Learning a language is not done without hours of learning and practice. The ability to communicate fluidly to the people around you is essential in reaching people with the Gospel. How can I explain the truths of the Bible if I cannot speak the language? Communicating is essential in life. To communicate in Argentina, you must know and understand Spanish. This is my life these days. I spend my days learning Castellano (Spanish). I attempt to say things (inevitably I say it wrong) and attempt to understand what others are saying as they correct me. I am growing in the language, but have very far to go! I pray in Spanish, read my Bible in Spanish, and talk in Spanish. Today’s post is more about language learning. For this post we will look at language school.

Language school is a formal setting. I firmly believe you cannot learn a language by language school alone. But that is not to say that language school is not important. Language school is very important. Our language school teacher’s name is Alfredo. Alfredo was born and raised in Argentina. He was saved in his 60’s. He loves Jesus and works to make Leslie and I fluent in the language. He heard the Gospel at Iglesia Bautista El Faro (the same church we attend now). Shortly after he believed on Jesus. He loves Argentina very much and loves talking about the culture and different cities. He corrects me constantly and I love it. I am learning so much from him. Our language school is 3 hours per day. In those 3 hours we work through a curriculum, talk about what we did last night, what we are going to do tomorrow, or what we read or saw. We sip on Mate (an herbal tea here that is delicious) and everything done is done in Spanish. Alfredo knows the vast majority of the people in this country are lost and have never heard the Gospel before. Today he was urging me to stay in La Plata because there are so many parts of this city that have never been touched with the Gospel (we are praying about where to go, but this is a subject for another post). We learn the rules of the language during this time.

Language school is a portion of language learning, but there are other things I do daily as I am learning this language. There will be more to follow on language learning.