Witnessing At 30,000 Feet In French

I flew back from Philadelphia this weekend for a business trip. After I boarded the plane, the stewardess informed me that I would have to move chairs. Apparently, the FAA frowns upon people with large medical boots sitting in the exit row seats (courtesy a nice sprained ankle from volleyball). She spoke to the two young men sitting across across the aisle from me, and asked if they would be willing to switch our chairs. They were happy to move and get a little more legroom.

When I switched chairs with them, I picked up a hint of an accent from one of them. Curious, I asked where they were from. The young man said that he was from France, heading home to Paris. "Oh," I said, "I speak a little bit of French. I learned it about 10 years ago and haven't used it much since then."

I started to have a conversation with the young man, named Rafael, in French. We talked about how he and his buddy were on their way home from going to Disneyworld. He was 20 years old, had just finished school, and was serving as a waiter in a restaurant. He had been to San Francisco before, and was thinking of being a waiter in New York City. We also talked about how he and his mother had traveled to Japan once before, and they could not find anyone there who could speak English, let alone French, in Tokyo. I recalled my travels to him of going to Japan for my honeymoon, laughing about the language differences that I encountered as well.

The captain came over the loudspeaker and said that our plane would be delayed for 15 minutes due to too much air traffic over New York, and they were trying to manage all of the flights. As we sat there for a few minutes, I knew that I needed to share my faith with Rafael.

"J'ai un question pour vous. Quand vous etes mort, que pensez-vous d'ou vous pouvez aller?"

("I have a question for you. When you are dead, where do you think you would go?")

"Je ne sais pas," il a dit.

("I don't know," he said.)

We spoke for the next 20 minutes, as I shared the Law and God's grace to him, almost all in French. I had to use English here and there, for words like "sin" and "repentance," but he would quickly provide me with their translations or equivalents. And sometimes I could remember one word in French, but not the antonym, and he would help me out, like, "What do you call it when you say something that isn't the truth?" and he would give me the word for, "to tell a lie," in French.

By the time I was nearing the end of our conversation, he asked me, "How many years did you say you learned French?" I told him that I took it for four years in high school, and that that was well over 10 years ago, and I haven't practiced much. "No way," he said, "you shouldn't be able to speak this well after so long."

I gave Rafael a couple of million-dollar bill tracts, and he was grateful for our chat. He needed to catch some rest, because he had only two hours sleep, and the flight to Paris would likely give him jet lag.

After we got off of the plane, and started walking into the terminal, a large black man came up behind me and said something. I couldn't quite pick it up due to the noise, so I had to have him repeat it twice. "Je parle le francais aussi. Je viens de l'Haiti," he spoke with a smile ("I speak French, too. I come from Haiti."). It turned out that I was speaking loud enough in the airplane
for Rafael and his buddy to hear me, there was another French speaker who was also listening to my Gospel presentation as well.

Pray for Rafael, his buddy, and the Haitian man and his wife.