For almost two years I’ve been working on Spanish, first with Duolingo and lately with the people here in the Valley who are fluent. I’ve found that native speakers are very patient and forgiving as I stumble through their language. For some reason, I find that even though I know the words, when I attempt to string them together into a sentence during a conversation, my mind turns dull and I stumble over the simple stuff. Practice, practice, practice.
Well, Sister Maravilla, one of the missionaries here, challenged me to speak in church (as in, over the pulpit) in Spanish. She supports a Spanish congregation, and we attend when we can. Frankly, I spend a lot of mental energy listening to the talks and attempting to make sense of them, but hearing the Spanish is helpful as I learn the cadence and flow of the words. We agreed that if I rose to that challenge, I would “earn” a Spanish mission name tag.
Well, I did it. I went in front of about thirty people (it’s a small congregation!) and talked for maybe two minutes entirely in Spanish. Sure, I stumbled over a few words, and I probably sounded like a toddler, but I got through it. Afterward, an older Mexican woman came up to me, grabbed my arm tightly, and said enthusiastically in broken English, “You keep doing it! Keep doing it!” She said that’s how you learn a language, and how she’d been learning English. She was really excited for me.
I talked to our mission office and explained my little challenge with Sister Maravilla, then asked if I could get a Spanish name tag. It arrived today!
Pepper received one as well. She’s much stronger in Spanish than I am, since she spoke Spanish on her mission in Boston thirty years ago. She says she’s “still rusty”, naturally, but that it’s “coming back”.
It might seem like a silly little thing, but it makes me pretty happy to see my progress in the language. I’m a far cry from fluent– and don’t expect to be even at the end of our mission– but it’s been a rewarding journey.