God's Steadfast Love Towards a Weary Language Learner

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It’s been said that providence is more amazing than miracles.  For miracles are God supernaturally intervening to bring about a certain goal by defying the laws of nature.  But providence is God using ordinary choices, decisions, desires, and circumstances to bring about a certain goal.  Every now and then God’s sovereign and loving hand is so obviously apparent on my life that I stop and tell myself, “whoa I better write this down so I don’t forget.”  This post is my attempt to capture God’s amazing providence in my life recently regarding my discouragement over language learning. 

·      The other night Allan couldn’t sleep.  He had been doing a lot of heavy reading for a project and was purposefully looking for a book to refresh his soul.  He opened up a book that he downloaded for free about a year prior.  It was the title that caught his weary eye, “Nothing is Impossible with God” by Rose Marie Miller.

·      Wednesday, October 29^th, 8:00am – Burdened and discouraged by the overwhelming task of learning another language, I finally broke down and cried.

·      Wednesday, October 29^th, 11:00am - I attend the woman’s bible study at our church, where they ask me if I will lead the next study and they let me pick the topic.  I agreed and looked at my calendar to see what the date of my talk would be and notice it would be the day before Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated here but it is my favorite holiday so I made a mental note to choose a passage about thankfulness.  Psalm 103 immediately came to mind.

·      Thursday, October 30^th - Allan is encouraged by the book he started reading the other night and shares it with me, encouraging me to read it as well.  I start reading it and was struck by a particular point the author makes several times.  I shared this quote from the book on my facebook page:

o   God knew we could never make it alone, so he sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts “by whom we cry, ‘Abba Father!’” (Romans 8:15).  The problem, I would tell women, is that we act like orphans, living as if it were still up to us, living as if the Spirit never came and could never teach us or guide us in all the affairs of life.  We go through the day believing that it is up to us to figure out how to solve our problems and get on with life.

·      Friday, October 31^st, 8:43am -  I receive a text from a friend asking me if I want to memorize Psalm 103:1-5 with her.

·      Friday, October 31^st - That night I am checking facebook and see a status on a friend’s page.  She shared a link about an online bible study for “busy busy moms”.  It’s a 30 day bible study on Psalm 103.

·      Saturday, November 1^st - I am talking to my close friend from back home.  She said she has been wanting to memorize big portions of Scripture.  She asks if I want to do it with her.  We decide on Psalm 103.

Needless to say after that orchestration of events I am now studying Psalm 103.  Within the first week of study the author and context of the psalm was covered.  The psalm was written by David later in his life when he had a keener sense of sin, preciousness of pardon and frailty of life.  David wrote the wonderful words of Psalm 103 after:

·      Sinning with Bathsheba

·      Murdering Uriah

·      Receiving rebuke by Nathan

·      Mourning the loss of his baby

·      Enduring the scandal of his children Amnon and Tamar

·      Enduring the shock of his children Absalom and Amnon

·      Fleeing for his life from Absalom

·      Mourning the loss of Absalom

These events gave David a keener sense of his sin, without which he wouldn’t be able to write Psalm 103. 

Psalm 103 emphasizes the steadfast love of the Lord several times.  The Lord surrounded me with steadfast love when he redeemed me (v. 4).  He is abounding with steadfast love (v. 8).  As high as the heavens are from the earth so great is His steadfast love towards me (v. 11).  And his steadfast love has no beginning or end (v. 17). 

Steadfast.  Firmly fixed.  Endurance and perseverance.

Before God providentially displayed his steadfast love towards me in Psalm 103 I was discouraged by learning Tagalog.  Did you notice that little event in the timeline I outlined above?  Did you notice the date and time I was in tears?  I saw my failures and temptations to sin.  I was lost without a clear conviction in my mind what my goal and hope was in my language learning efforts.  Why go through all that time and effort to learn another language only to be put to shame in the end by my failures?  And did you also notice the time and date of when God providentially responded?

“We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. “ Romans 5:3-5

I can rejoice in the pressures and burdens of learning another language.  Why?  Because I know that it will teach me perseverance, learning how to endure and remain under trying times.  And a steadfast character gives evidence of the new creation I am in Christ!  Revealing a hope that I can anchor my soul in that will not put me to shame or deceive me.  A joyful and confident expectation where I can sing the truths of Psalm 103 with David:

“Bless the Lord O my soul! 

O my soul!   

Worship His Holy Name.   

Sing like never before….”

To learn a culture, learn the language: relationships

Since I have been taking Tagalog language classes for just about two months now, I thought it would be a good time to do a blog post about my experience thus far.  Initially I figured it would be pretty straight forward, but it has proven more difficult than I expected. Why?  Well, mainly because I am not quite sure how to organize all my thoughts on the matter.  So to help remind me of my purpose and goal in learning Tagalog I have decided to blog about my efforts in the context of culture.  Specifically, blogging about the aspects of the culture I learn through studying the Tagalog language.  And one of the first things I learned about the culture was relationships.

Relationships.  When I realized I wanted to write about relationships it actually got me excited!  Remember those other posts I recently started in the series attributes I admire from the Filipino culture?  Well one of the things I have always admired and wanted to write about (but never got around to it yet) was the warmth of people.  I never wrote about it because I couldn't quite figure out or explain what it was that made the people warm.  But my language classes these last two months has shown me how some of the warmth is communicated.

The warmth of the people was actually one of the things that calmed my heart when I would get anxious in anticipation of moving to another country.  I wasn't exactly willing to move to any country with my husband.  But I could follow him to the Philippines.  Why?  Because my interaction and friendship with Filipinos back in the States were some the warmest and friendliest relationships.  And if I had to move to another part of the globe and live among strangers, there was comfort that I was going to live among friendly and warm people!  Plus, its one of the attributes that I hope will rub off on me the most.

Okay, ready?  Let's go to class!  "Punta tayo sa clase!"

Lesson 1 - Kami or Tayo?

One of the islands that Allan has had the privledge to teach at is Boracay.  If you are Filipino or have an understanding of some of the various islands here, an image probably quickly pops into your mind and a mood washes over your body.  "ooooh!!!  Boracay!"  In case you still don't understand, I just googled the word "Boracay" and here is the first picture that came up in my search.

Well the other month, I had just put the kids to bed and I came to join Allan on the couch.  He was working on his computer.  I asked him, "hey, what are you doing?"  To which he replied, "just finished buying tickets."  Tickets? I wondered, so I asked him, "where to?"  And he replied so non-chaulantly, "oh Boracay, we're going to Boracay next week."  Oh my eyes got real wide and I sat straight up, grabbed his shoulders and exclaimed, "We are!?!"  To which he quickly popped my bubble and said "We kami.  Not we tayo."

One nuance and variation Tagalog has from English is their pronoun "we".  Basically, they have two words for "we".   "We - Kami" which excludes the hearer from the action, versus "We - Tayo" which includes the hearer from the action.

Lesson 2 - Get Out of Our House!

Imagine a typical American household setting.  Dad is in the kitchen with his rebellious teenage son.  He is mad and fed up at the disobedience of his son so he yells, "Get out of MY house!"  My language tutor actually used such an illustration in one of my tutor sessions to explain that in Tagalog when you refer to your house you never use the first person singular pronoun, instead you always use equivalent of the first person plural pronoun.  The house, even if Daddy pays all of the bills, is never referred to as "my house" but instead always "our house". 

Lesson 3 - Do not say, "Hi, how are ya?"

One of the first phrases I ever learned was "kumusta ka?"  Which means "How are you?"  And sure enough that phrase came up in the first lesson in my language class.  But as soon as it came up my tutor qualified when and how to use it.  Here is what my Tagalog book says about the phrase, "kumusta ka":

This phrase is not used as commonly as English speakers would use "how are you?"  You would not say "kumusta ka?" to someone you see every day.  You would use it when meeting someone for the first time or when you meet a friend not seeing him for some time.

 Okay.  So what do you say?

Actually, Filipinos do not use verbal greetings very much with those they see almost every day.  A smile and a pleasant expression is the greeting, perhaps also calling out the person's name; other than that one goes directly into small talk, usually picking up on whatever they last were discussing with the other person.


My tutor explained that I would sound cold and distant if I over used "kumusta ka" in the same way I use "How are you?" in English.  Instead by going directly into small talk you show that you have accepted that person into your "circle", so to speak.  So I started to observe and I noticed that by not saying "hi how are you?" I was forced to observe, think and say something specific and personal to the person I was addressing.  This takes a lot more work but sure communicates more warmth.

Let's Review...

Okay class, so what did we learn from these three lessons today?  The use of deliberating including the hearer of the conversation into my speech it communicates warmth and a circle of friendship.  And how I greet another person reveals that I have to be intentional, observant and personal.

Studying Tagalog these past two months has revealed a lot of my fears.  I knew learning a language was going to be hard but I assumed it was going to be hard because it would take a lot of time and effort memorizing vocabulary.  What I didn't realize was that it was going to be hard learning how to think and view life differently.  So I might not be able to impress you yet with my amazing ability to to carry on a conversation, but I have learned a very valuable lesson!

Don't forget to come to our next class where we learn how the language gives insight into the history of a culture!