Found in Translation by Roger Bruner Page A

back. They smiled at me as naively as if I’d said, “You’re standing on a bomb, and it’s about to explode.”
    My French would be useless in Santa María.
    “Thanks anyhow, Kim,” Charlie said. “At least you’re willing to use your talents. Not your fault they’re the wrong ones. If anyone decides he or she can help even a tiny bit with basic translating, please see Rob or me later.”
    “I’ve got a question for you,” someone yelled from the middle of the mess tent. The voice sounded like the caboose “Amen!” from several minutes before.
    Rob looked around the general area the voice had come from, trying to pinpoint the questioner. “Sure,” he said after giving up. “Go ahead.”
    The questioner gave an offhanded wave so Rob and Charlie could see who was talking to them. “Why do you need any of us to be fluent in Spanish? Good thing that wasn’t a project requirement or none of us would be here.”
    “I wouldn’t, either,” Rob said as he examined his shoes for a few seconds.
    Charlie responded to the questioner without hesitating. “You’re right. I’m going to sound like I’m making excuses. For myself—for both of us.”
    Rob nodded. Then he closed his eyes. I wondered if he was praying for Charlie or hiding from the truth.
    The questioner shifted his weight and folded his arms. He reminded me of a bull getting ready to charge. I may not have been an expert on body language, but I knew a take-no-prisoners attitude when I saw one.
    After what seemed like an eternal pause, Charlie continued. “You know how quickly this project turned around. Even Kim understands that now.”
    Although I didn’t think he was trying to be funny in the midst of a potential mutiny, I couldn’t help laughing—first at myself and then at the amazed faces of everyone who didn’t believe I could laugh at myself. I’d show them yet how different I was from the girl they’d come to hate yesterday.
    “We didn’t realize the original translators were members of the church at Ciudad de Plata. So when Rob and I became last-minute team leaders, I wrongly assumed—”
    “We wrongly assumed …” Rob said.
    I admired Rob’s insistence on sharing the heat.
    “We wrongly assumed that the change of venue …” Charlie made the mistake of pausing to breathe.
    “What’s on the venue for lunch, Charlie?” a naive-sounding female voice said.
    Charlie couldn’t continue for the laughter—his own and everyone else’s. Even the take-no-prisoners questioner was laughing. Laughter might help bond this group, but that wouldn’t be enough by itself.
    These Christian young adults had no respect for age or rank. They wouldn’t have exempted Jesus from their teasing. He wouldn’t have had any problem dealing with it, though. He probably put up with worse from His disciples every day.
    But I wasn’t too shy to pull a punch of my own.
    “Gee! Can’t somebody please translate from English into English for that little girl over there?”
    Overwhelming waves of laughter surged toward the shore, but this time I wasn’t the tsunami’s target. I was riding the wave, and it felt great.
    “Thanks, Kim!” somebody shouted.
    “With your permission, I’ll finish explaining,” Charlie began again before anyone could chase that rabbit any further. “So we figured changing our project destination—”
    “Is that simple enough for you to understand?” someone yelled to the venue heckler.
    “In spite of changing projects and locations,” Charlie said, “we thought we’d still have our original translators. We expected them to show up at orientation when they didn’t meet us at the airport.
    “During the orientation meal, Rob called the emergency number for the mission organization we’re working with. They admitted they should have let Rob know we’d need to find translators, but nobody thought of it.”
    “We still didn’t know what a pickle we were in,” Rob said. “We assumed someone in Santa María could