Mar 302018
Est-ce que sais-tu qu’il y a un Dieu qui t’aime?”
For those of you reading with no French background, that string of words probably means about as much as it would if one took the alphabet and scrambled it up into a random sentence. You might see one or two words you could guess, but the question doesn’t mean much to you.
We’ve been learning French for almost three months and, while we can understand the meaning of that question, it still does not speak to our hearts with near the same extent as hearing,
“Do you know that there is a God who loves you?”
~ A sunset from the window of our apartment – we love that we have a view!
Want to know a few neat things about being immersed in a language other than your mother tongue?
Having your ears and eyes opened to the uniqueness and worth of each people group’s tongue.
Hearing a conversation and sometimes not understanding a lick of it, but seeing in each set of eyes understanding that comes only from communicating in the language your heart speaks.
Hearing fellow believers sing praise to the same God you worship, and knowing that He understands every single word and a heartfelt breath of ‘Worthy’ or ‘Thank You, Lord’ is no more beautiful to him than ‘Digne’ or ‘Merci, Seigneur!’
Having your ears and eyes opened to the uniqueness and worth of each people group’s tongue.
Hearing a conversation and sometimes not understanding a lick of it, but seeing in each set of eyes understanding that comes only from communicating in the language your heart speaks.
Hearing fellow believers sing praise to the same God you worship, and knowing that He understands every single word and a heartfelt breath of ‘Worthy’ or ‘Thank You, Lord’ is no more beautiful to him than ‘Digne’ or ‘Merci, Seigneur!’
We’ve realized it can be easy to (without realizing it) have the mindset that our language is superior simply because we know it best and it makes perfect sense to us (usually!). We’ve discovered this in class as we often find ourselves comparing the two languages: “Well, in English, we say it this way…” But as foreign as other language structures might seem to us, each language works for the people who speak it, and God knew what He was doing when He decided to “confound” our language (Gen. 11). It’s all part of His beautiful redemptive plan.
~ A peek into a recent afternoon of class
So even though we know we cannot learn French perfectly in the time we will be able to spend here, we are praying we learn well enough to develop friendships with the Togolese people and to share the love of our abundantly-merciful God with them in a way that truly speaks to their hearts.
- Please pray for us as we have our first set of exams this Tuesday (April 3rd). We are praying that they would accurately reflect our current levels of French and that nerves or test methods would not get in the way. These are not pass/fail exams, but rather an estimate of our current French level. They will begin at 8:35am our time (2:35am ECT) and last until 3:35pm (9:35am ECT).
- Pray as we continue to study and learn, that we would learn quickly and well the vocabulary necessary to effectively build relationships with the Togolese people.
- Pray for all of the logistics of shipping our vehicle and container to Togo. While this is still a few months away, we want to make sure everything is in order so that we can all get there around the same time.
Joyeuses Pâques! Happy Easter!
~ Visit to the Eiffel Tower at the end of February
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