Found in Translation

During my junior and senior years of high school, I participated in weekend seminars to strengthen my walk with Christ and my evangelistic skills. Two of my favorites were Dare to Share and Acquire the Fire, both of which were connected with Global Expeditions.

The seminars I attended featured Global Expeditions’ trips. Hearing the stories and seeing the pictures of all the people who were very much in need of help and evangelism touched my heart. I desperately wanted to go to another part of the world and become involved in any way I possibly could.

I requested information on an upcoming trip where volunteers would build houses for people in a Mexican village and evangelize as much as possible. I ended up taking this trip when I was eighteen, after my senior year of high school. It required a lot of preparation work; I had to take time off from my job, complete a lot of forms, and even get a passport.

The trip lasted seven days, and the participants were a combination of Global Expeditions staff, church youth, young adult groups, and individuals like me. Once everyone arrived, we had orientation and received our group assignments. The twenty-to twenty-five groups consisted of about fifteen people each.

Although I was aware we would be doing construction work, I’d been under the mistaken impression that we would stay in housing—complete with roofs and electricity. So while preparing for the trip, I made sure to pack my hair dryer and flatiron, makeup, a CD player/radio, my cell phone charger, and several changes of nice clothes for group Bible study. I even paid extra money at the airport because my luggage was well over the weight limit.

I flew to San Diego, and then we drove in groups on buses to the area we used as our camp. Camp consisted of a large building (we used that as our meeting area); two different clearings with tents (one for the boys and one for the girls); a kitchen and eating area; and two areas with outhouses and shower stalls.

When I saw the tents we were to sleep in, I was very upset. All of that money spent and trouble getting everything to fit in my suitcase, and it was useless there. All I’d really needed to bring was a sleeping bag and pillow and grungy work clothes. Because of my error in judgment—I failed to take part of the instructions seriously—I ended up sleeping on a blanket and wearing my good clothes for construction. I was definitely out of my comfort zone.

Each day, during the morning hours, we worked on the houses. Although we didn’t have a translator, some of the volunteers knew minimal Spanish and were able to communicate with the villagers. In the afternoons we walked around different parts of the town and shared the gospel. Each of our groups had a translator during that time.

While talking to the villagers, we discovered that some people had heard of God and were God-fearing, but they didn’t seem to have a personal relationship with Christ. We shared the gospel with them and frequently used the Roman Road. We also gave Spanish Bibles to the villagers.

After the trip was over, I told my parents all about my experiences. They heard about the people I met, the trials of learning to do construction work, and the joys of helping those less fortunate, and they saw how the trip changed my life.

So my dad decided to write a short story about a girl who goes on a mission trip to Mexico and has her worldview changed. That short story turned into an even better novel. (I’d say that even if my dad hadn’t been the one to write it.)

I hope you enjoy
Found in Translation …
and I pray that it changes your life.

Kristi Rae Bruner

Day 1

W
hat do you mean I missed my connecting flight?”

Never had I raised my voice to my parents—or to any other adult, for that matter—but I couldn’t have screamed much louder at that forty-something Skyfly Airline representative if I’d tried. She may have been joking, but I didn’t feel like laughing. I couldn’t have missed my flight.

“The plane was here and ready to leave at 1:19. Your baggage was aboard, but you weren’t.” Although her voice remained calm, she resembled a flashing danger signal and siren that screamed from head to toe, “Kim Hartlinger, it’s not my fault you’re the most irresponsible eighteen-year-old I’ve ever met!”

“So,” she said, “your flight left without you. We paged you a number of times first, but you never responded.”

“Is that what those announcements were?” Curiosity and defensiveness made me forget my initial irritation. I was too naive to know how concerned I should have been. “I heard somebody paging a Kimmy Somebody-or-Other, but nobody calls me Kimmy—and nobody ever will. If that guy said Hartlinger, I misunderstood him. His accent was thick, like a TWI—talking while intoxicated—or maybe like someone who isn’t a native English speaker. Don’t tell me announcements like that are made somewhere offshore.”

Telephone support for our home computer was, and I hated calling there for that very reason.

Oblivious to everything I’d just said, Millie Q.—I’d glanced at her name tag a moment before—had the nerve to smile, revealing an excess of leathery wrinkles that wood filler would have smoothed out better than her rainbow of cheap and ill-applied makeup.

I could also see a mouthful of teeth that needed braces so badly I was tempted to refer her to my orthodontist. I doubted, however, that she could handle the commute from the Dallas/ Fort Worth Airport to Georgia on a regular basis, even for something as important as making those fangs look friendlier.

Besides, I wasn’t in a mood to do her any favors. If she was teasing about missing my flight, her humor was sick and her attitude the ultimate in unprofessional. If she was serious—I was battling hard to reject the niggling possibility that she was—I needed to consider my alternatives. Normally, Scarlett O’Hara and I could put our worries on hold until tomorrow; but I had to reach San Diego early enough today to join the mission team to Mexico or turn around and go home again.

I could have panicked then, but I didn’t. Missing my flight would be a minor nuisance comparable to short periods of bumpiness due to mild turbulence. It couldn’t be a real problem like a major blizzard closing the San Diego airport in mid-July and preventing the plane from landing.

Although I’d never been on a plane before today, I imagined flying must be pretty much like traveling by city bus. Miss a flight, especially at a large airport like DFW, and another one headed for the same destination will come along any minute.

No worries. I’d be on a plane to San Diego soon enough.

Millie Q. hadn’t finished getting her digs in, though.

“They spent fifteen minutes wrestling your luggage off the plane, making that flight late leaving. Very late. One of the baggage handlers ended up in the emergency room with two broken toes after dropping one of your bags on his foot. What do you have in there—bricks?”

She couldn’t fool me with her story about the baggage handler, although I couldn’t deny that my luggage was heavy. Excessively so.

I didn’t regret having to pay seventy-five dollars for the overweight extra suitcases, though. I needed everything I’d packed: a professional-quality hair dryer; enough matching shoes and purses to have a fresh look every day; a treasure chest of my best cosmetics and toiletries; enough clothes to wear separate day and night outfits for the next fourteen days; a steam iron and travel-sized ironing board; and a small, high-power portable karaoke system with dozens of accompaniment CDs and tons of extra D-cell batteries.

Oh, and I’d packed a thick Spanish-English Bible I hadn’t taken out of the box yet. I didn’t bother bringing a Spanish dictionary, though. After all, we would have translators; and I wouldn’t need to communicate with the Mexican natives without one. Besides, I’d studied too much French in high school to feel like learning any Spanish now that I’d graduated.

“Kim,” Millie Q. said, resuming what seemed like her current favorite activity—picking on me, “if you’d been here at boarding time, you would be in the air now. You and every one of your bricks.” She grinned.

I cringed at seeing those teeth again.
Doesn’t Skyfly care about the appearance of your mouth?
Then I smirked without intending to.
Your mouth reflects badly on Skyfly in more ways than one, lady.

Then I realized what she’d said.

“At boarding time? Look at my watch!” I stuck my left wrist in front of her eyes, unaware that the time display was upside down. “You see that, Millie? It’s only 1:00 p.m., and my plane isn’t supposed to leave until 1:23.” I glanced outside where the plane should have been. “What have you done with my plane?”

Although I’d once seen a magician on TV make an airliner disappear, Millie couldn’t shrink my concerns by a single millimeter.

“There’s your problem.” I heard the implied “you dodo” as she pointed to my wrist. “Your watch is wrong. It’s 2:00 p.m. now—actually 2:04. We started talking at 2:01.” She failed to suppress a smirk as she pointed to the huge digital clock on the wall behind her without turning to face it.

The next Vanna White? No way.

“I, uh …”

No matter how poorly Millie and I had communicated so far, I couldn’t argue with the facts, and they all agreed that my time didn’t match DFW’s. I had too much intelligence to question which one was wrong.

But why weren’t they the same?

“Didn’t you set your watch to local time when the pilot from Atlanta announced it?”

She didn’t grin like the Cheshire cat in
Alice in Wonderland,
but like a demented rat. I might have reacted less defensively if she’d asked a helpful, friendly “Did you …?” instead of what assailed my ears as a nasty, accusatory “Didn’t you …?”

“Of course I did!”

I remembered setting my watch. I’d stopped freshening my makeup to do it. I was a hesitant first-time flyer, but I knew having the right time was imperative. Mom and Dad would have been proud of me. No carelessness on my part today. No, sir.