Seventh-day Adventists from across the Euro-Asia region of the church met at the Adventist school in Tula, about 124 miles south of Moscow, to discuss how to better share the gospel with the estimated 9.5 million hearing-impaired people in the region.

“If we carefully study how to reach these people, what kind of material we can provide for them and, most important, train more Adventist ministers in sign language, we can easily reach 10 times more deaf people than we are doing now,” said Valery Ivanov, communications director for the church in the region.

Using sign language, some of the 120 delegates told about their needs, the opportunities and plan of development for serious evangelistic work among the hearing-impaired. There are three churches, 20 small groups and a total of 500 deaf Adventists in the region.