My turn to teach...

During this visit and another one a week later to Santa Elena 20 de Octubre, I tried my hand and my new language at teaching. In La Esmerelda, I taught bible classes to the 4 to 6 year olds for three days. I was so nervous... especially when while Esther told me I only had to prepare for 20 minutes of instruction, so I did... and it ended up being 2 to 3 hour sessions. But we survived... all 17 of us, learned, colored and ran around a bit too. I taught two classes to the women in La Esmerelda as well... one class about Mary and the other about Advent in which we made an Advent wreath for the church.

Having got my feet wet, and still amazed that I was understood, I also taught two classes in Santa Elena, one to the women and one to the kids. The experience in Santa Elena was nuanced by the need to have everything I said in Spanish translated by one of the men from the congregation into K`kechi. Most of the women do not know Spanish and are teaching their children the language they know… the children learn Spanish in school.

Yet we communicated… the women benefited as much from my attempting to speak my new language, a witness to the fact that it is not easy to learn a new language… and the children, from one community with no electricity and another where only a few have it, colored pictures of the birth of Jesus that I printed off of the internet.