Driving Forward

Pablo, the day he got into culinary school. 

[taken from a facebook post from Feb 4th]

This is Pablo, my taxi driver. He’s 30. Growing up, he didn’t get much of a chance at an education. Today, he’s smiling because he just got into culinary school.

A year and a half ago when he started driving me he told me he wanted to learn English. So each afternoon on the way home we learned English. About six months ago, he said what he really dreamed of was being a chef. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. He said he figured with his education level he’d never get in to culinary school. But then he said, “learning English has helped me feel more confident."

So he started cooking recipes. He began saving his money. We learned cooking vocabulary on the way home. We prayed. Finally, he took a cooking test at a culinary school.

Today, I got into the taxi to see Pablo grinning from ear to ear. “Did you get in??” I asked. “No” he said. I was destroyed. Then he started laughing and I knew. After a punch to the arm we erupted in shouts of victory. The culinary school had called him today to let him know he’d gotten in.

Earlier today, I was discouraged about a variety of challenges facing me. But Pablo’s news reminded me how much richer life is when we face our challenges together. So I shared with him the difficulties I was dealing with. As always, his interest and prayer have helped me end a discouraging day with encouragement.

Reflecting on my friendship with Pablo a beautiful thought has come into relief: Life is better when we invest in others and let them invest in us. Praise the Lord for good friends.

Update 1: One to two times a week, Pablo comes to my apartment to do his culinary school homework. He's never owned a computer, so we spend time learning to navigate the internet and discuss concepts such as scanning articles and searching for keywords.  At times it takes Pablo 5-10 minutes to read a page of content (an eternity for those of us who depend on computers for work) but he doesn't mind.  As he reads, he'll on occasion say "Wow," fascinated with what he's learning. 

Pablo studying from my apartment. 

Update 2: Pablo was recently able to purchase a laptop computer which will arrive to him soon.  After some time for training, he'll be using it to do his homework!