301/365

We never know how many are going to show up on a Saturday, and that makes planning tricky. Certainly, no matter the country, young men are known to eat a lot. Today's menu is quesadillas. Tortillas, already pressed, are stacked up, ready to cook on my built-in comal. I slice the queso Oaxaca, the salty stringy ropes that will melt and ooze out the sides of the folded tortilla discs. I cut lunchmeat turkey into ribbons- admittedly, not a traditional quesadilla filling but maybe providing these guys with a bit of protein for the day. I half the avocados and portion out the green half moons, spreading across the plate to form bright fans. The salas are in jars and bottles on the table, my favorite green, Tim's spicy red, and the boys make fun that we can't agree on one. They fill up their plates with spicy crunchy Takis and chicharrones and they fill up their cups with coke. We pray, and thank the Lord for good food, and for good friends, and for the opportunity to enjoy one another. We sit and eat and the boys giggle at each other and at us. They ask us questions about our family and about our home en el otro lado, and try to figure out why we're in the neighborhood. In Romans 12, Paul exhorted the saints to practice philoxenia; literally, to show love to strangers. Today we turn that around, and even though we're the strangers, as the author of Hebrews reminds us, perhaps today we will entertain angels.