So, we had our first day of Vacation Bible School inside the stone-walled church in the quaint little farming town of Las Charcas, Dominican Republic. Everything was going smoothly. We started the day by singing Spanish songs that the Pastor’s sweet daughter, Ana, had taught us the night before over fresh mango juice on her porch. The kids loved the songs and fun motions that went with them, and it was amazing to put sweet words of Jesus in their ears that can sing to their families.
After the songs and a game of Dice Simon, (Simon Says) we started telling the story of Moses, and how his mom put him in a basket in the river to save him from being killed by the King. We told the story of Moses and how God protects his children and has so much love for all of the children of the world (apologizes to anyone who now has the song “All God’s Children of the World” stuck in their head’s).
When we piled back in the van to make our treck back to our casa, we were talking with our pastor about the day and how he thought everything went. Someone said that we had mentioned that Moses was un bebe guapo, (handsome baby because it stated this in the Bible) and Pastor Manuel gave us a quizzical look.
After that, the following conversation occurred in Spanish:
Manuel then said, “Moses was ‘guapo’?”
We replied, “Yeah, in our translation it says he was un bebe guapo.”
“Guapo? Are you guys guapo?” Manuel said with a furrowed brow. At this point whenever he said guapo, he would tighten his hands into a fist and make an angry face.
“Yeah, yeah, of course we are!” We started joking around, wondering why he kept referencing it.
At this point in the conversation, we basically found out that in the Dominican Republic, guapo translates as angry, and not handsome. So basically we taught the kiddos that Moses was an angry baby and because of that his mom put him in a basket and sent him down the river.
This was our first experience with loosing a meaning in translation, and let’s just say that Pastor Manuel had a good laugh when we explained what we had done!
