Today, my brother Lee and I picked up our friend, Hung, for church. Hung is from Vietnam and comes to church as often as he can in Upper Darby Philadelphia. He has some knee problems and diabetes, so his health sometimes makes it hard for him. Today was the first time I escorted him there, and I was honored to do so for this man. I've known him for a long time now, but he speaks broken English, so we don't always talk much. However, he was extremely talkative today. So I started asking him to teach me words in Vietnamese.
"How do you say, 'Do you read the Bible?"
"DOC KINH TANH." (He also wrote it down for me, but I don't know how to get vietnamese characters to show up here. You pronounce it with sort of an up-down-up tune.)
Then he said, "And you can also say, 'DOC KINH TANH MON AY.' Read the Bible everyday."
We laughed, and he continued to tell us other things. We don't remember them all. He also told us how to say "Good morning," but I don't remember that either. Next time I'll have to ask him to write that down as well.
I said, "How do you say, 'Jesus is God.'?" I wrote it down for him.
Hung wrote, "Giesu la dic chua tai." (Of course the characters all look very different on the paper I have.)
I still enjoy learning to speak in new kinds of tongues! :)
Obituary: Chad M. Roth
5 months ago
2 comments:
I learned last semester John 3:16 in french, I've forgotten now but I've been trying for some time to find someplace where I could learn Creole, which is the native language of Haiti, since I found out that most of them don't really speak french. I get to meet a lot of haitians in the hospitals I'm usually rotating through and I remember this one time at the Pedriatics Hospital me trying to witness to a lady who was there with her daughter, I have no idea if she understood anything I said, I asked several times and all I got was "Sí, Sí" or "Anja" (uh-huh), I prayed for her and her daughter after that, gave her a gospel of John tract and left. Only God knows if the seed was truly planted.
Maybe God will give you the opportunity to learn some Creole. I think it is an interesting language. I've noticed that with some foreign language speakers, they sometimes understand a little bit, but aren't able to say much to respond. You never know, that woman's children might know how to read the tract you gave her. I think that sometimes when I meet foreign women, if they can't read it, maybe their children can.
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