I recently met a very nice family at work, the father spoke english pretty well.  He was very patient with my Japanese and he actually encouraged me to use it.  It seemed as though the daughter was learning English so he thought that she should respond in English and I should reply in Japanese.  This made for a fun evening.  Although we really had some tough times understanding one another it was a great learning experience.  Overall I tried my hardest to make their evening as special as possible, as they did for me.