Day 75, More Than Language

Honestly, I don’t remember much of Friday, it was that memorable!  What I do remember, though, is that I putzed around the apartment for most of the day and finally got out to attend a YSA activity.  I helped prepare probably a couple hundred Russian raviolis, some filled with mashed potatoes and some with meat.  The activity itself was intended to teach the YSA how to prepare them and then feed everyone with what we’d already made and what they finished making.  The two Russian girls in charge expected that people would mainly come to eat rather than contribute, which is logical and is the case for some, but at least I knew I’d done my part.

However, believe it or not, my favorite part of it wasn’t making or eating the food, but conversing with the people who came into the room!  You see, not only did I enjoy it because Spanish was involved, but also because two French people I met in the temple the day before came, along with a friend, and we had multilingual conversations with our limited overlaps in each others’ language skills. Here I was in a conversation with a French guy and a Portuguese-Brazilian guy, the first having experience in French and English; the second in Portuguese, Spanish, and some English; and me, in English, Spanish, and French.  Sometimes I had to translate and sometimes they understood each other okay because of language similarities.  (In fact, I had mentioned to the French guy that the language similarities and differences are what I love to see in the Romance languages, and then a conversation came up later in which he made that point to say how he could understand some Spanish, with a bit of a smirk and a knowing look at me!)  Now, the simple fact that we could communicate with English being a common is one thing, but what I love most is that I was able to use the languages I know and marvel in the fact that what ultimately brought us together was the gospel of Christ and our membership in his Church.  Just like going into the temple and seeing service being done, even though one worker is a Spanish-speaking Spaniard, another is a Portuguese-speaking Portuguese, and the other is an English-speaking American.  I love it—living a life where I can find friends anywhere because of a common bond in loving Christ.  The language part is a bonus.  ;)