La misionera, la maestra and me

Two stories about communication, but first a note on Spanish (for those non-Spanish speakers out there): Spanish has masculine and feminine endings for nouns. Some nouns are either masculine or feminine, one or the other but not both, while other nouns can be both masculine and feminine, just not at the same time. Did I confuse you with that? Anyway, the Spanish word for missionary is misionero for a man and misionera for a woman ("o" for boys and "a" for girls).

First a story from our time of missionary service in Guatemala: Many missionary mothers, especially missionary mothers of small children, find that while their children are young, they don't have a lot of time to mish. Most feel a strong call to the mission field and want to be involved directly and hands-on with mission work. However, doing as much as they want is often difficult just because of household demands combined with the extra work that regularly goes with living in a less developed area outside the U.S. During one period in Guatemala, my wife, Laurena, was teaching health and nutrition in a rural area outside Guatemala City. At that point in our missionary career, that one teaching opportunity a week was about the only mishing she got to do besides attending Sunday church services. Laurena did not much like driving in Guatemala under the best of circumstances, and she really disliked driving on mountain roads. Since reaching the site where she was teaching involved driving on both mountain roads and rough rural roads in a rugged, short wheelbase, stiff suspension Toyota Land Cruiser without power steering, she asked me to drive her every week. Every week as we approached the teaching site, the neighborhood children would run along beside the car (which had to go very slow because of the bad roads) and shout "¡Ya viene la misionera! ¡Ya viene la misionera!" (The missionary is coming! The missionary is coming!) But in Spanish, unlike in English, it was clear that the kids were shouting that the woman missionary (misionera) was coming. In fact, I'm not even sure the kids thought of me as a missionary. I was just la misionera's driver. That one little bit of communication accuracy made an important difference in Laurena's perspective on her own ministry.

Next a story from tonight: I answered a call as I was sitting down to do some work on the computer. When I answered, "Hello," a tentative voice on the other end asked, "¿Está la Señora Johnson?" (Is Mrs. Johnson there?) The voice was tentative because the person on the other end didn't know whether I spoke Spanish. To that person, I was just the answering machine for the important person, their child's second grade teacher who happened to speak Spanish and was able to talk to them about their child in a language they understood. Laurena is a vital link between that family and the educational system. Without her, they would be lost.

Laurena and I became proficient in Spanish as a result of God's call on our lives to missionary service. God used that proficiency in Costa Rica, in Guatemala and even in New York and Montreal where we worked with Hispanic congregations. God gave us that gift of proficiency and is still using it where we are. I like to think that every semester as I work with SNU students, I am working with others for whom God's gift of language proficiency will be used all over the world, working in poverty alleviation or helping provide medical care or teaching children who need a teacher who understands their language and their culture. That's why I teach at SNU.