Praying for Effective Communication

As most of you know, communicating in Spanish has been one of the biggest challenges for me since living in the Dominican Republic. For the past couple of weeks I've been thinking and praying about taking an intensive Spanish course through an organization called Students International. Each fall, SI offers a 5 week, 5 days a week, 3 hours a day course for their semester students along with a few other random people. I am hoping (and praying) that I get to be one of these random people starting in September.

I've always known that my Spanish isn't quite at the level it needs to be at but over the past couple of weeks God has really bought to my attention, that my lack of Spanish is slowing down the ministries I'm involved with and the reasons I came here. A couple weeks ago I went with Emily, a summer intern, to visit one of our Anija students and at the end of our visit, Emily was asked to pray for the family- in Spanish. This made me think about how I've never actually prayed in Spanish before (other than, "Gracias a Dios por esta comida"- Thank You God for this food!). I want to have the courage and the right words to pray with my students and for the families I visit.

About a week ago I was talking with another friend about the outreach to La Lomita he went on with our church and as he was telling me how awesome it was to share the gospel, worship together, and pray for the people, I thought to myself, "I would be so intimidated to go on an outreach because I would have to speak Spanish!" I know that God can still work through me no matter how much Spanish I may or may not know but I want to be as prepared as I can be for praying, encouraging, and sharing God's love with my students and any others God places in my life here. That is the reason I'm here.

So, I ask that you pray with me for these things:

1. Students International says it's alright for me to take their course starting in September.

2. My bosses at Anija give me permission to leave Anija a little early for those 5 weeks.

3. Funding for the course would be donated as I've heard it's about $300.

4. God's grace and motivation to learn, and courage to communicate more in Spanish!