Teaching my son the seven

Micah is starting to imitate everything! It is very helpful for teaching him. It also serves as a great illustration to what we have been teaching our teens on Friday nights, “Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.” (1 Timothy 4:12).  My grandparents bought Micah a drawing board where you can draw and erase an unlimited amount. On it I’ve been drawing numbers, letters, and the Do-Re-Mi scale. He does a very good job of matching the notes with me and going up the scale. He says several letters pretty well, and he says some numbers well too. The ipad also really helps a lot too. He is so good at maneuvering it!

While I was teaching Micah some numbers, I was taught a lesson in missiology/cultural adaptation. One of the things that I try to do is make Chile my home while not losing my American identity. I will always be a fair-skinned, freckly, hazel-eyed, American born man. However, as a missionary I want to become Chilean in order to win Chileans for Christ. My cell phone is in Spanish, I use military time, I serve a hot drink after meals when guests are over, I drink mate till it comes out of my ears, AND I write my sevens like Chileans.

In the United States you write your seven like this:

In Chile, if you write your seven like that, then it will be taken as a one. In Chile, your sevens have to have the little vertical line going through the middle like this:

Yesterday I was drawing the number seven for Micah and I said, “We put this little line on it because we live in Chile.” It has taken me about a year and a half, but I have finally rewired myself to write the seven with the vertical line. When you have been doing something the same way your whole life, it can be difficult to completely change it! These are the little things that might not mean much to some people, but to me, as a missionary, it is a major detail!