LANGUAGE LEARNING

After being in the capital 5 weeks, we have now moved to another town called Escobar for the next 4 weeks. Jeff and I have begun a Guarani (the language we speak here) refresher course. As you can imagine, we lost a lot of vocabulary while we were in the states (not too many people there to practice with).

Paraguay is a unique country in the fact that it has two national languages: Spanish and Guarani. Spanish is used by government officials and in schools, but Guarani is used in the home. It is the language mothers use to soothe their children, the language men use to tell jokes, and the language used to convey deep emotion. The farther out from Asuncion you go, the more Guarani is spoken.

When we moved to Paraguay 5 years ago, our plan was to learn Spanish during first term and then Guarani our second term. But after our first trip to the rural area (where we wanted to minister) we were easily convinced that we needed to learn Guarani in our first term in order to teach God’s word in the Paraguayans heart language. And so after studying Spanish for 9 months, we embarked on Guarani.
Learning a language is the most humbling experience I have ever had! Upon moving to Paraguay, I quickly learned that hearing the language and speaking it does not come easily for me. Seems a little unfair, that God would call me to be a missionary and not give me the gift of learning languages. So as a child, I stumble through grammar, get odd expressions from those I am communicating with and try to laugh at myself.

Language learning is (as our co-work says) like trying to drink from a gushing fire hydrant. Words and phrases come at full blast and we’re lucky to retain a small fraction of them. It is a slow process and for months and months we’re stuck talking about the weather and children and praying for the day we can move on to more important matters – like salvation.

Thankfully God has allowed us to learn with Andy, a fellow missionary and the same one we studied with 4 years ago. We go up to his house for 4 hours every week day. He has employed a Paraguayan 3 of those days to be our language helper. In each of his Guarani classes since the very first, Andy has had at least one student begin class with a brand new baby or a baby has been delivered during class (not literally). 4 years ago in our class, Micah was born (Andy’s wife and our language helper had babies too). I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised when I found out I was pregnant just after making arrangements for this refresher course….we are the only students after all. Julia was 2 weeks when we began class and has done great. She mostly just sleeps and I nurse her during the break. For lunch, we stay at Andy’s place and eat a wonderful lunch prepared by his wife.

We are staying in the next town over from Andy’s at a seminary (it has no students yet). It is a beautiful place with plenty of room for the kids to run around outside. We will continue to live out of suitcases and lugging around our clothes, toys, bedding, towels, food and baby gear until mid-September. We then plan to move out to San Francisco and get settled back into our church planting and medical ministry.

While Jeff and I are in class our two younger boys play with Andy and Lizet’s boys. The often took walks to Abuela’s house to buy milk. One day Micah and Tyler were arguing whether it was “umbrella’s house” or “gorilla’s house”. That reminds me – please be praying for our children as they too reacquaint themselves with Spanish and Guarani.


Our class: Jeff and I, Andy (our teacher) and Norma (our language helper)


This is what Julia does most of the time through class.


The best part of language class is the lunch afterward that's prepared by Lizet!


Where we are staying


The kids enjoy the horses


We've been playing a lot of games in the afternoon


Ginny helping cook empanadas for dinner