Building confidence
This week we had our second foundational workshop with the pastors in the Battambong district. The new church at the district headquarters is just about finished being constructed with just some final cleaning to do (sorry no pictures). We used an upstairs open air porch for our gathering. The CHAD team was much better prepared this time and we were able to complete a full lesson in one day. The theme was “God’s extravagant love for the transformation of the world.”
My personal successes focused around language. I asked Mr. Thy and Tola to pre-translate some of the discussion questions into Khmer and had them print out the questions for me (I still can’t read anyone’s handwriting, only the precise characters as printed by the computer). I then made big posters with the relevant questions for each section. Then, when we gave our oral explanations (which are translated in real time) people could be simultaneously reading the task. I only made one mistake of putting a line-break mid-word. It would be generous to say that I recognized ¼ of the words I was writing, but there was some recognition and it was good practice for me.
The second big language success happened at the beginning of the day as folks were gathering. I was in charge of the warm-up (devotion), and I wanted everyone to collect an object and then share with a partner how that object symbolized God’s love. With minimal prompting and filling in with English words, I managed to successful say “before you go upstairs, please get a thing that is God’s Love and then talk together with another person.” The shocking bit was that the pastor I was talking with actually understood me!
My personal successes focused around language. I asked Mr. Thy and Tola to pre-translate some of the discussion questions into Khmer and had them print out the questions for me (I still can’t read anyone’s handwriting, only the precise characters as printed by the computer). I then made big posters with the relevant questions for each section. Then, when we gave our oral explanations (which are translated in real time) people could be simultaneously reading the task. I only made one mistake of putting a line-break mid-word. It would be generous to say that I recognized ¼ of the words I was writing, but there was some recognition and it was good practice for me.
The second big language success happened at the beginning of the day as folks were gathering. I was in charge of the warm-up (devotion), and I wanted everyone to collect an object and then share with a partner how that object symbolized God’s love. With minimal prompting and filling in with English words, I managed to successful say “before you go upstairs, please get a thing that is God’s Love and then talk together with another person.” The shocking bit was that the pastor I was talking with actually understood me!
Comments
Your recent messages brought back memories of the challenges and frustrations of learning the Khmer language, which I tried to do in 2004-05 during my 14 months in Cambodia. No one can imagine the challenge until they've tried it (or a similar non-Latin alphabetic language).
Thanks for sharing your experiences with Cambodians in the Methodist Mission in Cambodia and in their broader communities. Your work is a great witness of love and faith.
And, as is said in West Africa where you have also worked: "More grease to your elbows!" when it comes to language study time!
Grace and peace in your service.
Jim Gulley
Advisor on Agriculture and Community Development - UMCOR / GBGM