Jeremy Guthrie

And I've tried to live that way ever since.

No German.

It was really, really bad German at that.

So you took German in high school.

Yeah, I spoke no Spanish.

Why didn't you choose Spain?

That was the challenge.

I really want to go to Japan.

My mom's family comes from Japan.

I'm half Japanese.

don't speak japanese either but that was a dream of mine and so i wanted to go to japan but i was assigned to go to spain and that wasn't a choice that i made i simply volunteered i submitted a a resume said here's who i am here's what i've studied here's what i've done i would like to serve send me wherever you will and they chose to send me to spain and so i learned spanish from the very first word the first day spent two and a half three months learning it in a training center in utah

And then was shipped off to Santiago de Compostela in Spain and was thrown right into the fire and understood just about nothing for about five months before it kind of clicked.

Well, I would say taking on Spanish was,

one of the earlier challenges of my life you know i was really fortunate to grow up in a home that had loving parents and stability and so as a young kid i really can't think too much about really difficult challenges i'm grateful for that and i recognize that that's a unique opportunity but

learning spanish was hugely frustrating and so as much as i look back now and tell my own children you should learn spanish i'll i'll help teach you we'll do some class we'll talk about it after school spend 30 minutes a day and they want no part of it i'm just trying to help them but it stems from how frustrating it was for me to learn spanish and now i have a 19 year old son living in peru who never wanted to study with me but is forced to learn it himself right now

um i wanted to quit i wanted to quit spanish being a missionary even after a couple weeks and months was something that went from a really powerful kind of um crossroads in my life and decision to one that i'm like geez i make the right decision is this really what i want to be is this where god wants me to be because it sure feels like i'm alone and abandoned and that it's not going well

uh but i i learned okay i can only control one thing and that's how much effort do i put into speaking my language and studying it so after about two months it finally clicked i said okay i'm just going to speak spanish all day long even if i can only say five things i'll stick with those five things and i'll translate everything else and that made a big impact and so my ability to speak went much faster than my ability to learn uh to hear and understand because i could

put more effort into that.

And the listening and the understanding kind of came bit by bit.

So I think I was comfortable speaking by about three months into Spain, whereas it took another three or 40 to really be comfortable understanding.