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Teen missionary finds life purpose Saturday, September 16, 2006 BY CATHI CONTI SINSABAUGH SPECIAL TO THE REPOSITORY LAKE TWP. - Tessa Hershberger knows what her life goals are. The 19-year-old already has achieved several of them. She worked five months in Thailand on a missions trip earlier this year and plans to return. And as a senior at Lake High School in 2004, she wrote and published a devotional book for young women, “Confessions of a Girl: Truth to Be Told,” while she was class treasurer and an active member of the National Honor Society and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. She achieved all that despite being deaf by the end of her junior year in high school. “I can’t let it stop me from what I feel called to do,” Hershberger said. She has a genetic disorder called neurofibromatosis. Benign tumors grow along auditory nerves. People with it often begin losing their hearing in their teens or early 20s. Hershberger’s hearing loss began by the end of her freshman year. How did she and her family react to the news? “Our whole family took a six-month American Sign Language course,” Hershberger said. “And I also created a sign language club at Lake.” By her senior year, the tumor in her right ear was so large that she had to have surgery to remove it, leaving her deaf in that ear. The tumor has now destroyed 50 percent of her hearing in the left ear. This summer, she had radiation treatment at Cleveland Clinic to try to shrink the tumor. Hershberger now relies on lip reading. “Word discrimination is hard for me,” she said. “I might hear the voice, but I can’t make out the words.” The condition is hereditary. Her father, Joe, is almost completely deaf and has had cochlear implants. Her two sisters, Abby, 22, and Carly, 17, also have the condition, though they have no hearing loss. THE AUTHOR During the summer of 2004, Hershberger wrote “Confessions of a Girl: Truth to Be Told” as one of the first participants in The Fresh Writers Books program sponsored by Bill Jelen of Lake Township. Jelen writes and publishes books on Microsoft Excel through a company called Holy Macro! Books. As a volunteer with the Junior Achievement program at Lake, he came up with the idea for a grant for a student who wanted to write a book. He and journalism teacher Rick Friedline reviewed eight proposals from Lake students. Hershberger’s was one of four they chose to publish. “It was always one of my goals to write a book sometime in my life,” she said. “My specific goal for this book was to inspire other young women to grow in their relationship with God and to raise the standards in their relationship with God.” “Any special insight I had in that book came from God,” Hershberger said. She occasionally gets fan mail, and her book appears on Amazon.com with a five-star rating. TRIP TO THAILAND After graduating from Lake in June 2005, Hershberger served six months with Youth With A Mission, an international Christian ministry. Founded in 1960, it is one of the largest interdenominational and international Christian ministries, with about 12,000 volunteers in 135 countries. Her team worked in the far north region of Chiang Rai, Thailand, from December through February. Chiang Rai is a modern city in the heart of the mountainous Golden Triangle, where some hill tribes can still live in grass and bamboo huts. The team worked at an orphanage for children with HIV or whose parents died or were dying or AIDS. It did construction work, built a house for tsunami victims and taught English classes at an outreach ministry for prostitutes. When the team left Thailand, Hershberger didn’t. She stayed two more months to teach at a school for missionary and some Thai children, and lived with a missionary family from North Carolina. Despite her hearing loss, Hershberger studied the Thai language for four weeks, and, when she returned to Lake Township for the summer, taught herself the Thai alphabet. She has been working with a Thai dictionary and practicing pronunciation. “Thai is so different from English, because it’s a tonal language. The same word spoken in different tones means something different.” Hershberger is in Montana with Youth With a Mission for nine months of biblical studies, and she expects to return to Thailand. “I felt God’s call on my heart to long-term missions while I was in Thailand,” Hershberger explained. “And I definitely feel called back to Thailand. I love the land, and I love the people.” “They are very hospitable. They love to entertain foreigners and cook up lots of food. But they live simply and are not obsessed with possessions and things. I like that.” Originally published 9/16/2006 in the Canton Repository, a Copley News Newspaper. This page current as of May 24, 2007 8:43 AM |