Communicating without a common language

Hi Lane,

You probably will not read this until after your holidays, unless you take the computer along, but that doesn't matter for this note. I just thought about it during the sermon.

About thirty years ago my father-in-law came over with my mother-in-law. We lived in Burlington behind an apartment, right on the lake in the former stage coach stop-over between York (Toronto) and Niagara Falls, a huge mansion where we enjoyed being for four years. My father-in-law didn't know a word of English. In the apartment building lived Mr. Shepherd, a 96 year young man who of course didn't know a word of Dutch.
These two older men got together and "talked" for close to an hour. We stayed away from them because they would probably have felt embarrassed about however they were communicating. We did hear them singing together once in a while, each in their own language, various hymns and children's Bible songs. We later were told how many children each one had; somehow they had told each other that and other facts.

I had always found that an amazing event to have witnessed. They were serious at times, at times laughing. Both told us later that it had been easy because each had noticed the other one was a Christian. That must be an universal language!

Bram and Mineke van Overbeeke