FBC Missions

Two weeks. 14 days. 336 hours. This is how much time that Paul Calvert had to learn Spanish before embarking on a mission trip with nine other college age students to Bolivia. ¿Was he successful? More or less.

Only with the knowledge of English, French and Japanese did Paul enter the appenticeship of two Spanish Majoring friends, Carrie and Rebecca. Through rigorous hours, daunting conjugations and many moments of clueless histeria, Paul came closer to conquering the exotic lanuguage of Spanish.

Once in Bolivia, however, it quickly became apparent that Paul understood very little, if any, Spanish at all. Riding on a bus for six hours from La Paz to Cochabomba, Paul could not distinguish at all the conversations or lives going on around him. Even after the bus ride there was no reprieve. Riding with a Pasorial worker from the Church, Jonny (now our favorite local), regaled many stories of novelty and exravagence, none of which Paul could understand.

But Paul was not alone. There were others on the trip who understood little Spanish at all. Gaining support and strength from these compatriots, Paul felt compelled to enlist the aid of more knowledgable individuals on the trip. Great Spanish scholars such as Bri, Ty, Jenna and Kara provided much of the experience and insight that Paul needed to communicate with the people of Bolivia.

Paul soon found his chance to put his newly acquired Spanish to practice. The team was going to do VBS at Camp Jireh, a ministry for children from the streets. While playing soccer with these wonderful children, Paul found oppurtunities to yell “AQUI” and “GOAL!” With these small trimuphs, Paul became more venturous and talked to Escarletta (a little girl) through a sock-puppet snake named Bernardo.

As Paul became more proficient at Spanish, he continued to learn and make mistakes. Mishearing Ty at a dinner with another family, Paul mistakenly said “Oil travleing to Bolivia” before Ty intervened, restating the Spanish word making it “BEFORE traveling to Bolivia”.  At that same dinner, Paul meant to say “a little hot,” but accidently called Kara “a little shut-up”. Quite embarrassing for Paul. Someone that Paul felt very comfortable making mistakes with was Jonny, our Pastorial friend. This was excusable, because while Jonny taught Paul Spanish, Paul taught Jonny Japanese. Jonny´s favorite phrases at the moment are “Konnichiwa” (hello) and “Arigatoo” (Thank you).

This all came to a head on Saturday night: College Youth Group. Dan leads the college group down here, so it only came naturally that we would meet our respective peers. These were no children still learning Spanish themselves. This was no forgiving local learning Japanese. These were College students just like Paul and the rest of the team.

And how did Paul do? Wonderfully. He was quite surprised, actually. He rambled on about anything and everything, and through limited help and exaggerated hand gestures, Paul was successful in communicating with them. They talked about their individual studies, family, the decorations being from Roccoco era in Europe, how Bolivia was, everything. Paul was so enthralled with speaking with a student named Jorge, that he failed to notice the tiny dog ¨Guapo” (”handsome”) eating his delicious pastry. Paul met Davide, Alejandro, Daniel, Andrea and Damaris, all of whom were inexplicable and amibable people. They would no doubt be Paul´s friends sooner if they lived with him down in Eugene.

After that evening though, Paul realized that we in the Church share a bond that goes deeper than any language ever could: genuine love. Everywhere that the team has went these past few days, we have been welcomed by our gracious hosts and loved upon (they usually do this through food). Though half of us could never understand what they were actually saying, we could feel the love and joy of Christ coming out, and that is what matters. Not only is this awesome, but it also means something. Even if there are those that will never understand what we say (figuratively and literally), we can still make them feel loved. And that is only one thing that God has blessed us all with through joining his family.

 Sincerely,

Paul

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 6:42 pm and is filed under Bolivia 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.