German

Learning another language is not always so easy. God has blessed us so many ways in our language learning process. We have been bold in this new language and learning relatively quickly. Something that I have noticed though is it is especially hard to be yourself in a different language, to feel that comfort or make jokes. Our german teacher told me once that for every language you can speak you have a different personality. I didn't really believe it but thinking back on the last 8 months, it's true. We are not generally as talkative and it takes a lot more motivation to initiate conversation at times. However I have been seeing this slowly change, which is really exciting. We have been talking more and more in German and depending less on our English, even with many of our friends and the youth kids. Recently I spent a few hours with a friend on a walk and I really felt like I had been myself, even though it was all in German. I definitely think part of it is because I feel very comfortable around her but also I'm getting more comfortable with the language. Also this week I have been the coordinator for the tutoring program that we run and even though I was really nervous to talk with parents and the other helpers, God has given me the courage and allowed me to communicate all that I needed to. Praise God!

Yesterday was a big moment for me to see how far Seth had come in German. We had our English Camp church service. So all the families from everyone at camp was invited to all come together. Our team here organized the service and there were probably 250 (I'm bad at guessing) but it was definitely way more than normal. We each had our tasks that we were in charge of and Seth's was to interview some campers and leaders up front so everyone could hear about some of their experiences. It was all going to be in German and he had prepared all of the questions in advance. I expected him to simply read the questions but man was I surprised. He was himself, almost just as much as he would be in English. He was telling jokes and responding well to their answers. It was really cool to see everyone laughing. It probably sounds small but recently German has been really encouraging and helping us to feel more like we belong here.

But also, just about every time we are feeling encouraged about how much of the language we are understanding, we are then in a situation where we realize how much more we have yet to learn. Last night was one of those nights where we were spending the evening with six or so college students. They were mostly all speaking in dialect and we understood very little. I think it is good though to have those moments, not to get too confident and to be continually in the learning mode. You can definitely be continuing to pray for us in this process because it will definitely continue to be a barrier that we are needing to overcome.

Thanks for all your prayers with the Lernhilfe. It has been going great so far and we have been having more kids signing up all the time. It has been a challenge at times as I have been talking with parents as well as the various volunteers but God has been providing! Be praying though for more kids to come!