"Surprises" and Blessings and Well-done Meat! Just wanted to share a bit about our leader retreat this past weekend and a Spanish snafu in class.
This past weekend was the long-awaited, long-anticipated (at least for me) Young Life Spring semester leader retreat to fellowship and plan for this upcoming semester. I worked for countless hours the last couple of weeks helping to plan the schedule, training sessions, planning sessions, and some logistics. Don't get me wrong, I had some awesome help from Josh, our intern, and Boo, the Tico guy I work with. However, Jessie (my supervisor and area director) has been in the States for several weeks for Young Life training and so I felt the weight of the weekend falling on my shoulders.
Like the best laid plans, they sort of crumbled. Unfortunately, we had some leaders back out at the last minute (and others who couldn't come originally) and so we had FAR fewer numbers than anticipated, which was a little disappointing for a number of reasons. Not the least of those reasons was I was looking forward to some great team-building time. But God always has something up His sleeve, and I was blessed more than I can say by those who were able to come. We were able to not only plan 95% of what needed to be planned, but also have some great time just hanging out.
I laughed a lot. We played football and watched a movie. I got some awesome girl talk time in with one of my favorite ladies here. And we planned 15+ Young Life and WyldLife clubs, among other things. Score: 1 for God, .5 for Ali (I did manage to get over my disappointment and jump into what GOD had planned for the weekend faster than normal, so I get half a point :)
Okay, on to part 2: My latest Spanish language snafu. The task was to answer this question:
"Que esperanza tiene usted?"
"What hope/wish do you have?"
Because of the type of verb we were studying, I was supposed to answer by saying what I would like someone else to do. Since I go to a Christian language school we talk about God a lot, so I thought I would say that I hope at the end of my life God will say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
Now, I know how to say "good job" and "you finished well" in Spanish, but not exactly "well done." So I looked it up in my Spanish online translator and it said, "Bien cocido." Now, if I had thought for two seconds, I would have realized this was not the type of "well done" I was looking for, but I was in a hurry to finish the assignment and this was the last question.
As we shared in class, I responded to the question:
"Yo tengo la esperanza de que al final de mi vida Dios me diga, "Bien cocido! Mi serviente fiel." Basically, "I hope that at the end of my life God will say, "Well-done little steak, my faithful servant."
The Spanish teacher looked at me with a funny face, "I don't understand, bien cocido?" And I told her I put well done in my translator...and as I'm saying it...I and the rest of the class realize that this type of well done refers to meat, not a job well done!
We laughed for a good five minutes! How humbling this process of learning a new language is!
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