"Znate li hrvatski?" "Samo malo." The translation for this is: “Do you speak Croatian?” “Only a little.”
Language learning is going slowly. Our tongues are stumbling over unfamiliar sounds and words, while our brains are trying to adjust to different letters and grammar – declension, conjugation, gender, and all those cases! Thankfully, we have a few people to help us including Mirna, our language helper, who meets with us a few times a week, and Danka, the teacher at a private language school, who is helping us with grammar. We hope to be increasing our time with Mirna and decreasing our private lessons for awhile until we know more words and phrases. While we are at the language school, Ellie Beth spends time with Kati and her son, Aron, who is six months old. Ellie Beth has enjoyed taking walks with them to the market and playing games in Croatian. Lydia will soon be joining them. In July, I will be taking an intensive language class at the university while Dan is at camp. Then in the fall, Dan and I will start language school at the university while all four of us continue with language helpers.
Please continue to pray for our language learning. Although many people speak some English, especially the younger generation, we want to be able to communicate to the Croatian people in their heart language. It has been frustrating to not be able to connect with people because we can’t speak their language.
