Drinking from the “Español” Fire Hose

“Stem changers,” “cognates,” “infinitives,” “base verbs,” “dichos,” “conjugations” & “pure vowels?” Does hearing those words get your language learning energy flowing? Those terms along with countless others have become a part of our daily lives now that our brains have been thrust into the world of Spanish language study. Our daily language classes feel mostly like trying to drink from a fire hose interspersed with minutes of glorious victory when we fully comprehended something for a few seconds and then… back we go into drinking from that good ol’ fire hose!

Our class is a really small one as we are two of the only four (sometimes six) students. Tom and I are new of course so we are starting the class for the first time and the other two students are mom’s who felt that retaking the class would benefit them in light of the fact that one just had a baby (which naturally meant she had some time out of language learning) and the other (my sister! :D) was about to have a baby which would take her out of Spanish study for a little bit too. (My sister has had her baby by now by the way. This picture was taken several weeks ago when she was almost due!) There are two other students who come when they can depending on the demands of their full time ministries which they are already serving in.  In a lot of ways it’s very nice to have a small class because when you have as many questions and comments as we do, it’s a good thing our teachers don’t have more students they need to focus on! 🙂

One thing we did right away in our class was to take a lot of pictures that would be compiled into what are called “photo books” which are used to help us base our language learning on. After all, there needs to be something to talk about! We had a list of main verbs we were to act out for a picture that would help to elicit different vocabulary as we progress in our language ability. Maybe this will bore you to death but we were quite entertained as we took some of these pictures! Below are only a handful of the pictures we took, trying to elicit specific verbs. Take a look at just some of our pictures and see if you can guess what word we were trying to act out! (Answers are at the end of the blog so you HAVE to read the whole thing to get to them ;D)

I know, I know- some of these are so funny! Hee, hee.

 Of course there are many ways we learn language and much of them are coming into play as we go to class. Not only have we been learning language but we re also learning about some Mexican geography, history and culture! Bam! I guess that’s why they call is “take off,” because it’s getting us started on our language learning journey with a big helpful ‘push’ forward!

I could go on and tell you tons more details about all that is going into our days and studies but instead I’m going to switch gears and remind you WHY this is all happening. We are not on vacation, we are not on a tour, we are not studying to earn credit toward a degree and we are certainly not doing this for “fun.” The point is that here in Mexico, (like many other countries) there are millions of people who don’t know the Lord. Understanding and becoming fluent in the language and culture of the Latino people is our door to being a part of sharing truth with the lost here. And not just share it, but Lord willing, to share this truth and His love with excellence in a way that can be clearly understood and grasped!

Just as it was in Papua New Guinea, as each week passes we learn more about the many needs of the unreached people here and our hearts ache over all of them.  How do we choose where to go and where to be used here when there are so many needs? Needless to say it is overwhelming. We do not know how the Lord will lead us in the following year or two or where He will place us to do His work. What we DO KNOW is that we can trust Him to work in this time. We are trusting Him to work in the relationships we are building, trusting Him to use the hours we are putting into study and trusting Him with the time it will all take. He is not limited by time but He does use it for His perfect purposes. As in every effort we make to obey Him, it is worth it!

{Answers to the Photobook verb sheets from left to right starting at the top:}

1.  Seem/Appear (they appear to be sisters)
2. Hit
3. Hurt
4. Scared
5. Be Able (for the pic think Rosy the Riveter)
6. Pour
7. Forget
8. Change
9. Pleasing To
10. Eat
11. Study
12. Be (a superhero)
13. Play
14. Dig
15. Pardon
16. Cut
17. Listen