Horns honk, people play real-life Frogger crossing the street, a man sells freshly grilled corn off a folding table on the street corner, women peruse the clothing shop that’s across the street.

I wistfully start singing, “Up where they talk, up where they run, up where they stay all day in the sun! Wandering free, wish I could be, part of that world!”

In my melodramatic moments, I do feel a bit like Arial from Little Mermaid. I can watch and listen to what’s happening around me, but I can’t quite join in the way I want to.

Language is a gate. My stack of flash cards and the recordings on my phone are proof I’m trying to push the gate open. I’m leaning all my weight against the gate trusting that, imperceptibly, one millimeter, one word, one new neural pathway at a time it will swing open, and I can fully join the hubbub of my city.

In the moments where I can have a perspective shaped not by Disney songs but by the scope of eternity, I remember I push against the gate because of love. Love can be best shared when it can be understood. As a follower of He who is Love, I want to grow more into His image. I want to love well. Right now, love looks like studying verb conjugations, spending copious amounts of time in coffee shops (where it’s harder to be distracted from studying said verb conjugations), and spending hours each day staring at squiggles until the squiggles become sounds and the sounds become words.

There are many times during my language class that if someone came in they might think I was doing an impression of Nemo trying to say the word anemone. "An anemo-none. A nemenem-menome-nememen-nenemone." Learning a language one word at a time can feel a bit like merging onto I-35, but instead of driving a car, I’m pedaling a bicycle. I’m pedaling hard, but not exactly keeping up with the flow of traffic. Yet, I look forward to the day I graduate to a moped.

Sharing the Good News is the logical outflow of Knowing the Good News.

This is my motivation to learn this language. The pressure is off because I know the best and only thing I have to offer in any situation is the Holy Spirit in me. There are millions of people who likely will go their whole life without getting to know and be loved by someone who knows Jesus. How can they know Him, if no one introduces them? That’s the need. We get to be a part of that! My journey to move outside my home country began by internalizing that need. Plus I realized that the desire to live outside one’s home culture is WEIRD. It’s something that God wired into me.

My willingness, intersected with a need. To obey was to go to that intersection. It’s a joy to live in that intersection. It’s worth the patience it took to seek out and learn what that intersection would look like. It’s worth the work it took to make the logistics happen. It’s worth those things, and so much more, because He is more worthy than anything we can imagine.

He is worthy of worship from every people, nation, tribe, and tongue.

All this to say, if you’re considering serving God outside your home culture take every opportunity to know Him and make Him known. Every path following those directions will look different, but He will be leading you every step of the way.

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About The Writer: After connecting with Africa Inland Mission at the Urbana Conference, she took her skills as a nurse to North Africa where she is learning language with a goal to teach other nurses about providing compassionate, competent care but also seeing this as work for the Kingdom.

Please pray for her nursing students as they are being challenged beyond anything they have encountered in an academic setting.

Pray for her ministry and that their faculty would encourage and support them well, reflecting and pointing them towards our Ultimate Helper.

Interesting in serving? Explore your part here!