Mean while we are furnishing it and it is beginning to look most attractive. Cardinal Heenan kindly got Cafod to give us £3,000. The Lebanese President" insisted on giving us £1,400, and the Minister of Education £2,850. Our bazaar brought us £4,000. The American
Women's Club and the Catholic Women's Guild helped very generously, and St. George's Guild are giving us £70 towards the furnishing.
Unfortunately we are losing all our big students this sum mer. They are going out to earn their living. Our master tailor, who didn't come to us until he was 18, is leaving to get married.
He is marrying an English deaf girl he met when I took a group of them across to
England just over a year ago on a course of Theatre for the Deaf. We advise all our deaf boys to marry deaf girls. Ex perience all over the world shows this is the best solution.