Living in a new culture is humbling…like probably the biggest gulp of humility I’ve ever taken. For example (and laughs):
- The first few restaurants we tried here, all we could do was point on the menu at something that ‘sounded’ good and smile, hoping it was something we liked (it was a month before we knew how to ask for our empanadas to be heated).
- COUNTLESS questions from cashiers, etc. that only got answered by confused smiles and the hopes that she felt less awkward than we did (our first trip to the market we bought limes and when she handed us 25+ limes aka 1 kilo, all we could do was say gracias and walk away, pretending like yah, we totally meant to buy a month’s worth of limes…)
- The sports we play here are all the ones I rarely or never played in the States (Google fronton).
- Our Spanish teachers here only know things about us that we can communicate in Spanish – so around the vocab of a kindergartener-middle schooler (I guess they also know ½’s and ¼’s of “funny” stories from our lives that we tried to tell but weren’t able to finish).
Basically, hardly an hour goes by daily that I’m not confused about something and really have no clue what someone is trying to communicate/get me to communicate…
And it’s HUMBLING!! We’ve been learning what hourly grace for ourselves and those around us looks like, and also how to laugh at each other a lot (like when Matt continually said a curse-word to our leaders on accident, or when I greeted people with “hasta la vista”, the first Spanish phrase that came to mind, straight out of the mouth of Arnold Schwarzeneggar).
Sometimes though, it’s not super fun to sound like a kindergartener and I often feel a strong desire for heart to heart conversations with the people here. Thankfully we can more than get by at this point in language learning and we’re not even half-way…so don’t get me wrong, we’re very, very excited about the progress we’ve made and have yet to make.
But I’ll be honest, there have been days when I’ve thought, God why did you call us to a place and people that we don’t even know how to speak to…
A few weeks ago, our teacher gave us a children’s Bible story book and I think it was more than a coincidence that I came across the story of Moses. God graciously reminded me…in broken Spanish…in a Children’s Bible…
Moses was freaking out about the opportunity God put in front of him. He wasn’t a good speaker, wasn’t a natural-born leader, didn’t have many words and basically, he realized that if it was up to him, he was going to mess this thing up big time. Moses tried to use his own insignificance as a “get-out” card which its evident, is the worst excuse – God loves to use small people for big things so that HIS name will be glorified on the earth.
But Moses had doubts and tons of questions and even after God (who MADE man’s mouth) reassured him over and over that He would give Moses words and that the people wouldn’t think he was dumb, asked for a back-up to speak for him.
And I just feel like that’s often a problem for us too, no? Learning to believe that God’s going to show up in everyday life, even in the small steps that we forget He cares about along the way to the big task that He’s called us to.
What if every day we had the goal of living life by faith in the God who made our mouths
and not be sight – by looking at our own inabilities and clumsy tongues.
I’m thankful to be reminded of this goal, at least hourly, with every correction of “bien” vs “bueno” or every time I conjugate a verb after a preposition.
Bendiciones,
Sophie