I would say in general, taxi drivers are the most difficult people to understand. Their speech tends to be incredibly fast and slurred. To my amazement, I was actually able to understand pretty much everything this time as well as communicate quite well. It made me feel good about my slowly improving language ability.
This last time I was in Lima I took one cab driver who happened to be from Puerto Supe and his parents still live on my street. He proceed to ask me what seems a standard question protocol: How long have you been here? How long are you going to stay? Is your wife Peruvian? Why are you here? So you are Mormon? So you are Seventh Day Adventist? Are you Catholic or Evangelical? Are you a preacher?
I think we must not fit into the usual foreigner mold because at the end of it, they really have no idea what we do. This time was no exception but the taxi driver did figure out I had something to do with religion. He proceeded to share with me a few 2 or 3 word phrases from the Bible and out of no where he asked me how I became a Christian. I gave him a 2-3 minute summary of my life and at the end of it he told me that he was going to be 46 next week and that he had wasted 28 years of his life messing with drugs, although now it's just an occasional problem.
Up until this point the conversation was pretty normal, I'd had half a dozen or so just like it. For the most part you don't talk. You just listen and nod. But then he started saying that he felt God was knocking on his heart and that he needed to change and he wanted to know more about Christ and the Bible. He asked me if I could pray for him like the apostle Paul prayed for people that he would be changed. I explained that I would be happy to pray for him (although I'm far from the apostle Paul) but that I wasn't the one who could change his heart. He interrupted me to say that he knew and he was going to be praying too, it's just that he had to drive and couldn't close his eyes. So we prayed together and afterwards he asked about some churches he could go to. I gave him a recommendation of one that I knew also had the Alpha course in Lima and suggested he check it out.
The whole experience was quite interesting because even though I understood the words I couldn't really understand what was going on. Also I hardly said anything to the man but you would have thought I gave him an hour long sermon. To be honest, I don't know if anything changed in V's life that day or not but I wouldn't be surprised if that was either God calling V to himself or is beginning the process of it. Either way it was pretty exciting and I felt quite honored to be a part of it.
