Helga Dueck and the School for the Deaf in Filadelfia, Paraguay

Helga Dueck had no idea, when she started out for the Mennonite World Conference in Winnipeg in 1990, how much her life was about to change. She traveled from Filadelfia, Paraguay, on her crutches and her one leg, eager to meet new people, reunite with old friends and attend a special session for people with disabilities. She brought with her an open mind and an open heart.

She came away with a new direction that would lead to a new dream.

“God calls a person, and if the person is willing to obey, then they can continue to pray, continue to go forward and not fear but to have confidence in God,” Helga says as she stands, surrounded by adoring children, in front of the place that started as a dream and is now Rayito de Luz, a school for the deaf in Filadelfia that everyone told her was “too big of a project.”

Moved by Scripture and prayer: Helga Dueck in front of the School for the Deaf in Filadelfia, Paraguay. Photo by Katherine Arnoldi.
The journey from the dream to the reality was not easy but was far from the first challenge that Helga has faced in her 66 years of life.

Her parents had been refugees from Siberia, Russia, and arrived in 1930 in the inhospitable Chaco, a place called the Green Hell, with 120-degree heat, impenetrable thorn bushes, no water, and soil made of clay and sand. In 1931, her parents married and over the years had 10 children, including one they adopted, the daughter of her father’s sister, who had died in Russia. Helga developed polio as a small child, and a botched operation at age 12 created even more problems. Still the indefatigable Helga continued her studies, entering the Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Montevideo, Uruguay, despite the condition of her leg and back pain that developed as a result of her use of crutches. The director of the school, Nelson Letwiler, offered to pay for an amputation, but Helga resisted, until a lack of circulation made the amputation unavoidable in her second year of school. Her leg was severed at the hip.

Friends for life: Helga Dueck and students at the School for the Deaf in Filadelfia, Paraguay.

Nonetheless, Helga successfully graduated. Her parents offered to give her a salary if she came home, but Helga told them, “I did not learn all I have learned for that,” and she found employment at the Mennonite Leper Hospital 81 kilometers from Asunción. There, despite severe pain, she taught for four years at a school for 100 students that had been started by Dr. John and Clara Schmidt.

A doctor told her she would be paralyzed in a few years unless she could get an artificial leg, an impossibility in Paraguay. Nelson Letwiler invited her to come to the United States, but no help was available, so she found her way to Dr. Helmut Huebert in Winnipeg, who managed to arrange for an artificial leg.

But all did not go smoothly. After much struggle, Helga realized she would not be able to use the leg, so, once again on her crutches, she set out to find employment, only to discover how difficult it was for a disabled person to find work. She faced rejection after rejection. Finally, Neil Klassen at the Mennonite Brethren Gospel Light Hour hired her, and she proved to all that her disability did not impair her ability to be an asset to the organization. Ten years later she learned that her boss had put his own job on the line to defend his decision to hire her. Even today this story brings tears to her eyes.

During her employment at the Gospel Light Hour she learned something from Neil Klassen that she carried with her the rest of her life. She noticed that sometimes he went into his office and closed the door for long periods.

“He is not to be disturbed,” another worker told her.

“What is he doing?” Helga asked.

“There is a problem he must solve. He is praying,” she said.

Helga followed this example when she returned to Paraguay and worked four years as the director of a dormitory of the school at Yalve Sanga, the Indian settlement supported by the Mennonites not far from Filadelfia, four more years as a teacher and one year as the principal of a school she founded that served nine villages.

In 1989, Henry Enns of Mennonite Central Committee came to Paraguay, looking for someone who was disabled who could speak German, Spanish and English and could work for MCC in South America as a spokesperson for disability awareness. Everywhere he went, people recommended Helga to him, and soon Helga was on the way to an orientation and training for this job at the Mennonite World Conference in Winnipeg.

Then her life changed.

As Helga traveled from 1991 to 1995 throughout Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile, visiting centers for the disabled, giving speeches about disability awareness and chronicling the conditions and needs of the disabled, she was always moved by the conditions of the deaf children she saw. She often saw deaf children who were given no opportunity to realize their potential, who were sometimes treated no better than pets. She felt she could do something to help them.

And something else kept appearing to Helga. Everywhere, it seemed—in magazines, newspapers and books—Helga noticed over and over Proverbs 31:8-9: “Open your mouth for the speechless.”

But what could she do?

She dreamed of opening a school for the deaf.

She continued to pray about her concerns and her dreams and continued to move forward, to not fear and to have confidence in God. She thought often about the Scripture and its meaning for her: “Open your mouth for the speechless.”

“God, if it is only me that wants a deaf school, let me know,” Helga prayed. “I cannot do it alone.”

In 1994, Helga was invited to attend the Lobetal Institute, a center with 900 patients in Celle, Germany, where she received training about disabled people and was given boxes of supplies and teaching materials to begin her deaf school. In 1995, she visited an MCC-sponsored deaf school in Recife, Brazil, with 100 students, where she furthered her studies. Encouraged, she continued to pray.

And to open her mouth. She visited local churches, government offices and social organizations asking for support. While many agreed about the need for the school, she was told over and over that it was “too big a project at this time.”

Then, miraculously, an opportunity appeared. She was urged to run for the Concejal or City Council of Filadelfia, and she won. With that salary she began her school, first in a Sunday school room at a Native Mennonite Church, then at the government school. But soon another problem presented itself. The students came from distant towns and stayed with relatives or host families and were often in unsafe or unstable living situations. Again Helga traveled the roads to ask for a building for her school so she could have dormitory facilities. She sent a fax to Kinderwerk in Filadelfia, an organization in British Columbia that helps children in Paraguay, and heard back from Uwe and Hedy Stahl.

“We will buy you a building,” they said, and soon a perfect building was found.

Now the students come because the police have picked up a homeless boy who was sleeping with dogs and discovered he was deaf. The students come because a mother, having heard of the school, arrives with her child and eyes of hope. They come speaking many languages but learn international sign language. They come to find friends for life. They come to find Helga and the teachers, who believe in them and their abilities. They come to find confidence, pride in their accomplishments, hope, fun and inspiration. Graduates of the school are working in the local bakery, working in the supermarket, working in a tile factory. One graduate married a hearing man and has two hearing children she clearly loves.

And the community that told Helga it was too big of a job?

At a recent ceremony marking the end of the school year, the yard of Rayito de Luz is filled to capacity with the people of Filadelfia, the alumni of the school and dignitaries from far and wide. The children sit in their starchy, pressed white shirts and blouses, their dark pants and skirts. They sign songs together, put on a skit, read the lips of Helga while she asks them questions, and they speak aloud their names, beaming with love in their eyes at the woman who started from nothing, nothing but faith, this opportunity to shine.

After the ceremony, an auction of donated items offers everyone a chance to support something that all of Filadelfia now points to with pride, their school for the deaf, Rayito de Luz.

Katherine Arnoldi, Ph.D., is a member of Manhattan (N.Y.) Mennonite Fellowship and a Fulbright Fellow in Paraguay for 2008-09.