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Learning a new language opens up a new world of opportunities. For one, your mind is opened to new “tracks” of thinking. Concepts and thoughts can be translated, with words from both languages bouncing to and fro as the brain processes information in different compartments. I was highly ambitious when it came to learning Romanian, for many reasons – the main one being that I wanted to effectively communicate in the culture God had called me to minister in.

In the years prior to my moving to Romania, I eagerly sought to pick up as much of the language as possible, memorizing words here and there, trying to read the Romanian Scriptures, and finally, learning some songs that I could sing in Romanian on mission trips. The song-learning enabled me to communicate to the church people, but my Romanian skills were less than stellar. I thought I was doing great, but this was another example of my over-confidence upon moving to Romania.

During the mission trips, I accumulated enough knowledge of the Romanian language to think that I could understand about half of what was being said. In fact, my understanding covered about half of the general ideas of the conversation, and that was true, not because I had begun to learn Romanian, but because my years of Spanish (a Latin language like Romanian) were beginning to pay off. Truthfully, I probably understood only 5% of what I heard, even if I could figure out the gist of a conversation. Even 5% was nice, but thinking I knew more got me into trouble many times.

Once, after preaching at a church, one of the ladies met me at the door and asked me how I was doing. Thankfully, I was with a translator, so I couldn’t mess up too badly; at least, I thought I couldn’t. I answered her in Romanian and then asked her how her husband was. (I had met with the couple in their home just months before). Tears welled up in her eyes as she told me that he had passed away. But instead of understanding that she had spoken of his death, I understood that she was crying because he was deathly ill. So, I answered back quickly that I was praying for his full recovery! The translator looked at me, stunned, and said, “Trevin, she said he’s dead!” Needless to say, I started being more cautious about acknowledging when I hadn’t understood all that I thought I did.

written by Trevin Wax  © 2007 Kingdom People blog

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