frustrated and...full of joy

yesterday it happened. tears came during class...

its been a few days coming. for the last three days of class i´ve walked out and wanted to scream. to the top of my lungs and then go buy a huge bar of chocolate. ha.

(juliette if you are reading this, just think back to all the times this past year we walked out of our spanish classroom in shear frustration...extremely similar)

i have been great until now. i have been patience with my ignorance in the language. or reminded myself to be. i have attempted to speak spanish with everyone i´m around all the time--even though I ALWAYS sound like a rambling idiot piecing spanish and english words together or just saying the verb without conjugating it. but non-the-less I always tell myself that i´m not allowed to get upset or angry or frustrated-i have to constantly remind myself that this will take time. i will not be speaking beautiful flowing spanish tomorrow not matter how desperately i want to. this is going to take time and discipline.

...time and discipline. two very great words huh? don´t you just love to swallow them? along with a big plate of 1 Thess. 5:16-18 "Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." (thank you her hands)

so yesterday during class without warning i had to sort of hide my face, go to the bathroom acting as if something was wrong with my contact...

it has been hard.

but i love it.

i love that i´m living with a family that doesn´t know ANY english. i love communicating with them. its a change. its a refreshing change. it has been a huge learning experience.

it has been hard. but i like being pushed out of my comfortable little 3x3 box. waaaay out of the box. i wish the box didn´t really exist. maybe the Lord will keep pushing me further and further and further in life..through experiences through living...and i won´t even know what a box is. or what the limits are. or what constrains me. ooooooooooo i want to be there. someday...maybe someday

so yes after my frustrating day i walked out of school and my roommate was waiting for me. first thing she said was i looked as if i had just been in a huge fight and definitely lost. ha. well lucky me thats what i felt like too. i told her i never wanted to hear spanish again. (not really...i´m over that now but i did feel that way at the time)

she met me because we were going to go to a bible study. :)

At church a couple of sundays ago i met a guy and he had invited me to his house for their wed. night bible study. I didn´t get to go last week and so i really wanted to go and check it out, if anything just to speak more spanish. Bettina had thought i was kinda crazy for going by myself to some random house, so she decided she would come along.

well...after my frustrating class honestly the last thing i wanted to do was be around people speaking spanish and me not understanding

so before going we went to a TEXAS bar and grill.

yep. not joking

i had passed it the other day and almost wet my pants. its called LONESTAR Bar and it has Texas flags all over the place. pictures of governers. etc. absolutely amazing! and i got a plate of rice and beans and ranchero chicken :)

mmmmmmmmm...(the first thing i´m doing when i get off the plane is eating mexican food. never knew how much i´d miss it!)

so we headed across town following a map to Emilio(the guy)´s house. i love the way the streets work here. they dont. ha. at all. they are just a bunch of crazy mazes. you attempt to follow a map. but then you always end up just taking streets in the general direction of where you want to go. then somehow, i have no idea how to explain this, you look up and in between two buildings that stand about 4 ft apart is your street. ha. believe me it happens and its crazy.

so we found the street. or so we thought. i called Emilio and he ended up metting us and then we followed him to his house.

this guy is crazy. he loves Jesus. and is very hyper. he is fluent in english too which was wonderful. however we talk spanish to each other because...well...i´m trying to learn spanish.

betinna still thought this was real sketchy. lol

i wish there was somehow i could have videoed this entire night for you. basically it was me, bettina, emilio, and 2 other guys. we all sat on the back patio and began to study galations 5.

like i said Emilio knows english very well and so did Juan--they would speak in spanish and if we didn´t understand they would translate for us. Juan teaches at the British Insitute here in Sevilla so he was a great english speaker.

however...most of the time these guys would just go at it(muy rapido)--flipping through the bible to other related scriptures, expressing opinions, talking about what certain preachers had said about specific things (ps. emilio and juan listen and read John piper all the time, funny connection there), discussing between themselves while bettina and i tried to soak it all in. We probably had about 25 bibles on the table circulating and a couple of dictionaries. i loved it!this brought so so so much joy to me.

Thank you Lord for bringing me there.

i laughed almost all night. for no reason at all really. just at the randomness of it. just at the fact that sometimes we would just stare at each other across the table knowing we wanted to say something but had no idea how to express it.

then at about 11:30 they all shut their bibles.

we thought it was time to go.

nope. how could i not have guessed?

they brought out the food. haha. AND helado!!!!! (ice cream)

i really really really wish this was on video. i couldn´t stop laughing. then we just talked about life things. about politics and what was happening in España concerning the church and the government....and i mean everything under the sun.

Juan gave us a ride home! yiippee no taxi money spent!

it was a great night. and I thank God for immediately giving me a deeper passion to learn the language after such a frustrating day.