Wednesday, September 22, 2010

A language blunder

We have a sweet lady who comes to our house twice a week to help me keep up with the housework...now before you think I'm sitting around eating bonbons while she does all the work...let me tell you that cleaning is a daily affair. There is something about the air over here...it just holds dust constantly. Nothing stays clean.

So, we have a house helper and we need her. We love her like family and work to practice our language with her, which is difficult, because she speaks a dialect. A comparison might be that you learned to speak a proper England kind of English and you are trying to carry on a conversation with a good ole boy from southeast Texas (no offense friends). It's challenging.

She is a believer, but her family isn't. Nor are they wealthy. Her husband has to travel to other locations to work and she is often a single parent of her two kids. Anyway, we try to encourage her the best we can. We hug and love on her and she, in turn, loves us and is patient with our language. She adores the Prince and Princess. I think she missed the Prince almost as much as we do.

Now to the story...recently she had a death in her family. This is our first experience in this culture with someone close to us having a death in the family and we had to do a little research to know exactly what to do. So, after we took care of what was culturally expected, I pulled her aside, hugged her, and in my broken language told her we loved her and would do what we could to help her. I then asked her if I could pray with her. She didn't understand at first, but she caught on when I bowed my head and she followed suit. Then she returned the blessing by praying over us and thanking Father for putting us together. It wasn't until much later when I was relaying to the King the episode that I realized what I had actually said and why she didn't understand immediately that I wanted to pray for her.

You see the word for "pray" and "cake" are similar. Apparently, I asked her if I could "cake" for her.

LOL.

Thought you'd appreciate a little humor. :)

1 comment:

GloryandGrace said...

That is a classic language story :)

Glad you're able to reach out to her during this difficult time~