Compartmentalizing the alfajores

Yum!

Thursday is alfajores day. Alfajores make Sharayah very happy. As I told Heather, "I will look forward to Thursday for a long time." Amen.

What's also pretty great about Thursday is it's my day with teenagers. Last night, Andrea (Raul's wife, the other Andrea is Samuel's wife.. hmm.. kind of like all the Amanda's back in Colorado..) pulled me aside and asked if I would read a verse to the teens on Alfajores day because she would not be coming. My face probably did that I'm-excited-but-also-scared look. Something probably like this:

No, I'm not trying to look like Harvey Dent in this picture.

But I said yes. This morning, I was praying about what to read. Well, I was praying about two things really. First, I was facing that ever popular skepticism about what I'm doing here. As in, as a missionary. Am I a lunatic? Am I mad for coming all this way to face fairly stressful situations every day just to tell people about some guy named Jesus? And then I asked what I should read.

Here's how awesome God is though. I've been feeling compelled to read Hebrews for the past couple of weeks. At the same time, I've been reading 1 and 2 Peter (also believing that's what I needed to read in answer to prayer) and I didn't want to rush that. So I read through it twice, and have savored many moments. Enter my two-question prayer and the beginning of God's response.

First, I was reminded that Hebrews is an argument proving how much greater Christ is than "just a man." The logic of even just the first two chapters got me excited to be serving again. Not that I didn't know these things before, but as 2 Peter says, "It's good for your minds to be refreshed." Indeed, I didn't feel crazy anymore!

Second, I had been thinking about Psalm 139. And so by the end of this personal conversation with God time, I pretty much landed on that one as the section of verses of choice. Then reading Hebrews, I remembered Psalm 8 and felt like the two chapters were pretty great for each other. When we got to el Refugio (where we make the alfajores.. mmm...), Raul took a moment with us as we were beginning to knead the dough for the cookies.

(In Spanish:) "I would like to take a moment to share some verses with you," he said.

I thought, 'Oh, so I won't be leading a Bible study type thing today after all. That's fine!'

But then Raul began to read straight from Psalm 139! Wait, really? As if to say, even if Raul didn't read them, I would have. Surely the Lord wanted to tell someone in the room something today! Who, I don't know, but it's a crazy experience.

I later told him this, and how I wanted to read Psalm 8 too. He looked at me with surprise. "The Spirit must be doing something," he had said. He then told me that I must lead next week. Gulp. :P

As we continued making the alfajores, I noticed the boys were still not talking to us as much. I then stopped to just pray about this. Only He could make the conversation start after all. About 10 minutes later, one of the Spanish-only speaking volunteers turned to me to tell me something they had told her.

(Also in Spanish) "Whenever you gals speak in English, they think you're talking about them."

I responded with a little smirk, "Cualquier ellos estan hablando en espanol, pensamos que ellos estan hablando acerca de nosotros." Everyone laughed. And the tension then relaxed. The door opened quite nicely and we all talked much more. Praise the Lord! May Alfajores day continue with such blessings! Chau.