HUGE MIRACLE. This is the God we serve!

Our school was in an impossible situation. The School of Dance in Montana needed 48,000 dollars to make it to our tour and field assignment to Croatia. This was before Christmas. We had faith that somehow God would provide. We also needed visas for two of our international students but that looked like an impossible situation too. A week before we were supposed to leave, many of us we getting anxious. God had already given us thousands of dollars since Christmas, and we were so thankful for that. But we still needed 26,000 dollars more. Can we get that much money in one week? Some of us hardly believed it possible. We still had two visas that the Croatian embassy were not processing. On Valentines Day we prayed for four or five hours asking for a miracle.

That night the rest of the school collected $4,300 for us.
The next morning, the Croatian embassy made an exception for us and sent us the two visas and they arrived the next day. All of us nearly cried for joy and it was only a matter of time before He would fulfill what He promised, that we are all in this school chosen by Him and we are ALL going on this field assignment to dance in teach workshops and spread joy and inspire people. If one girl doesn’t have enough money, it’s everyone’s dilemma becuase we had become a like family.

It’s Saturday night and we still needed $17,000 dollars. We were all packed and ready to go. We were going to anyway, knowing we only had enough money to survive in Croatia for 2 weeks. But we were fully prepared that God was going to provide everything before we left at 4 am the next morning or while we were in Croatia. God told us to walk on water, and live on the edge. This is what it’s all about. God was giving us the opportunity to be faithful and to be courageous. That week despite all the worry and the stress I’ve never been so joyful in my life, and I knew it was God. Because we knew that God was going to show us and everyone what He can do and that when the situation is impossible, it’s God who comes through. He was going to keep His promise and we were going to Croatia. We just knew it.

Saturday night at about 8 PM, a man called from one of the girl’s churches back in her home and said that he would pay for ALL the remaining tuition and fees. $17,000. Seventeen thousand dollars!

God is seldom early, never late and always on time. We were prepared to go without, and would survive on faith. But God said we didn’t have to. Every penny was taken care of. THIS is the God we serve! We wouldn’t be here in Croatia if it weren’t for Him!

Now we are in Croatia and so many more miracles and exciting things have happened in God’s name. I will send more stories when a I get the chance.

Not What it Was. Not Who I Was.

Dance today is not what it was. Of course it wouldn’t be because time is an endless moving changing thing. Whatever it is. And all of life seems to be trapped in the cage of time, so everything is influenced by its momentum. Dance today is raw, rusty, broken and imperfect. And in its imperfection lies its perfection because it shows what is real, what is desperate, what is dark, and what humanity hopes for. Even when some do not realize it. So we who dance, or have anything to do with dance are done with fantasies, fairy stories, myths and legends. We’re through with the pretty ballerina living in a fake world on a stage where she dismisses reality – and might even run from it. Today, reality is the stage. Stark, sweaty, bold, bloody, real, transparent, full of hate, full of desperation, full of longing, and full of love. Dance today has grown into itself. It has finally grown up from its dreams and realized the stark reality that one cannot know beauty until it knows the ugly. That joy is not joy until it knows its sorrow…Dance today has realized that its more diverse, more different, more pliable, more bendable, and becuase of that – unbreakable. Dance has discovered that it can’t escape the fallen, broken world but it can embrace the beauty in the dinginess, now that dance has accepted its grit, its mud, its war, its sorrow and its blood. There’s no other way really. But not to love it for what it is. But what it was supposed to be. What it will be.
No.
Not to love it.
Only to be discontent with it. That in the eyes of the dancer who breathes in this smoke, that in her very stillness, she moves in the darkness as if to sing of hope instead. Dance today is not what it was.
I am today not who I was.
Look past the movement and see the soul of why we dance. Why we all dance. It’s the same reason for why we all continue to live. Today, we stop being hypocrites. We will face what we hide, we will face what we fear. This resurrection is very near.
No. I am not today, who I once was.

Miracles…and more…

Before Christmas, I must admit that many of us were lacking in faith. Would God provide? It seems that He likes to wait until the very last minute. This past week has been amazing. Our last guest artist, Randall Flynn (Director of Ad Deum Dance Company) came (I’ll tell more about him later) and prepared us for the future more than we can say. The Holy Spirit has been moving in the whole base and we leave for outreach in no more than two weeks. Several miracles have happened and we know more will come. Carla, from Costa Rica feared that she wouldn’t be able to complete this school, but just this past week a supporter from the base gave her four thousand dollars, enough to cover her remaining fees and her outreach fees! Not only that but another girl, Sene from Samoa has been missing her visa and nobody knew when it would come back from the embassy. It had been gone since before Christmas and if we didn’t get it back soon then she too would be held back from outreach. But yesterday, we got the news that it had come back! Now, all we need is money for Jackie (and her passport and visa back) from Rwanda and for Heather from Texas and for Alissa from North Carolina. We know it will come. Before Christmas the entire school as a whole needed 48,000 dollars. Now, we only need 28,000 dollars! All of that money came trickling in from God’s very hand.

We’re praying for another miracle. Lotte, the head of the School of Dance had injured her foot a while back. She is an anointed dancer and when one watches her dance, something moves within. But she has been held back by this foot injury that has had surgery and yet has never healed. We all know that this is not God’s will for her. We pray for her foot all the time. This week, the guest choreographer, Randall Flynn set a duet on her and another staff member, Crystal. Lotte cannot dance all of it full out, but as we watched her dance it, all of us were moved to tears because we could see her heart and see her longing to dance and we could see God’s grace in her movement. We don’t know what it feels like for her to sit out and watch us dance, wishing she could do the same. She’s going to be healed on outreach. She’s going to be healed and then she will be able to dance that duet full out, without restraint and without pain.

We’re working harder than ever with Anatomy finals coming up, two concerts to prepare for including all the dances we’ve created so far (around 25) plus all the dances that each student is creating on her own for our composition final. Outreach is in two weeks and we get more excited by the day, knowing that God’s going to do amazing things.

“Servant Artistry. Your dance is your towel. Now go, take you towel and wash feet.”
-Randall Flynn

Captivating Dance

I’ve arrived at a humble place
A place where evil is tortured it its stay.
In Divine Purpose there is Vision.
There is no competition
There is no division.
It’s as if Heaven speaks from our feet
Jumping at this joyful song
Sweeping at this sorrow along
It’s like God said to free us
And to free those who will believe us
And we all heard it.

We see a world in grave darkness
And reality becomes our stage
We know a Light, a different way.
And this light reveals the stage:
Breath of God blown like wind to our limbs
Emotions begin and inspiration gives in
To movement, to noise,
To silence, to stillness.
It’s like the ground were always shaking
So we cannot stop moving
Speaking such poetry words would fail to utter.
The entire Being is drawn into its trance,
Given to God – a beautiful, captivating dance.

(~Ep, December 27, 07)

Jolene Konkel…the One Who Started it All

Our second to last guest choreographer demanded more energy than we thought we had. Unfortunately I was sick with a cold and laryngitis which meant that my voice was gone and was told by a strict Lotte that I was not allowed to dance despite my pitiful pleadings. But I’m pretty sure I gained more from Jolene’s advice and wisdom than actually being in the piece that she set on us to take on outreach. Her story is an amazing one. She went to a bible college seeking God yet knowing that He wanted her to dance. In those days, dancing was a “sin” and strictly forbidden especially in a Bible college. But God moved where there were no doors and she was able to jointly attend another nearby dance school and eventually introduced dance into the bible college. People saw God in her work and more people wanted to dance and were set free from restraints and a whole new world of praising God and communicating Him to the people was created. Jolene wanted to open doors for more dancers like her, who have a relationship with Jesus Christ but are stuck in a a world between worlds. The dance world did not have anything to do with the Church and the the Church didn’t have anything to do with dance. A split identity is what God is healing in artists. This is why Jolene started the school of Dance six years ago, so that dancers who wanted to use their gifts for God could learn how with excellence and use that for God’s glory. She started in avalanche and each year it grows bigger here in Lakeside. It was a HUGE privilege to learn from her to be challenged by her, and to be inspired by her. As one who continually breaks the mold of tradition to what is Truth, she knows what it takes to make her art speak louder than anything else.