Empathy for a native Spanish speaker

My son Lige picked up a couple of new piano students. I know the mom and dad from the school book fair. They're native Spanish speakers, but have been in the US a long time and are pretty much fluent in English. Today, Grandma brought the kids to lessons, so I got to meet her. She's been here a while, but she's at home all day with little kids as the designated kid watcher. Thus, she's not so good at English. When they showed up, I sat down to talk with her for a few minutes while Lige taught. I planned to go get some work done after being polite, but something in the way she talked made me think that maybe she really wanted to practice English. It struck a chord of empathy in me. I want to be better at ASL. But I'm home all day with little kids, and just don't get to talk to native speakers very often, either. So in my head, I realized that staying and talking would be an appreciated service. We sat down and got to know each other. I tried using all the things my Deaf friends do for me - slowing down, helping her learn new words when she was trying to express new things she didn't know the word for, avoiding hard words, stuff like that. It's not easy to have a conversation that way. My brain wanted to go faster or change to something more fast-paced. But I made myself slow down and enjoy the conversation in honor of all the patient people who have done that for me :)

It ended up being a neat experience. I told her about how I was sympathetic to her language struggles because I had the same thing at church, and told her a bit of our story. I asked her if she went to church, and she said she was frustrated with her church and looking for a new one. I told her we had some missionaries that could come tell her about our church (in Spanish, even!) if she was interested, and she was as excited about that as anyone I've ever seen. It made me grin that our little conversation made her so happy. I spent a year and a half as a missionary in the Philippines, and I don't think I ever saw anyone who was so excited to talk to some missionaries before. So we picked up the phone and called the missionaries right then.

So, I was glad I took the time to talk. She was looking for some English conversation and a good place to go to church, and I could help with both of those interests. Because really, I do go to a pretty fabulous church.