Humans of NGU: Nicole Gilmore
Will Fulton, Contributing Writer
Most of us would like to think that we could take a step into unknown territory, but not all of us can say that we have taken that step. For Professor Nicole Gilmore, that step was taken in 2001 when she traveled to a Spanish speaking country without knowing how to speak Spanish.
After graduating high school, Nicole Gilmore decided to take a gap year and study Bible at Palabra de Vida, a college in Argentina. When she decided to attend this school, she did not know how to speak Spanish. Her only prior foreign language experience was studying French in high school. The year that she spent in Argentina was a trial by fire in more ways than one. On top of the lack of air-conditioning, there were initially eight students in her dorm with two more moving in later. This was a stark contrast to the life she was used to back home in New Jersey.
During her first semester, she was able to take classes in English, but this was not the case during her second semester. After further acclimation to the Spanish speaking population, all of her second semester classes were exclusively en español. There were no more translators to help her understand the language, so she had no choice but to learn how to listen to and communicate using the native tongue.
Even though her time in Argentina was far from easy, she still looks back on that year with fondness. While there, she was able to share her faith for really the first time in her life and see what it was like to reach the nations with the gospel. The friendships she made were deep and rich and the time she had there was life changing. The rest of her life has been directly influenced by her time in Argentina. Through her school, she heard about North Greenville University. It was here that she found her husband and earned her degree, majoring in elementary education and minoring in Spanish. After graduating, she and her husband moved to Chicago where she earned her master’s degree. They eventually moved back to South Carolina and she is now putting her degrees to good use by teaching Spanish here at NGU and homeschooling her kids.
Even though her time in Argentina was far from easy, she still looks back on that year with fondness. While there, she was able to share her faith for really the first time in her life and see what it was like to reach the nations with the gospel. The friendships she made were deep and rich and the time she had there was life changing. The rest of her life has been directly influenced by her time in Argentina. Through her school, she heard about North Greenville University. It was here that she found her husband and earned her degree, majoring in elementary education and minoring in Spanish. After graduating, she and her husband moved to Chicago where she earned her master’s degree. They eventually moved back to South Carolina and she is now putting her degrees to good use by teaching Spanish here at NGU and homeschooling her kids.
Her life has been directed a way that can only be described as divine. If she had not gone to Argentina, she might not have heard about North Greenville or met her husband. She stepped into the unknown, and God guided her into the life she now lives.
