[continued from yesterday's post; series started 07/05]
So I was off...I could now speak Spanish and hold my own in talking about almost anything. I was fluent. Many of my fellow students notice the difference upon my return from living in Mexico, and I took on a new role as tutor of my classmates. This is when I discovered that I enjoy teaching. I would reserve a classroom in the education building on certain evenings there at SFA. Before my regular Spanish classes began during the day I would write the room number and time for the tutoring sessions on the chalkboard, then my classmates that needed it would show up to get a boost before a test, or just to brush up. I would be there, chalk in hand, ready with examples and a teaching style that resembled entertainment more than instruction. It worked; the evening night sessions became popular, and I made a firm decision that teaching Spanish was what I wanted to do. It was a good time, and a heady experience, but most of all I was proud that I'd accomplished something that no one else in my family had, which made it all my own: I'd mastered a foreign language.
Life went on. After the summer of 1980 I made regular trips back to Mexico where I'd lived near Allende, Coahuila. My abilities grew and I ended up becoming a high school Spanish teacher...had some good years, others not so good, but stuck with it for fifteen years. At times in church I preached and taught in Spanish, and at the Jersey Village Church of Christ was a deacon in charge of Mexico missions, making one or two trips into the interior of the country per year to check up on our missionaries. I had done it, and was making use of my abilities to be a blessing to others.
So it was with surprise that I ran head-on into the fates that interrupted that flow, and took me on a journey into yet ANOTHER language...
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