Can a Bear Behave as a Mouse?

I really like fables because they don’t directly point at you but they still show the truth about you. When I was reading a fable written by a French author a couple of days ago, I realized a great truth about myself – I am afraid of the English language!

I didn’t have good English teachers when I was in high school. In Slovakia, when a woman has a baby, she gets to stay home for three years and take care of her child. Each of my English teachers became pregnant as soon as school started, so I never had an English teacher who lasted the whole year. Our long-time teachers were the math or geography teachers. My chance to improve in English in college disappeared also – just like the morning fog!

The fable I read recently revealed the truth! What am I talking about? Read on: The main hero of the fable is a little mouse, which was afraid of cats. Therefore, the little mouse asked her fairy godmother to change her into a cat. So the cat got rid of the fear… but only until the cat met a dog. The mouse, who had been transformed into a cat, asked her fairy godmother to change her again – now she was transformed into a dog. She was satisfied until she met a bear. So now the fairy godmother must transform the dog into a bear – into the animal which the dog was afraid of the most. The bear was totally satisfied. But only for a while! The bear was afraid again when he came one last time to the fairy godmother. He had met a hunter and asked his fairy godmother for her help. But she refused to help this time: “Even through you‘re in a huge and strong bear’s body, you still think like a mouse!“

I was reading this story and understood everything. English was the cat, the dog, the bear and the hunter for me! Instead of despairing, I remembered my grandma’s words: “If you fall, do not worry. You didn‘t fall up, but down and we found you there. So stand up, keep smiling and keep walking.” So I am walking today, with God’s grace, in Vancouver, Washington, at New Heights Church, one of Center for Christian Education partners, and I am learning English. I’m also learning many different ways of using English for my ministry at the Bible school in Martin, Slovakia which is part of the Center for Christian Education, and also includes a Lutheran preschool, elementary school, high school and college.

Writing and telling people everything that is happening here is my ministry at this time for the Center for Christian Education. I am writing about God’s many blessings which happen every day at the Bible school in Martin. Communicating with the Slovak media is my job. I am also creating our Slovak blog and English blog (www.cce.sk/blog). My colleagues and I desire to share our daily joys and worries with you, testify in our country, and participate in the growth of Christ‘s Church in the world. Therefore, I am also trying to make every effort to be effective and productive in my knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:8) and use that in my ministry.

I think this ministry of yours, our American friends who come to the Bible School in Martin every year, is so important. Your teams come to Slovakia and your people are serving in other places in the world, as well. I see that you are serving close to home and also far away. This is wonderful because I’ve seen that God is working everywhere through Christians! We are supposed to be all the more eager to make our calling and election sure, so we have great motivation to keep going – serving and bearing witness in Slovakia and outside our country as well. One of the ways I do this is by testifying through the news about how God is working in Martin, Slovakia.

This is the best reason I can think of to study and learn English—so I can tell people all over the world about God in a language they can understand.

Hedwiga Tkáčová
Director of Communication in Center for Christian Education in Martin, Slovakia