Martha Keslar talks a million miles an hour, whether it’s with her mouth or with her hands.

She glides through a series of sign-language motions interpreting a Catholic prayer almost as fast she can vocally explain her pursuits as a dancer or introduce the family’s eight cats and three dogs out loud.

Martha is 13, and she has a ton of energy.

“She’s pretty much like that all the time,” says Suzanne Lange, Martha’s sign-language instructor.

Each Sunday evening at 5 p.m., that energy is funneled into one pursuit: interpreting a good chunk of the Mass at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, 1234 Ky., into sign language. She’s been doing it for two years.

Martha is 5-foot-1 and weighs 75 pounds, but she has a big presence at the front of the church.

“She’s a ballerina; she’s graceful,” Lange says. “Her hand positions are just beautiful. She’s flowing it all together. It’s pretty signing.”

Early learner

Martha’s introduction to American Sign Language was by necessity.

She couldn’t hear for the first two years of her life because of a genetic condition that caused the bones in her ears to grow too slowly. Her father, Doug Keslar, has the same condition.

Martha continues to have hearing loss and expects someday to wear hearing aids.

After she started talking around age 4, she let the signing go. But she decided, with her parents’ urging, to start taking lessons again around five years ago.

“It’s just part of my life,” she says.

Martha’s mother, Mary Catherine Keslar, says it was clear early on that Martha had a talent.

“We’d go to a class together, and they’d teach us 40 signs,” Mary Catherine says. “And I’d leave with six or seven signs, and she’d leave with 40.”

Form of worship

Now, Martha interprets “frozen” sections of the weekly Mass – the parts that are the same each week – and the songs. Lange interprets the Scriptures, the homily and also songs.

St. John’s does have a small deaf community, says the Rev. John Schmeidler, the church’s priest. But he says the interpretation offers spiritual value for parishioners who can hear, too.

“They enjoy it, that way of worshipping,” Schmeidler says. “As I watch it, and as I see it being communicated, it enriches our own hearts and offers a deeper mystery than we can understand in our own language.”

And having that come from a teenager means something special, he says.

“It’s the difference a spirit can bring – it’s a youthful newness and freshness, and an energy that’s there,” Schmeidler says.

Martha considers the signing a service she can provide.

“It’s a link between the deaf and hearing communities,” she says. “It’s something I enjoy.”

‘So bright’

Martha, who will be a seventh-grader at Central Junior High School, isn’t sure whether she’ll pursue a career in sign-language interpreting.

Lange, Martha’s instructor, says she has a good groundwork laid if she’s interested.

“She is so bright. She just picks up things by observing me,” Lange says. “She does finger-spelling, using the manual alphabet, and does it much more naturally and quicker than I can. She just picked it up.”

Martha says she enjoys the challenge of interpreting religious services, where relaying the details of concepts is especially important and difficult.

“You have to communicate using your hands and arms and the expressions on your face,” she says. “You kind of have to know what you’re talking about.”

Lange says Martha’s signing has led others to take classes she teaches each semester at St. John’s. Martha says she hopes more people would learn the basics of sign language, even if they don’t know someone who’s deaf.

“It’s kind of like learning how to talk – you see others doing it and you want to do it, too,” she says. “It would make it more known, and more accepted.”