Elf Cookies!

(You are going to have to ignore the apostrophies once more. Freaking Spanish keyboard is all jacked up again!) Carrying on...

There are two things that describe my life perfectly right now. Catch Phrase. and. Charades. Yes, the mix of these two games are pretty much my life here in Costa Rica. You might be confused, but here is why. Given the whole "language barrier" a lot of hand motions and gestures are used when describing things or certain situations. Thats the whole Charades part of my life. Or when my host family, or other tico/ticas for that matter, are trying to figure out a word in English they will try to use other words that they know to describe it, hense the Catch Phrase part of my life. For example, I was at Kates house the other day and we were talking to her host dad, William, about the beach that we are going to next weekend. He was telling us that people are sometimes naked, but that they wear these masks. He then got a confused look on his face, and you could tell he was trying to figure out the word for these types of masks. Then, with out anyone having to say go, we started playing Charades. He was doing hand gestures while Kate and I were trying to figure out what masks he was thinking of. I was thinking in my head, very positive actually, masquerade masks! Right, isnt that the kind of mask people would wear when they are naked on the beach? Nope, he was actually talking about snorkeling masks. Yeah yeah, makes sense... beach, snorkeling masks...whatever. Im just glad I didnt yell out masquerade masks. That was a close call!

This weekend though, I wasnt so lucky, and shouted out the wrong answer. Here is what happened. We had a Young Life/Wyld Life leader retreat. On Saturday night it was decided that we were all going to play Catch Phrase! Awesome. Who dosent like Chatch Phrase? :) I was so excited, and thought for sure that my two weeks of intense practice whould surly set me up to absolutley destroy the other team. Well...somethings dont always go according to plan. It was Jessies turn, and we (everyone on her team) were all trying to guess the word she had to describe. (As Catch Phrase rules go, the person describing the word can not say any part of the actual word. They have to use other words to describe it. Make Sense?)
Heres the play-by-play...
Jessie said "Santas helpers!" Naturally, we all replied "Elfs!" She nodded her head to indicate that we were right, and proceeded to the other part of the description. She continued on with "oh...oh...cookies!" At that point everyone was kind of quiet, thinking of what the word could possibly be. What do the two words elf and cookies describe? I, so sure and and confident in my answer yell out "Elf cookies!" Seriously Lis, Elf cookies? What the crap. No. Plus, she said cookies in her description, so clearly the word cookies couldnt have been apart of the word she was ultimately trying to describe. Turns out the answer was Keebler. I mean...I was kinda close...kinda! :) Keebler E.L.Fudge Cookies. So that is why my life is so perfectly described by Chatch Phrase and Charades. Sadly though, as you can see, I am not very good at either of these two games :)

The retreat though... It.was.Awesome! Seriously, so great. It was such a great time to spend with all the other Young Life and Wyld Life leaders (there are 11 of us total! holler) We were at a camp in the mountains called Lecumbre. By the way, Costa Rica is seriously unreal. There are insanely green awesome mountains and breath taking beaches. Little random fact, Costa Rica is the same size as Virginia. Who knew! Anyways, we planned out clubs for this semester, prayed, laughed, and got to hear a really sweet message from Doug Burns, who is on committee for YL here. Man, I so needed to hear what he had to say. I felt as though Jesus was talking directly to me. Doug talked about the role Young Life played in his own life as a high schooler, his time leading YL back in Texas, and now what its like to have two kids involved in Wyld Life. I so badly needed to be reminded that what we are doing, what I am doing here in Costa Rica, matters! Its easy for me to get discouraged and to think that I wont make a difference here, but thats just Satan trying to convince me of lies. Doug reminded us leaders that we have the ability to make an eternial significance in kids lives. Dang. That so matters! Like I said, the retreat...It.was.Awesome!