Quiero Taco Bell?

January 29-We had youth group tonight.  It was Sarah and I’s job to pick out games for the kids to do. Now just to recap, the people who we interact the most with are Phil and Rebecca (Phil is the pastor of the Calvary Chapel here), Matt and Brooke (they run the Potter’s Field Kid’s after school program), Eddy (21, lives in the church and works there), and Daniel (15, is on the worship team and is really involved in the church so we see him a lot).  These 6 are the only people who can actually communicate in English with us.  I just assumed that since both Eddy and Daniel could speak English, then most of the teenagers knew at least a little. I guess I was being really naïve when I thought I could actually explain the games in English. 

 We got to the church and there were about 20 kids, most of them in middle school.  There were only 4 girls, and one of them was sitting by herself so I went to talk to her. I asked her name in English and she just said no. So I asked in Spanish and she said Gabriella.  So I also asked how old she was in Spanish. And that was pretty much the extent of the conversation because I couldn’t think at the time of any other questions I could ask her that I could translate into Spanish except like "quiero taco bell?" or something stupid like that.  So after standing there awkwardly for about a minute I went up to Eddy and asked if any of them actually spoke Spanish.  2 boys out of this group could speak just a little.  Thankfully we had Pastor Phil to translate for me as I explained the games, but for next week I’m going to try to explain it all in Spanish myself.

 I want to connect with these kids so bad! The boys were easy enough.  I had a great time with them laughing and goofing off.  But Gabriella separates herself from the group (I went up to her periodically while others were playing games to try to talk in Spanish to her), and the 3 other girls have no interest in participating in anything.  Which actually isn’t that different from youth group in the States… But anyways prayer for reaching these kids in their language is much appreciated!