What’s So Great About Learning a Language Anyway?

(Some of this post is an excerpt from our latest Newsletter.)

First off, let’s make it clear that learning a new language is a painfully personal process. I have heard highly educated men with vast experience in the professional field say that it is the hardest thing they have ever done. Learning a language has a way of making one feel like a babbling baby who can’t even ask for what they want (“how do you say napkin again?”). I (Dan) currently have the privilege of studying with students in the second semester here at the Rio Grande Bible Institute Language School. RGBI uses an immersion approach which I don’t think has anything to do with their Baptist roots but is exactly as the name implies leaving students sputtering, gurgling, and gasping for air. After two months of day in and day out memorization, repetition, and grammar, my fellow classmates and I are all feeling the effects of having been immersed in Spanish!

Thankfully we have other classes like conversation that help break up the monotony as can only be found deep in the pages of a textbook. In that class we have exciting theological discussions and act out Bible stories but are only allowed to do so in Spanish. Our skits are earning our class a bit of a reputation as they often leave us in such hysterics that it draws other students and teachers from down the hall. When acting out Paul’s escape from Damascus (Acts 10:25) one of us even climbed out the second story window! Click on the video below to see how much fun learning Spanish can be!  You'll see a Hollywood version of the life of Moses with a fickle director who keeps asking us to act it out in different ways- with more emotion- slow it down- give it a futuristic edge (etc).  The scenes you will see are Moses' birth- his discovery in the river by Pharaoh's daughter- Moses killing of the Egyptian- and his return to the disgruntled Egyptians. 

Believe it or not... all of these methods are helping us speak better Spanish so that we can communicate the most important message to the people of Paraguay.