fearfully and wonderfully made

One of the things that excited me most about coming to Haiti was the opportunity to be able to learn and communicate in a different language. Haitian Creole is a very easy language in the fact that it doesn't have a lot of confusing rules and multiple verb conjugations. Unlike English that has a lot of words that mean roughly the same thing (for example, make: create, build, assemble, brew, compose, construct, fabricate, form, generate, manufacture, produce, etc.), Creole has one word that can be used for lots of different things (for example, fè: means to make, to do, to perform, to produce, to provide, to manufacture, to achieve, to take in (money), to read, to learn, to give birth, to stay, to spend). Basically, in English we have lots of different ways to say one thing and in Creole you have one way to say a lot of different things. As long as one pays attention to context, basic conversations are easy to follow. 

When I first arrived in January, so many people said that I would be communicating in 3 months. I didn't believe it was possible. After all of the audio language courses that I did before coming, I was excited to pick out a stray word here and there in conversation.

Still, exposure does something to you, and the more that I heard the words being spoken, the quicker I was able to catch on. It seemed like every time I learned a new word, I picked it up in conversation not long after, helping to reinforce it in my memory. By no means am I anywhere close to fluent, but I can at least express my basic needs and wants, and carry on a decent conversation with someone as I walk down the street.

This past Sunday, I was able to understand my first sermon, from the passage, to the illustrations, to the outline as a whole. I do not say this to “toot my own horn” because I know that none of this has been through my own strength and I still have a LONG way to go. Yet, after being here for only 5 months, I am amazed by how much I've been able to learn. When David states that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” he wasn't kidding (Ps. 139:14). Just our minds are a marvelous creation that should bring us not only to awe and wonder, but drive us to use it to it's full potential. If we would not only believe that we had this potential, but put it into action, how much more abundant our lives could be? God promises us that He has the ability to do amazing things in and through us (Phil. 4:13, John 14:12), we just have to step out with full confidence.