Beyond my home borders

By Patricia Myers - Christian Science Sentinel, June 12, 2006

My parents joke that our home is a kind of United Nations/Holiday Inn. That’s because since I was four years old, my family has hosted exchange students. You might say it’s become a way of life for me—and it hasn’t just been about sharing my house, my parents, and two older sisters (not to mention my snakes, geckos, tarantula, two dogs, and two cats), but seeing the world as an extension of my family. We’ve been home to exchange students from countries like Spain, Italy, Thailand, Argentina, Denmark, Belarus, and Azerbaijan over the past 14 years.

One of the really cool advantages of this is that I feel as if I have brothers and sisters all over the world now. Even my really good friends at school here in Tennessee are all foreigners—one of my best friends, Sonja, is from Bosnia; and another good friend, Meng Meng, came here from China.

Last year, I finally had the opportunity to be an exchange student myself. I spent my junior year of high school in the small town of Anton, Panama. I have to be honest; my Spanish was pretty much a joke before I went on this trip. I mean, I’d taken two unserious years of Spanish in high school, but the extent of my vocabulary was limited to hola and si. That had to change—and fast!

The whole language thing kind of bothered me at first—especially since it seemed as though a lot of the other exchange students I was with on the program not only knew Spanish, but several other languages as well. I felt as if I was the only one who didn’t know a lot. So I decided to pray about the concept of “understanding.”

I’ve been going to a Christian Science Sunday School from the time I was little. And since there weren’t any Christian Science churches near where I was living in Panama, I decided to make it a habit to study the month’s supply of Christian Science Weekly Bible Lessons that my mom regularly sent me. The Lessons gave me a lot of good ideas—and they made me feel as if I weren’t so far from home. I remember thinking,

God only speaks one language—why can’t I?

And what I mean by that is the way He communicates to us is through thoughts and realizations (angel messages)—in a way that anyone can understand. His communication isn’t done through a limited channel of language, but through love and intelligence.After my prayer, I got the idea to just stop speaking English at all—and to speak only Spanish. And that was pretty significant for me since the Panamanians spoke what sounded to me like rapid-fire Spanish, and it often went over my head. But I asked people to speak more slowly. And pretty soon I was able to communicate in Spanish as I never had before. In fact, I even spoke it well enough that I could joke around with my family. I’ve been told I have a pretty dry sense of humor in English, and I was afraid they might not get my humor. But I saw that my desire to see the joyous side of things was actually a spiritual quality—something originating in God that could be communicated despite language barriers. It turned out that my family in Panama really got my jokes, and they laughed right along with me.

At one point during the year, I came down with some kind of a stomach virus. It was pretty painful. I woke up one morning and couldn’t eat. I wished my parents were there with me. At a time like that, I was used to my mom reading the Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly aloud to me. But I grabbed my Spanish translation of Science and Health, as well as that week’s Lesson, and started reading. The Lord’s Prayer was a huge comfort to me—in fact, I even read it in Spanish, which gave the familiar words a new slant for me.

As I recall, the Lesson subject was “Mind,” which is one of my favorite names for God. I thought about how it didn’t matter where I was, because I would continue to be the idea of the one Mind wherever I went. I realized that no matter where you are, you can’t say you’re apart from this one Mind. Nothing can block you from it—not sickness, not anything.

I also thought about my host family in Panama and realized they were my brothers and sisters, too, since we’re all connected to this same Mind. After I’d finished reading the Lesson and praying, I decided to go outside and join my host family. They were playing soccer—and pretty soon, I joined in the game, too. By lunchtime, I was eating again, much to everyone’s surprise. The stomach pain was totally gone.

I guess the number one thing I’ve learned from hosting exchange students and being one is never to be quick to judge other people. And for me, that’s meant not gossiping. When you spend time getting to know a person’s culture and life, it’s just so much easier to see past stereotypes. That’s been big for me—and the other thing? Being in Panama really improved my soccer game!

This entry was posted on Monday, October 9th, 2006 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Healing, World Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response.