Its true, try it and see if you don’t feel like a toddler again. Missionaries start at birth in a new language and start again as adult babies in a new language (sometimes more than once). Ask any missionary and they will tell you it is a humbling experience. I hid two punchlines from older blogs in the last box. I dabbled a little in computer coloring.
Thank you reading my 1st month of cartoons. I am learning something each time I sit in front of the three empty boxes. This blog will help you pray for the needs of missionaries and hopefully make you smile. Today I participated in the Leah Fun Run and was thankful it was a 3K rather than a 3 mile (I love Metric). I am available to speak on missions.
Updated to correct a word.
In Honduras I used all three of these phrases in Spanish the first night at the restaurant. It was exciting to step across the language barrier and be understood. That was thirty years ago. My son Scotty and I traveled from Ulaanbataar, Mongolia to Ulan Ude, Russia knowing how to say in Russian: Hello, Thank You, and Five Bread. Most of these phrases should be said with a smile as in the cartoon.
I like saying my weight in Metric. I just don’t want people trying to convert it to the English system. When living in most of the world, except for three countries, you must learn to speak the metric language. 60 liters fills up the car, 1 kilo fills up the sugar canister, 10 degrees you wear a sweater, 32 degrees you look for shade, and a football field is about 100 meters. I never did learn metric time.
Please as you travel Europe, don’t be overly concerned about the holes. The chance of you falling into a hole in a country where you don’t speak any of the language is just one in seven. (The holes are deeper in Eastern Europe). Try as you travel to learn some of the language, it can benefit you greatly. I think the four people in box #2 are asking, “Need Help?”
It took a long time to get from box #1 to box #2 in the cartoon, and it took six months to get to box #1. First there was a private tutor, then language school, and then a private tutor again. I studied DAILY the whole time we were in Mongolia. The four sentences turned into a church. Each Sunday the lesson got longer and more people came, then I stepped out of the picture and started a second work. I was invited back to speak at Chinese Fellowship Church just before leaving Mongolia. While no one said out loud, “you received the gift of tongues”, there were Wows from those two Mongols who sat from the beginning and listened each Sunday as I struggled through a lesson. Tsitsik really said, “What happened to you!”, she had asked me many times to get an interpreter and now those words flowed for twenty long minutes.
My buddy Duke and I prayed as we walked passed every house in my subdivision, if we saw toys in the yard, we prayed for the children and if their name was on the mail box, we prayed for the home by name. We didn’t stop or close our eyes as we prayed out loud taking turns. People who saw us thought we were walking and talking. Dr. Jonathan and I prayed walked through Ujiji, Tanzania a city that was 95% Muslim and walked by three Mosques. Once a care taker invited Cindy and I into a Mosque in Kigoma so we prayer walked on the tour without our shoes.
My first memory of having that deer in the headlights look was in the Summer of 1971 at R.A. Camp working with deaf campers. If Carl, my interpreter, left for a moment, then there I was not having a clue what the campers were saying. I had that look many times in many languages. Many times I didn’t have that look but understood what was spoken. My sophomore year I took a course on Sunday nights in sign language which prepared me for the next two summers when I was blessed with deaf campers but no interpreter.
Your heart language is the language you speak growing up and use every day. I speak and understand 20-21th century Southern English. June 1971, I bought a Good News for Modern Man for thirty-five cents and WOW, the scriptures came alive. I read it from cover to cover in no time (I read other translations cover to cover).
Laughing the Languages 