I think language changes you. To truly speak another language you often have give yourself over to another culture - to think differently. Sitting at a table last night, breaking bread and surrounded by amazing Chinese friends made me realize how much I have missed fellowshipping in the Chinese language.
I text and speak Chinese every day, but to be in fellowship together, eating, bonding - that is truly something else entirely.
@sinbach I don't have any expeience with language, but I was in Uganda in 2012. The cook at our orphanage lost his little daughter to malaria. He was out a week. When he returned, he looked exactly like you would expect in the situation. A flood of compassion and I ran to him and embraced him. He was Muslim. I was a western Christian. He did not refuse my embrace. But afterward the onlookers, all Christians, were shocked and told me that was not permissible what I did. But I was behaving from outside the culture. It was such a lesson in the affect culture has on us. I notice it too when I spend lengthy times in my native Minnesota. An absolutely different culture than Texas. It is the frog in the water. We adjust.
