Monday, March 16
Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? –Acts 2:17-18
I had tried to learn a little Spanish before the trip. I bought a CD and listened in the car; I studied the accompanying workbook on vacation in Florida. I was preparing to go to Chile on a UCC trip to visit our sister churches in the Pentecostal Church of Chile.
I wasn’t very successful. When we got to Chile, I tried to recall those vocabulary lists I had studied, but the words eluded me. Sometimes they morphed into the French and Swahili I had studied in high school and college.
The trip leader had pity on me, and paired me up with Elena Huegel, our UCC missionary in Chile. Together we were placed in a homestay with a young family–Andres and Marcella, with their children Consuelo and Augustine. At first I relied on Elena to translate, but she was busy and tired. Eventually I got over my fear of embarrassing myself. I brought my Spanish-English dictionary to every meal. I started sentences without knowing how to finish them. I used my hands; I acted things out; I simplified my ideas so I could express them in the present tense.
Once I started trying, Andres and Marcella were willing to risk a few words of English. Their daughter Consuelo studied English in second grade, and she began to chime in. I spoke very broken Spanish; they leapt in with some English; we all laughed a lot.
After a few days with our homestay families in Rancagua, our group went to visit other churches in other parts of Chile. At the end of the trip, we reconnected with our first hosts at Centro Shalom, a Pentecostal Church of Chile retreat center in the mountains. In that peaceful setting, with lots of beauty and inspiring worship and song, I could see something was bothering Marcella and Andres. Both cried every time we sang; both went forward for laying-on-of-hands and healing prayers every opportunity we had.
It was so hard for me to see my new friends in so much pain and not know why. I thought about asking Elena to find out for me. I realized, though, that I would have been acting from my desire to know, not from their need for me to understand.
On the last day, I took a walk with the woods with Marcella. I had planned ahead, using my dictionary to look up the words. What I said–what I hope I said–was simple. “I can see you have a lot of pain. My heart is with you and my prayers are with you.” Whatever I actually said, Marcella understood. She knew I cared.
Help me, God, to move past my need to understand. Help me simply to care. Amen. –Debbie Clark