Tuesday, June 11, 2002
Monday, June 10, 2002
The wonders of communication
Communication is an incredible thing.
The Heartlanders team was in Okinawa for a team retreat last month - eating REAL American food for the first time in months, enjoying the warm wind (and warm rain), watching morning break across the ocean and silhouette slender palm trees against the sky.
We met new team members and team members who have been around for years. We prayed. We talked strategy. We sang hymns.
And on the way home, God gave me a breakthrough.
I was riding in the front of a taxi-van which hauled seven of us (plus our luggage) from the hotel to the airport in Naha, Okinawa's capital, about an hour away. As we loaded everything in to the van, I noticed our driver - a little old man who appeared to be in his late 60s or 70s... pleasant face, gray hair, cute fishing hat.
I have a soft spot for older people, especially older Japanese, so my interest was peaked immediately. And that cute fishing hat... That did it for me. I had to talk to him.
"Good morning," I said to him in Japanese as he swung our suitcases into the back of the van.
"Good morning," he replied with a big smile.
"Do you speak English?" I asked hesitantly in Japanese.
He laughed and waved his hand back and forth. "No, no. Not at all." He paused, loaded some more suitcases, then tipped his hat back and said, "You speak good Japanese. Where are you from?"
Aha! He WAS friendly. And he wanted to talk to me, too!
I sat in the seat behind him as our taxi-van caravan took off, watching the fields of skinny sugar cane and summer blue sky slide past the windows. I asked him about the sugar cane fields, Okinawa food, where he was from and what things he liked.
And he answered me in fast, gutteral Japanese with a strange, slurred Okinawan accent, beaming all the while.
He told me the Japanese names of the flowers as we passed by, what to call palm trees, how to say "hello" and "thank you" in strange Okinawa language. We listened to part of a baseball game on the radio.
"Do you like baseball?" I asked him.
"Not really," he replied. "How about you?"
"I love baseball," I said. "And I really love soccer."
"Is that right..." He watched the road a while. "So what do you do in Japan?"
"I teach in English and Bible in Sapporo," I said.
"Really! You're a missionary?" he asked.
"Yes. I came to Sapporo last August."
We talked about Sapporo ramen and the long winter, the feet and feet of snow that fell every year.
So the two of us talked almost the whole way to Naha - a little brown-haired missionary daughter sleeping in my lap, the driver (hard of hearing) tilting his head to hear my broken Japanese.
It wasn't until we were zooming through the narrow, crowded streets of Naha that I realized what a miracle had just happened.
He hollered something in Japanese over the noise of traffic.
"He says people aren't allowed to ride bicycles in town because the streets are so narrow," I told the others in the van.
I asked him another question, and he was listening so hard that he had to tap his brakes to slow down in the traffic flow.
"Oh, sorry - I'm dangerous," I joked in Japanese.
He roared with laughter - face crinkled in a big smile, watching the other cars in the rearview mirror.
Wait a second - what just happened?
Did I just have an hour conversation (and tell a joke) to old Okinawan man - all in Japanese?
Did he really just tell me something about bicycles and crowded streets and I UNDERSTOOD?
Did he actually UNDERSTAND what I said and laugh?
It was like a gigantic neon sign suddenly burst into brilliant, gaudy light overhead: Jenny, this is COMMUNICATION!
I could almost hear the Hallelujah chorus showering down in our little taxi-van as I took it all in.
I just COMMUNICATED with someone.
I just carried on an entire CONVERSATION with someone. Not an, "Excuse me, where's the bathroom?" question or even the typical, "I'm from America. Nice to meet you," thing.
No, this was a conversation - a giving and taking of information, a blending of lives at tiny, interconnecting points.
And the miracle - IT WAS NOT BECAUSE OF MY JAPANESE!!!
I've been in Japan a year, but believe me - years of Japanese could not prepare me to talk for an hour with an Okinawan man.
No, it wasn't my SKILL but my TOOLS! I didn't even realize it, but being in Japan has taught me how to say some basic things: "Could you say that again, please?" or "I don't understand this word. What does it mean?" or "I don't know what that means. Does it mean...?" or "Could you repeat that slowly?"
I've learned how to ask questions a different way when I come to a roadblock.
I've learned how to DESCRIBE what I mean if I can't think of the word.
I've learned to locate the problem words and go around them.
In short, I've learned to communicate. I can't translate. I speak many grammatically correct sentences. I could NEVER write a paper in Japanese.
But God has taught me, without me even realizing it, to communicate.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS???!!!
IT MEANS I'M NOT ALONE!
It means I can erase the invisible lines that separate me from other people!
It means means I can share questions, joys, pain, faith, funny things, strange things, ANYTHING with a person, even a stranger, if they're willing to talk to me!
It means I have my life back!
It means I have a connection to other living human beings, a connection to lives beyond my own!
For almost a year I have lived in Japan feeling lonely and isolated, trapped behind a massive language barrier like jail bars. And God has been slowly handing me the keys. Keys to freedom. Keys to my old talkative self. Keys to let people know that I'm more than a friendly American - I'm a CHRISTIAN.
I said good-bye to the taxi-van driver at the airport as we loaded suitcases out onto the hot sidewalk.
He shook my hand with his worn, calloused hand, and said, "Thank you," several times in Okinawa slang and then Japanese (just to make sure I understood).
I thanked him back and told him to take care.
"I had fun," I told him. "Thank you."
"Me, too," he said. "See you later."
He waved to me from the taxi-van as the caravan pulled away, probably headed off to pick up more people.
I waved to him until the van was gone.
See you later. No, I probably won't see him again. I don't know his name, his email address. I couldn't even pick his face out of a crowd now.
But the miracle is still there.
When I met friendly Japanese strangers back in Sapporo, I chatted with them and listened to their lives.
When I gave a fragile old lady my bus seat, I let her know that I was a Christian.
I sit here even now, amazed.
Thank you, little Okinawan man, for showing me the gift of conversation.
Thank you, God, for working as you so often do - in tiny, undiscovered ways that suddenly pop out in stark relief one day (to our great surprise!) Thank you for the spoken language, the sharing of words and blending of lives, the intersection of thought between two people.
Use our mouths, God - whether we speak English or Japanese, like a translator or in broken syllables, to declare your praise to a lost world.
Make us like Moses - whose "slow" speech set a nation free.
Set this nation free, God.
Set Japan free.
Let your people go.
The Heartlanders team was in Okinawa for a team retreat last month - eating REAL American food for the first time in months, enjoying the warm wind (and warm rain), watching morning break across the ocean and silhouette slender palm trees against the sky.
We met new team members and team members who have been around for years. We prayed. We talked strategy. We sang hymns.
And on the way home, God gave me a breakthrough.
I was riding in the front of a taxi-van which hauled seven of us (plus our luggage) from the hotel to the airport in Naha, Okinawa's capital, about an hour away. As we loaded everything in to the van, I noticed our driver - a little old man who appeared to be in his late 60s or 70s... pleasant face, gray hair, cute fishing hat.
I have a soft spot for older people, especially older Japanese, so my interest was peaked immediately. And that cute fishing hat... That did it for me. I had to talk to him.
"Good morning," I said to him in Japanese as he swung our suitcases into the back of the van.
"Good morning," he replied with a big smile.
"Do you speak English?" I asked hesitantly in Japanese.
He laughed and waved his hand back and forth. "No, no. Not at all." He paused, loaded some more suitcases, then tipped his hat back and said, "You speak good Japanese. Where are you from?"
Aha! He WAS friendly. And he wanted to talk to me, too!
I sat in the seat behind him as our taxi-van caravan took off, watching the fields of skinny sugar cane and summer blue sky slide past the windows. I asked him about the sugar cane fields, Okinawa food, where he was from and what things he liked.
And he answered me in fast, gutteral Japanese with a strange, slurred Okinawan accent, beaming all the while.
He told me the Japanese names of the flowers as we passed by, what to call palm trees, how to say "hello" and "thank you" in strange Okinawa language. We listened to part of a baseball game on the radio.
"Do you like baseball?" I asked him.
"Not really," he replied. "How about you?"
"I love baseball," I said. "And I really love soccer."
"Is that right..." He watched the road a while. "So what do you do in Japan?"
"I teach in English and Bible in Sapporo," I said.
"Really! You're a missionary?" he asked.
"Yes. I came to Sapporo last August."
We talked about Sapporo ramen and the long winter, the feet and feet of snow that fell every year.
So the two of us talked almost the whole way to Naha - a little brown-haired missionary daughter sleeping in my lap, the driver (hard of hearing) tilting his head to hear my broken Japanese.
It wasn't until we were zooming through the narrow, crowded streets of Naha that I realized what a miracle had just happened.
He hollered something in Japanese over the noise of traffic.
"He says people aren't allowed to ride bicycles in town because the streets are so narrow," I told the others in the van.
I asked him another question, and he was listening so hard that he had to tap his brakes to slow down in the traffic flow.
"Oh, sorry - I'm dangerous," I joked in Japanese.
He roared with laughter - face crinkled in a big smile, watching the other cars in the rearview mirror.
Wait a second - what just happened?
Did I just have an hour conversation (and tell a joke) to old Okinawan man - all in Japanese?
Did he really just tell me something about bicycles and crowded streets and I UNDERSTOOD?
Did he actually UNDERSTAND what I said and laugh?
It was like a gigantic neon sign suddenly burst into brilliant, gaudy light overhead: Jenny, this is COMMUNICATION!
I could almost hear the Hallelujah chorus showering down in our little taxi-van as I took it all in.
I just COMMUNICATED with someone.
I just carried on an entire CONVERSATION with someone. Not an, "Excuse me, where's the bathroom?" question or even the typical, "I'm from America. Nice to meet you," thing.
No, this was a conversation - a giving and taking of information, a blending of lives at tiny, interconnecting points.
And the miracle - IT WAS NOT BECAUSE OF MY JAPANESE!!!
I've been in Japan a year, but believe me - years of Japanese could not prepare me to talk for an hour with an Okinawan man.
No, it wasn't my SKILL but my TOOLS! I didn't even realize it, but being in Japan has taught me how to say some basic things: "Could you say that again, please?" or "I don't understand this word. What does it mean?" or "I don't know what that means. Does it mean...?" or "Could you repeat that slowly?"
I've learned how to ask questions a different way when I come to a roadblock.
I've learned how to DESCRIBE what I mean if I can't think of the word.
I've learned to locate the problem words and go around them.
In short, I've learned to communicate. I can't translate. I speak many grammatically correct sentences. I could NEVER write a paper in Japanese.
But God has taught me, without me even realizing it, to communicate.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS???!!!
IT MEANS I'M NOT ALONE!
It means I can erase the invisible lines that separate me from other people!
It means means I can share questions, joys, pain, faith, funny things, strange things, ANYTHING with a person, even a stranger, if they're willing to talk to me!
It means I have my life back!
It means I have a connection to other living human beings, a connection to lives beyond my own!
For almost a year I have lived in Japan feeling lonely and isolated, trapped behind a massive language barrier like jail bars. And God has been slowly handing me the keys. Keys to freedom. Keys to my old talkative self. Keys to let people know that I'm more than a friendly American - I'm a CHRISTIAN.
I said good-bye to the taxi-van driver at the airport as we loaded suitcases out onto the hot sidewalk.
He shook my hand with his worn, calloused hand, and said, "Thank you," several times in Okinawa slang and then Japanese (just to make sure I understood).
I thanked him back and told him to take care.
"I had fun," I told him. "Thank you."
"Me, too," he said. "See you later."
He waved to me from the taxi-van as the caravan pulled away, probably headed off to pick up more people.
I waved to him until the van was gone.
See you later. No, I probably won't see him again. I don't know his name, his email address. I couldn't even pick his face out of a crowd now.
But the miracle is still there.
When I met friendly Japanese strangers back in Sapporo, I chatted with them and listened to their lives.
When I gave a fragile old lady my bus seat, I let her know that I was a Christian.
I sit here even now, amazed.
Thank you, little Okinawan man, for showing me the gift of conversation.
Thank you, God, for working as you so often do - in tiny, undiscovered ways that suddenly pop out in stark relief one day (to our great surprise!) Thank you for the spoken language, the sharing of words and blending of lives, the intersection of thought between two people.
Use our mouths, God - whether we speak English or Japanese, like a translator or in broken syllables, to declare your praise to a lost world.
Make us like Moses - whose "slow" speech set a nation free.
Set this nation free, God.
Set Japan free.
Let your people go.
Friday, June 7, 2002
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
