We Are Friends

"We are friends."

The broken English, delivered in the precious husky voice that steals my heart a little bit more every Monday, threatened to break my already shaky composure. His arm around the classmate seated next to him and his grandfatherly grin blurred as tears filled my eyes despite my best intentions not to get emotional. He is Nik, my 83-year-old ESL student from Belarus. He speaks little English, knowing only the occasional word or phrase despite his seven years in the United States, and yet I love him more the longer I know him. Through him I have learned that, in Christ, there really is no language barrier. Somehow, it is enough that we love God and that we love each other. I've seen it in my relationships with my students and with their relationships with each other.

"We are friends."

The woman he sits next to is Olga, the student I have already decided that I'm never giving up, no matter how advanced her English gets! She is seventy-six years young, the little girl in her heart shining through in her delightful hugs and the way her eyes twinkle when we are sharing a funny moment. Olga, as she will proudly tell you, is from Peru. She speaks Spanish. Nik speaks Russian. Neither speaks much English, and yet they sit together every week, talking the best they can with the English they know, and resorting to their native languages when they run out of shared vocabulary. I frequently watch them with tears in my eyes, and yesterday was no exception.

"We are friends."

The lesson was the beginning of my unit on Walmart, the store where everything you need is in one place. The current discussion was about how God meets all our needs. We don't need to go to many different sources for love, peace, joy, comfort, strength, forgiveness, or friendship. I told them that not only is God my friend (a teaching completely new to many of the religions represented in my classroom) but that He had also sent my students to me as my friends. "I love you all," I told them, feeling the emotion choke my throat as I continued to speak. "You are my friends."

"We are friends."

His sweet grin, the way he leaned closer to Olga, his arm loosely draped across her shoulders, all joined with his words as God whispered in my ear, "Look at what I've done." I thought I had come there to teach English. I didn't count on falling in love with all of them, nor did I count on the precious friendships that I see forming between my students. God had other plans.

"We are friends."

We may not speak the same language, but we are friends. We may get frustrated sometimes because we don't understand each other, but we are friends. We may come every week only to teach or learn English, but we are friends. Some of us love and follow the same God; others do not. But we are friends.

How like God to do what I wasn't looking for. How like Him to tenderly remind me who the real Teacher of that classroom is. How like Him to take twelve people from different age groups, different cultures, different languages, different religions... and unite them in His love for them. To take twelve strangers and make them friends.