So we’re now in Ecuador, and it has been quite a week. I feel like we’ve been here for a month already because we’ve done so many things. We’re staying in a pretty rural area with a pastor and his family, who are all hilarious and awesome. Now a brief story. We were at the church and probably a good 5 minutes before the service started, the pastor came up to us and said (in Spanish) that he wanted one of us to sing a few songs and one of us to share our testimony to start off the service. I’m sorry, come again- the service that starts in 5 minutes? Awesome. To make things a little more interesting, no one at the church speaks English, and we don’t have a translator this month. Therefore he or she who shares their testimony needs to do so in Spanish. So, I may have double majored with Spanish whilst in college, but that really just means I took a bunch of Spanish literature classes and extra gen eds, and I am by no means a fluent Spanish speaker. Anyway, somebody threw out a “Bekah, you can play a few songs on the guitar, and then Carrie can you share your testimony?” Sure can. I had a brief moment of uncertainty and then I just laughed. It was just like “Are you kidding me? I have 5 minutes to figure out how to share the cliff noted version of my life story in a language that I don’t actually speak for an entire church congregation. Sweet. This is going to be awesome.” I went for it and it actually went pretty well. In some ways it was almost easier giving it in Spanish than in English because if I messed up or said something dumb, it wasn’t a big deal because I was much more focused on just getting my point across. The next night we were at a bible study and the pastor asked for a few more impromptu testimonies from non-Spanish speakers. I figured if I could give my own testimony in Spanish, I could translate somebody else’s. I feel like translating is kind of fun because there is less thinking involved. When I had to give my own testimony, I had to think of what I wanted to say off the top of my head and then try to formulate how to say it in Spanish. But if you’re translating, you get to skip a step. It’s just hear something, say it Spanish, hear something, say it in Spanish. That’s not too difficult. So, I guess this continues the finding of the voice trend, which I am enjoying. I feel like when you get shoved out of your comfort zone, you find that it is really not so bad outside of the box. I feel like I am becoming a lot more confident with speaking Spanish and just in general. It’s a good place to be.
