I can still remember the feeling that came over me as I stepped off the plane. I had never experienced an environment vaguely similar to this one. The airport did not have terminals; one walked directly from the stairs of the plane to the runway. I landed in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, with a mission group of approximately twenty people. The nationals of this country speak Spanish; a language I had only begun to learn at the time. I looked at the trip as a challenge of how well I knew the Spanish language. It did not take long for me to realize that I knew much less than I would have ever imagined.

I found difficulty in recalling the most basic parts of conversation. This partially depressed me, because I had anticipated having conversations with the nationals. Despite my sadness, I became extremely encouraged in pursuing a familiarity of...