Trilingual

DD reading Proverbs 16:9 in Chinese, 

"The mind of man plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps."

"Do you understand it?"

"Yes, I can't write it, but I can read it."

"So this is the old language?"

"Yes. But I still like it.  I love to read the Bible, it has such good advice, and it is so beautiful."  DD has only been reading the Bible for a little over a month, and most of that time she has been reading in her second language, Thai. 

This week however, that changed.  For the first time, our Saturday student Bible study used Bibles in three languages.   Thai, English, and Chinese. 

Excited that we had finally found a Bible in the right Chinese dialect, I asked DD to read the passage we were studying out loud.  What I didn't realize was that finding the passage was going to be almost as big of a task as finding the Bible itself.

"James."

I might as well have said a random word in Russian or Afrikaans.  The name didn't get us very far, and me flipping through the pages that held absolutely no familiar letter or number clues wasn't helping either.  I thought I had our solution when I looked up the characters for "James" in Chinese on the internet, but for some reason, they didn't match.  Another dead end, but we weren't giving up.  

"Okay.  We need a new plan."

First, the table of contents.  I flipped more pages. DD flipped to the back cover.  I wanted to say something like, "We want the table of contents, not the concordance." But I didn't know those words in Thai (or Chinese).  Then I realized what DD already knew, Chinese is written from right to left, top to bottom in columns.   I counted in my English table of contents.  James is the eighth book from the end (in case you ever have to find it in a language you can't read.) 

"Yesh-ceb?" DD asked.  Knowing that "James" is pronounced, "Yhe-cob" in Thai gave me confidence that we had found the right book.  We turned to the first page.  Not being able to read Chinese numbers, I had to trust DD was following.  "There should be a big number 'one.' Okay, now 'two,' 'three,' and 'four.'  Yes!  We want four, that is the chapter.  Now verses 13-17.  Those are the little numbers.  Yeah!!!  We found it.  Can you read it to us?" 

While DD read, my heart leapt.  It was beautiful, as was her expression, which came alive as she read.

By the end of the night, DD was tuning pages, finding chapters and reading verses all on her own.  "You can take this Bible home to read if you want."  I encouraged her.

"But what if someone else wants to read it here."

"We will get another. It is so special that you have one in your own language to read."