My
husband, three young daughters and I were on the outreach phase of a
Discipleship Training School (DTS) with YWAM. Our leaders had chosen
south-central Mexico as our mission destination, using the YWAM house in Tepic,
Nayarit as our base of operations. Somehow, even with my dubious culinary
skills, I ended up as the team cook.
Actually, my
girls and I had a blast, hailing the brightly-hued, beat-up Mexican taxis to
take us to the Supermercado, where we learned valuable life-lessons. Like
the fact that peanut butter was more expensive than steak and canned tuna fish
was about all our team could afford.
My
husband, Greg, knew enough Spanish to get around, but I was mostly clueless in
the language department. Believe me, I tried—but when I tried to tell the
locals I was the cook for our group, they stared at me like my hair was on
fire, wondering why this silly gringo was calling herself a little pig.
We’d
only been in Tepic for a few days when I met our next-door neighbor, a
nice-looking man in his 40’s. I was hauling bags of groceries into the
house when he passed by, dressed for a night on the town.
“Buenos
Naches, Senor!” I confidently exclaimed.
The
man stopped in his tracks and glared at me. Then he shook his finger at
me, as if scolding a small child, and said: “Buenos noches, Senora!
Buenos noches!”
He
stomped away, leaving me crestfallen. It wasn’t until I was at the market
the next day, getting hamburger fixings, that I understood the gravity of my
verbal error.
Naches
is the Spanish word for buns . . .
I
managed not to tell anyone else they had good buns on our outreach, but the
impact of that one little vowel made an impression on me.
Sometimes
those little things really do matter J
Is this the place for embarrassing stories? I hope so cause I'm going to tell mine. I once told a pastor's wife about how I breastfed my son when he was a baby! The word for bottle and breastfeed in Spanish are impossible close for us gringos. It just isn't fair...!
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