"If a commission by an earthly king is considered an honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?"
-David Livingstone

February 6, 2011

Language Study!

As I write this you will find me presently seated in a little candle-lit bamboo room. And feeling rather content, I may add. My roommates are chattering together in Thai, munching goodies, studying for school, and sleeping, respectively. Jabez being the sleepy-head, no doubt. It’s a good life.

Yes, if you haven’t already guessed, I’m temporarily relocated. Again. This time I’m at our friends, the Sharon’s, training center, which is located down near Sankhlabury about a 16 hour drive from the Sunshine Orchard. They have an excellent language teacher named Pearl and I’m here to study – this time Karen. This is actually the first time that I've ever had the chance to learn the Karen language with the help of a "real" teacher or have any kind of planned lesson so I'm pretty excited about this.

It’s an amazing thing, really. I can sit in our 10am-12pm class and in two hours I can have the answers to half the questions that I’ve managed to dream up in the past year – and more! This makes me happy.

What I find to be slightly less thrilling is the continued discovery of words that I have pronounced wrong countless times throughout the past more than a year. But the knowledge of good and solid answers always softens the blows.:)

Jabez, of course, is standing – er, lying – beside me through all of this, bringing a smile to life and supportive coos, as well as acting as master class disruptionist. Presently he’s making his grand debut into life as a scheduled member of society. We hope that he will soon resign himself to this. Meanwhile, the rest of the household here has dealt graciously as well as stoically with his nocturnal squalling sprees. I am delighted to report that they’re diminishing in both quality and quantity.

I am so grateful for both good friends and language teachers.:)

I pray often for the gift of tongues. My Karen test is this morning and I have a feeling that it will find me sending pleas heavenward very earnestly.

1 comment:

  1. Maria, you got me chuckling hard. I love the paragraph about Jabez becoming a scheduled member of society.

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