A little over a week ago, he called me after school to ask me why I had signed him up to take a Spanish test. I told him I didn't know anything about it or why he was selected to take it. I figured out later that he was selected because back when I enrolled him in kindergarten, I listed that we spoke both English and Spanish in the home. He'd just come out of the Spanish immersion preschool, so hopeful me thought that we'd keep up that Spanish. Not so much. Anyway, all these years later, he gets this little note saying that he needs to take a Spanish test during first period. Poor little guy. All eyes were on him when he realized he was the only white child in a room filled with all native Spanish speakers.
We had told him to not worry about it. It was just practice, and it couldn't hurt him to take it and find out just how much Spanish he knows now, anyway. The timing couldn't have been any better after just having spent a summer in Colombia and three months at home now with a brother that will only speak to him in Spanish. He got home that day, saying the test was pretty hard, so we just kind of laughed about it and moved on.
Well, as much as hearing Juan David only speak in Spanish makes me want to cringe at this point, it definitely has paid off for David. He came home this week with this little note in his backpack.
Yes, that does say HIGH SCHOOL foreign language credit. The child barely started the SIXTH GRADE! We're so proud of him, and he's quite proud of himself. It was quite the unexpected surprise for all of us, though we knew his Spanish has really blossomed over the last three months.
Another surprise also awaited him at a soccer game this week. Both boys had just been given brand new soccer balls recently. We warned Juan David to guard it with his life at the soccer fields because they "disappear" very easily. A few days later, they both took their balls to their soccer games, and David's sadly "disappeared". Despite the fact that we'd put his name, his team name, and his phone number on it, it never got turned in. Someone decided they liked his ball and stole it right out from the net while he was stretching with his team. I prayed about it and asked God to return it to him unless he was meant to learn something from the loss.
This week we sat down on the bleachers before Juan David's soccer game, and some kids were playing around on the field with a ball just like it. They walked away from it for a minute, so David marched right out there to see if it had his name on it. The kids saw him and told him that was their ball, but then we watched David look right at them and show them his own name and phone number on the ball. Those boys scattered pretty quickly after that, and David felt good to have his ball back.
I told David that God answered my prayer, and he said, "You prayed about my soccer ball?" I said, "You know I pray about everything." Thank you, Jesus, for answering my prayer.
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