The Language Barrier

I'm sorry I've been kinda slow to post. Our plane flew in late last-Friday and we drove home on Saturday. I've been home since about noon Saturday. So much has happened that I don't know where to begin. I'm going to break everything into a series of shorter posts about a specific thing. My goal is about two per day.

I thought I'd focus on Creole for this first post. The language barrier was much more difficult than I could have imagined. I didn't realize how much we communicate through words. Aleia, a girl from our partner team from Iowa, and I tried to teach a group of kids tag through motions. It didn't work. The kids just gave us the These Americans are crazy look.

Creole is a deviation of French. Instead of bonjor, they say bonjou, which means good morning. Many of the words are very similar, but it definitely isn't the same language. Many people do speak both Creole and French because French is taught in school.

I don't know what we would have done without our translators. I don't think any of our our ministry would have been effective without them.