I recently made a trip to a provincial town, Battambang. I think it’s the second or third largest city in Cambodia. There, representing PPBS, I was teaching Education by Extension (EE), a way to bring theological education to places in Cambodia that have less resources and opportunities to receive training in theology. 

My teaching program content was very similar to a one hour lesson that I did four years ago to residents from a province not far from Battambang, Koh Kong as they visited with a good friend of mine, Dr Jeff Hogue. See here for that post. The differences are shocking! That first time I taught for one hour. This time I taught for 18 hours in 3 days. That time I spoke in Khmer maybe 20-40% of the time. This time basically 100% Khmer. Then I had a missionary friend use the main concepts that I was trying to communicate and use his Khmer to get the points across. This time I had a Khmer lecturer give me tips (like that I should not say that the Israelites wanted to have sex with a king). Last time I had little interaction with individual students. This time we laughed when I said map instead of promised land, or when I couldn’t get my mouth around a fairly standard word. That time I couldn’t explain beyond the basics. This time I could talk about the nature of covenants, use the word for ‘important themes’ to show literary devices particularly in the Old Testament and convey the abstract ideas like the benefit of understanding context using the illustration of sight and touch as two ways to learn things.

I found out just recently that one of the things my missionary friend back then was impressed by was how little Khmer I had and yet I was giving it a go. Now I see the fruit of years of language learning. For those who are currently language learning (of which I still am), keep at it. It gets easier. And it’s so encouraging looking back.