I’m Emily Werness and I would say one of the hardest things my team has faced in Cambodia so far is the language barrier. We do not speak much Khmer and our contact, Dara, understands English very well, but I can usually only make out about 50% of what he says. It has made handling financial transactions frustrating as well as never knowing our schedule except hour by hour and day by day. The youth we are around sort of know English and have helped us with interpreting and translating, but it is still a struggle.
But through the frustration of trying to relay how to play duck duck grey duck, singing “I’m in the Lord’s Army”, sharing the Bible story of Zacchaeus, or teaching the English alphabet, I realized how complicated I was making things. Because of the language barrier, most of our communication had to be stripped down to a few basic words as well as lots of hand gestures and charades. I was in the middle of teaching the story of Zacchaeus with Sunday (18 –year-old youth from the first church we were at, New Life) serving as my interpreter. Sunday is pretty good, but he still doesn’t know every single word in the English language, so I found myself breaking down the story to the basics. Zacchaeus was a short, bad man and Jesus came to town and everyone wanted to see this great teacher. Zacchaeus was too short so he climbed a tree to see Jesus. Guess who Jesus wanted to eat dinner with? Zacchaeus. Even though no one else liked Zacchaeus, Jesus loved Zacchaeus. Jesus loves us all so much, no matter what.
Here in Cambodia, we are forced to only focus on simple truths. We cannot be concerned with saying things eloquently or trying to sound super spiritual or intelligent because that only adds to this barrier. What breaks down this barrier are the simple truths:
-There is one true God
-He sent his only son to die for us and take away all the bad we have done
-He rose from the dead and we can be with him in Heaven if we accept him and believe what he did for us
-He loves us and is always with us
During our last couple of nights at New Life church we joined them for evening worship, which consisted of a couple of songs, a devotional led by Pastor Tom, and then we all would pray together, focusing on a few key things, like the church and spreading of the Gospel in this immediate community, for our team and our mission to spread the love of Jesus in these 11 countries we visit, etc. Even though they sang in Khmer and I couldn’t understand the words, I could feel their passion for the Lord emanating from their praises. And then!! As we all stood in a circle, holding hands, united as family in Christ, voices raised as one to our Father, the one true God, shouts of thanks and praise and requests in Khmer and English filled the silence of the cool night air….ahhh it gives me shivers again just thinking about it! Talk about the beauty of praying together, voices raised as one to God. Worship, praise to the God we all love, united in his grace, is what bridged the gap.
I’m Emily Werness and how would you explain the Gospel, the story of Jesus to someone who doesn’t understand much, if any, English? What remains when you strip away the fluff of our words? Do we let Jesus shine through?
