And the Word became Meat

I really love the El Chana Church of Christ. We are so blessed to have Christians that welcome us so openly into their family. They tolerate our (my) bad Spanish and give us (me) a safe place to practice speaking. Sunday morning, I actually had multiple conversations in Spanish before church. I sat with a couple I hadn't sat with before and enjoyed visiting with them. (All in Spanish... so I think I know what we said.)

We "Sprang Forward" going onto daylight savings time. So... umm... we had fewer students there than normal and a few came late. (But some of the members showed up an hour late too.) And just like when at home, not all of the students go to church, so as the semester has worn on, some have stopped coming. They don't realize what they are missing.

In Bible Class, there were 5 ACU students, myself, Eric Rama, and Pablo, the teacher. We were discussing Christianity as compared to different religions. Eric really does a great job translating. It gets funny sometimes because he's the only one who can really think philosophy in two languages. Some of the students are good and can understand all of the discussion. Pablo can speak English, especially in one-on-one conversations, but generally only speaks Spanish in Bible class. There were a few times I'd have to stop the Spanish discussion to get Eric to sum up. It was really fun, even though sometimes I'd get giggly over the craziness of doing these discussions in two languages. But then again I get giggly over a lot.

As I said, Pablo can speak English, but sometimes the problem in languages is that what is two words in one language is only one in another. For example carne can mean meat or flesh. So we hit a discussion of John 1. And Pablo wrote on the board "Verbo hecho" The Word became... And then wrote in English "meat." So it was "Verbo hecho meat" - "The Word became meat." We all knew what he meant but we got cracked up. Eric managed to explain to him that we usually translate that to flesh.

In the afternoon, I hung out in the apartment and watched Los Pumas beat Scotland in the World Cup Rugby Finals. Well, I saw the first half anyway, the second half was during evening services. On Saturday, the number 1 (New Zealand) and 2 (Australia) teams in the world lost. While the 3rd (South Africa) and 4th (Argentina) teams won their matches. So the semi-finals are set for next weekend: Argentina vs. South Africa and England vs. France. I know you are all as excited as I am!

For evening services, a weird set of circumstances led to me be both the only North American and only woman at church. I got a tad bit of attention. (Which that is ok, because I like attention.) I was forced to use my Spanish because there were no one else to translate for me. At one point after church, Martin and Pablo decided they wanted to practice English and they had me switch to English. So then we got to playing with switching back and forth. Depending on what words we knew.

After the sermon, who ever preaches almost always asks me if I understood. I don't know if it is because I look like I'm listening so hard or what. Yesterday I could honestly tell Martin I knew many of the words, but I don't usually have enough time to string them all together to get a meaningful sentence. More and more often I understand the gist of what is being said, but there are some people I still can't really understand at all. But I don't have the heart to say, "I don't understand a word that comes out of your mouth when you are speaking at the front of the church." Other people I can understand pretty much everything.

I've realized that I've grown used to this new church, because rather than leave immediately afterwards, I stand around and talk for awhile. Or in the case of Sunday night for 40 min. Oh, one kind of funny thing, I got stuck in a conversation with one person for about 10 minutes. It wasn't bad, I just couldn't talk to anyone else, and we were getting repetitive as we had reached the extent of my Spanish and his English. (Like 10 min of trying to explain that I was born in Canada and live and work in Texas now, got a little old.) I was pretty sure that the rest of the men could see that I was stuck. (Pablo was making faces at me.) At the very end Pablo and I were the last two to walk off. He makes some comment about how I enjoyed that conversation. And I said, "You knew??? You could have rescued me!" He replies, "Rescue?" thinks for a bit, and then says, "Ah, yes! Rescue, Ahahahahaha!"

Oh, another thing that is funny about spending a lot of time with people from church, is that they are much more comfortable speaking English in front of me. (Which is good for me getting to know people, not so good for my Spanish.) Well, I found out yesterday that one of the men who had pretty much acted like he spoke no English actually speaks quite a bit. Both Sunday morning and night, in front of me, he spoke complete sentences in good English like, "I need you over here." to the people I was talking to. So the second time he did it, I say, "Wait a second, you speak English!" He just laughs and shakes his head. Then I say, "Yes you do, because you even understand the jokes! That's the sure sign you understand!" He just laughed more and went inside. I'm glad they are comfortable with me though!

After church I went to dinner with Luke and then visited with other students. Some what ironically I was having a hard time making myself work on my talk for chapel the next day. Why was this ironic? Because it was on Self-control!

Monday was pretty much a normal Monday. It was a little different because it was Raquel's birthday. Some of the girls showed how awesome they are by getting up and fixing breakfast so Raquel wouldn't have to and getting her flowers. By the time we get out of class at 6:30 on Mondays, Anne, Kelsey and I are pretty wiped out. (The kids have 4 hours of class in the afternoon with only half an hour break between the two.) But it wasn't anything that a good step class couldn't fix. It of course was super fun. Our instructor gets really excited about big finishes. We are always refreshed and ready to go back to the house and work. (Or in my case, continue to procrastinate writing P-chem notes for another hour or two.)