New perspective

I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as LDS or Mormon. When boys and girls reach 18 or 19 years old many serve missions away from their hometowns and families to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Many of these missionaries serve in foreign countries and learn foreign languages. Upon returning home, these missionaries give talks about t their mission experiences to their congregations. Inevitably, if the recently returned missionary served in a foreign nation he or she would give their talk and halfway through would come at a loss for the English word they wanted to use.

Being the cynical person that I am, I would think these missionaries were just trying to show off their language skills and I would silently be screaming in my head “the word you are looking for is window, wiiiinnnndoooow. How hard can this be? This was your primary language for 18 years. How do you forget this?”

I’ve been living in China for over a year and although my Chinese isn’t good, I find myself forgetting English words.  Last week I was talking with a friend and couldn’t think of the word wall. Seriously? It is so simple, yet so hard to think of at the time.  So to all of these returned missionaries I had silently judged, please accept my sincere apologies. I know understand that sometimes a person really can’t remember simple words in their native tongue after living in a foreign country.