know where you've been. We've now completed 6 weeks of intensive immersion
Kiswahili language study. In many ways I feel like that baby elephant,
looking back not sure what has happened, but thankful there is someone with
me to show me the way forward.
One day this week I was asking myself just exactly how far had we
progressed. We had just come out of Thursday evening bible study at church
and neither Sally or I seemed to have gotten ANYTHING from it. Sure we
understood the bible passages, but what the leader had said, might just as
well have been Chinese. Then the next day, a big rain storm came as our
class was ending and we invited our teacher to stay and have lunch with us.
As Sally was preparing Shepherd's pie, Sayi and I were in the sitting room
talking. I was actually surprised at how easy I was finding myself
discussing things with him, like issues that youth are facing, problems of
married life in Tanzania, and other things. Now I know that our teacher
knows where we are in our language skills and I am sure he was modifying his
part of our conversation to adapt to my skills, but even so, we really
seemed to be talking with each other. I praise God for that.
He is a really nice guy who has grown up in a difficult situation yet has
seen God bring him far.
Then today in church, it really seemed that Sally and I were getting things.
I know we have a looooooong way to go, but yet today, things were clicking.
I looked back at my first week of notes from classes and now laugh at the
things I wrote, equivalent to "See Dick run. See Spot run..."
This past week we had the privilege to write out and then share our
testimony with our teacher, Sayi. We had to make a lot of corrections, but
he really felt that what we wrote helped him to understand who we were, what
God had done in changing our lives, and why we're in Tanzania now. Now
we're working on re-writing it and learning to really share it more
naturally than reading it. It is exciting to think that soon we'll be able
to teach the truths of God's word to Tanzanians. Man, I get excited when I
think about teaching them about THE Truth, the person of Jesus Christ.
Soon...
Lastly, I have to share a funny with you. I love to laugh. I really
believe it is good medicine. Well this week, the last thing our teacher
taught us was a song about the parts of the body. It's kinda like "head,
shoulders, knees and toes" if you remember that song from primary school.
He had us standing up and doing the motions of touching our head, eyes,
nose, etc. as we sang it. Well, right in the middle of the song I just
broke up laughing and couldn't go on. It was a bit disrupting to the
teaching moment, and he looked at me like what is wrong with you. I kept
laughing. OK, so I got ahold of myself and then shared that in the middle
of the song I just got this picture of myself doing a consultation with a
patient in the hospital, and then not remembering the name of a body part,
having to turn away and sing the song to myself to remember what to write in
their file. We all started laughing and laughing. He suggested that
perhaps I could learn the parts well enough to not have to use the song as
patients might think I was a bit strange. It was a good way to end the
week, with laughter and then a meal shared.
We truly have come a long way in 6 weeks. God has blessed us with 4
different wonderful teachers who have been patient and have encouraged us as
we plod along. God has helped us to learn so much. We've surpassed 600
vocab words, we're reading and writing, and slowly getting better. I don't
say that to brag at all, but to praise God for his many blessings.
Please continue to pray for us as we exercise these 50+ year old brains. I
am grateful that it is possible to remodel the brain at this stage in life,
that God created each of us in such a way. And pray for us to continue to
know his presence with us as we continue forward in language learning. It
won't be long and we'll be in Kigoma! To Him be the praise and glory!
Daily by His grace...
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