Janet Gesme is a musician and a passionate language learner, currently learning French, Hungarian, Korean and Mandarin Chinese. She teaches and translates English, Russian, Spanish and German, plays an Edward Geesman Cello and Martin Schleske's "Schorshi viola." She is the translator of two books by Martin Schleske, including the award-winning English translation of The Sound of Life's Unspeakable Beauty and Christopher Schacht's Around the World on 50 Bucks.

www.janetgesme.com

Welcome to 12 Minute Converse with Jesus Believers.

God chose first to have a conversation with us, his creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you, Janet.

It's a great pleasure to connect with you.

What part of the world are you in today?

I am in Bend, Oregon.

When I saw that you're learning French, Hungarian, Korean, and for some reason I'm thinking you're in Europe, right?

So were you born in the U.S.? I was born in Springfield, Missouri.

Oh, so what got you to loving language?

I first took a language class in high school.

I took one year of French and then I turned and took one year of German.

Then when I went to college, I just really enjoyed German.

So I took a couple of more classes.

And when my children were born, I decided to raise them speaking German.

So I always spoke German to them and my husband spoke English to them so that they would be bilingual.

And when I was 33, some people moved to town who spoke Russian and they didn't speak English.

So I thought, well, I should learn Russian.

And I did.

And I ended up helping a lot Russian people with a lot of dentist appointments and medical appointments.

And that was a huge blessing to me and hopefully to them as well.

And then a Spanish Bible study came up where I had a German Bible study and some of my friends said, hey, we want that study in Spanish.

And I said, cool, let me order materials for you.

But when I saw the materials, it was really exciting.

So I was like, I got to learn Spanish.

So I did that and my husband was watching all of this.

I was a professional musician this whole time.

But he was watching this and he was like, something's going on here.

And he found a school where I could go and get my master's in German.

And so I ended up getting my master's in German.

And really, it just hasn't stopped the passion for learning languages and connecting with people in their heart language is something that I love.

How many children do you have?

I have two children, Alex and Zeta.

They are 29 and 28 years old.

Wow, you have adults as children.

I know.

There you go.

Okay, I can align with that.

So what instrument were you playing at the time?

I started on viola when I was nine years old.

And I started playing viola professionally when I was 15 years old.

When my children were young, I started playing cello as well.

So I ended up having a car accident in 2015.

And that put an end to my music career.

But at that time, I was playing a lot of concerts on both viola and cello each month.

Sounds as though there's a story there.

Do you miss it still?

It took two years for me to be able to sit long enough to play the cello for a whole concert.

And the viola, it took over six years to be able to play the viola again.

And I don't know that I ever would have played the viola again had it not been for Martin Shleska.

So on the day that I had the car accident in 2015, a friend of mine showed me a book by Martin Shleska.

And it's called Der Klang von unerhörten Sinn des Lebens.

In English, it's the sound of life's unspeakable beauty.

And that book really got me through all that time when I couldn't do anything.

I couldn't, I could barely walk, sit, I couldn't play music anymore.

And the book was such a blessing to me.

And little did I know that it was God's plan that I would actually end up translating that book.

And it's written by a famous luthier.

He makes violins, very famous for making violins.

And while I was translating the book, he changed his focus to making a viola model.

He wanted to perfect a viola model.

And he would write to me about it.

And it was just killing me when he would write about it because I couldn't play anymore.

And then eventually he started talking about the one he was making for me.

And the viola that he ended up making for me, I went to Germany to play it, not having been able to play viola hardly at all for six years.

And I had to relearn how to play.

But I'm not sure that I ever would have been successful at that had it not been for his instrument because he makes them very, very light instruments.

They're very lightweight.

And because of that, my broken body could handle the instrument.

So I can play again, I get to play music again.

And I'm so, so grateful.

The downtime that you experienced, was it very important for you to be able to reflect on what God had done for you?

And was it a situation or was it something that you always did before?

Oh, that downtime, the most vivid image in my mind from that time was, I felt like I was staring at a locked door.

And on the other side of that locked door was my viola.

I had to give the viola I played at the time, I had to give it away to a lady in town who plays principal viola in our orchestra.

But I always had this feeling that I was staring at this locked door and on the other side was my viola and I would stare at it with all my might just like, just wanted that viola so bad.

And I would feel these powerful, gentle hands take hold of my shoulders and turn me around and gesture to this amazing, beautiful world full of phenomenal things to discover and do.

And this voice, the voice of God would say to me, don't waste your time staring at a locked door.

I have so much for you.

I have so much to give you.

Just he had so much to offer me.

And so I had to let go of that.

And I'm just grateful for this amazing world and all that he has to give us.

Where did you think the ability to learn languages actually came from?

Is it a family member that possibly had that talent as well or skill?

Or is it the fact that you did as much music as you did in the past?

Music could help because I was used to repeating the same scale a lot of times.

So the idea of repeating a sentence many times in a row to be able to say it, I was used to that.

But I'd say the biggest thing that helps me is that I'm willing to be vulnerable in front of other people.

So I sound like a two-year-old when I'm talking to people, just broken words and trying to get something out.

And I love that.

I love, especially because I live in the United States, a lot of people come to this country with hopes and dreams, but it's difficult to learn the language.

And I love being the vulnerable one instead of them being the vulnerable one.

That when I'm speaking their language, they're the experts.

Amazing.

So when did you meet Jesus?

I would say that I've always been a Christian, but there have been a couple of breaking points in my life when I thought, what am I doing?

Why in the world would I believe all this?

One was when I was 14 years old, and my mother and my sister and I left home.

My mother was having a rough time with the marriage.

And I really thought, if my parents don't love each other, then why should I believe anything they've ever told me?

And for me, it was the fact that I needed something solid.

I needed something stable.

And I could see in my life that there was really nothing, nothing stable, nothing solid.

And I thought, if I need something, it exists.

Even if I don't have it at that exact second, if I need something, it exists.

So something solid, something stable does exist.

And then I started exploring different religions to see what made the most sense.

And Christianity, Judaism is the only thing that makes sense historically.

Linguistically, of course, my belief is very deeply rooted in language, in the ancient Hebrew and the ancient Greek, which are two miracles because they are languages frozen in time that we can still understand.

So that was one of those times when I was 14 years old.

And then as a young adult with children as well, I was doing Bible studies.

And I just thought, what am I doing?

I can't see God.

I can't touch him.

I can't control him for sure.

But it was the verse in Proverbs that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

And I thought, man, that is so true.

The second you don't believe in God and fear him, you think you can get away with anything.

You think you can hide stuff and do bad things and no one's going to know.

It's not until you fear God that you become transparent and wisdom is birthed by that.

And that was the second time where I was like, if I was fearing nothing, that wouldn't work.

That would not create wisdom.

It's the fear of the Lord.

It's this reverence for the Lord that creates that wisdom.

So that was another one of those times.

Five years from today.

Hey, let me listen to the conversation I had with Angel on the podcast.

And you're hearing yourself, you're hearing the evolution of you, the accident, your children are older now.

What's a message you'd leave for future you?

I would say to myself, oh my goodness, you never could have imagined that, could you?

Because God always had something better in store and more shocking in store than what I could imagine.

And I think I would also tell myself that all those times that you were frustrated and maybe didn't do the right thing, it's okay, because God still pulled you through.

Before we leave, is there anything else you'd like to share with our amazing audience?

I would like to share that I'm not the only translator, that just because someone is a translator between two languages, that's not the only way we translate.

That every listener is a translator because we're all repeating what we hear.

And we get to choose what we repeat and how we repeat it.

So I would encourage all of the listeners to think about the words that come out of their mouth and repeat the things that are good and noble and true and pure and repeat praise for God and use their mouths to do that.

Janet, a pleasure.

I treasure.

Thank you for being all this inspired by 12 Monaco.