Shekinah Ballet's First Successful Benefit Concert!

The sun was rising over the mountains on interstate 81 as I made my way to Living Faith Chapel. My hands were already shaking, and I decided that perhaps the shot of espresso in my Starbucks Frappuccino was not a good idea. Oh well! I was looking forward to getting to the church before anyone else so that I could collect my thoughts, stretch, and find some time alone with God. I needed an added measure of grace certainly this day. I smile thinking how ill qualified I was (and still am) for the gift and amazing opportunity that He gave me in this dance ministry. Young ladies who are looking for a godly example, knowledgeable ballet teaching, and a director who can encourage and enable them to worship God. The idea that God would give me this opportunity is incredibly gracious. I could list some facts about myself that would certainly disqualify me from such an honor, yet God was so abundantly gracious and giving. At first when I thought of the dance benefit concert idea, I did not think it would succeed. I was waiting for it to fail like my numerous other ideas always have, but as time went on, it began to go more smoothly than I expected. For example. I realized one day that I did not have a speaker that would be loud enough to project the music during rehearsals. I also wanted to be able to play my music form my iTunes account on my phone. Within an hour of praying for a speaker, my mother walked in the door with a speaker that she received from the Sprint store. "I have no idea why I just spent $100 dollars on a speaker that we will never use when we are just about broke, but for some reason I just bought it," she explained.
It was at this moment that I knew that God was going to show me His grace in a miraculous way. Soon I realized that the church was going to be $250 dollars. While the cost was not unreasonable at all, I was overwhelmed by the seemingly significant cost since I did not want to charge my students this first time. Perhaps this was the insurmountable hurdle. Of course the show would not happen. Not soon after praying for wisdom in how to deal with this cost, one of the mothers graciously offered to pay the entire cost!
Finding dancers was another matter. I had to find girls who would be willing to worship God through dance. I wanted to have a core group of girls who already knew Jesus as Savior and had gentle, pure spirits so that as other girls came along, there would be spiritual encouragement and an expectation of excellence in conduct. The young ladies that ended up dancing with Shekinah had beautiful attitudes, and were exactly suited to what I was trying to achieve, a godly environment where Christ could be glorified.
In addition, there were apparently some little girls that wanted to take classes. I had no real thought to teach little ones currently for this show, but I set up a time when the mothers could bring their daughters and where I could teach them a basic dance. I was astounded on the night of the first junior division rehearsal to see fifteen young girls all with willing attitudes ready to learn a dance and picking up the parts well!
Now as I sat in the sanctuary at Living Faith Chapel waiting for our curtain crew to arrive and the sound system to get set up, all I could think was "Lord, you have given me an incredible gift! This is the dream and the desire of my heart that I have had since I was in second grade. I have strayed from you in my heart this year. I have been completely a mess in many of my decisions, and yet in the very same year when I make the worse decisions, you have overwhelmed me with a sense of your grace, and You have enabled me to do what I never thought would actually happen. I want to be faithful to serve you and lead these young ladies to You. Please give me the strength to do this."
As the day continued, It was nothing but craziness. Every moment I was giving orders to someone. From 7:00am to 4:00pm I was running like a crazy person. By 4:00pm, I was feeling sick and anxious, yet I had a tremendous support group of incredible friends who made me sit down and stop working, who brought me food, and took my phone away from me and took over everything, so that I could relax, We had seventy people begin to arrive at 6:00pm. The show had no major blunders except that I discovered that I need to work on talking professionally on stage. I was blessed with peach roses. (my favorite) at the end. The show raised $422 dollars for Street Kids Philippine Mission and $422 dollars for Shekinah Ballet Company. All I can say is God is truly good! Rich in mercy and abundant in loving kindness. He has given me a love for these girls, and an incredible opportunity, and I am not going to take this for granted, but I daily look to Him to enable me to take the next step and honor Him in everything.

Rehearsals

We have had at least seven rehearsals, including rehearsals with little girls which we call our "Shekinah Junior Division". We never expected to have so many young ladies with such a desire to learn and dance. They have brought me numerous pictures and have given me numerous hugs to show their gratitude. The last week has been a stretch for me as a director. I have been finishing up a twelve credit semester of school, along with directing the dance show. My semester ends on the 8th of May and the show is on the 9th, so this has been crunch time for me. Thankfully, my classes do not have finals. That has been a huge blessing. I have also had much support from encouraging friends. God has been very good to me. I am not the least bit stressed, although quite busy. Things are coming together, and while we have no idea how many people will actually come, we are trusting God to bring those who will be truly blest by our first worship production.

Our rehearsals have included a short devotional with the older girls, a warm up for the girls, and a time of learning each dance. On Saturday, May 2nd, we are having our dress rehearsal. It's been amazing to see God work in all of these things. I am starting to realize that this desire of mine to share dance with young ladies while simultaneously encouraging them and building godly relationships with them, may actually be a reality! God is so gracious to me, and I am so privileged to be a part of this!

Adminsitrative Assistants and Advertizing Consultants

Shekinah Ballet has a number of knowledgeable volunteers that are working together to make this show possible. Two of the most helpful volunteers are our advertising consultant, Laura Jeu

 

and Miss Brook's Personal administrative assistant, Lindsay Harris. Both of these girls have been keeping up with numerous typing assignments, ordering tickets, getting together t-shirt orders, writing out programs, and supplying much of the work that is involved in manning the ticket table. These girls have put in countless hours and have been a source of knowledge and inspiration with their various ideas. On the night of the event they will be handing out tickets. Please be sure to thank them for their hard work.
As I have been thinking about the tremendous support that our volunteers have offered, I am reminded of Romans 12:4-6 which says, "For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly..." The gifts of these volunteers is a testimony to the way that the body of Christ works together, many different individuals all working together for God's glory.

Preparations and First Steps

The last few months have been a whirlwind of excitement and preparation as I begin to learn what it means to direct my own dance concert. Back in November I was visiting a friend near Philadelphia. We had just enjoyed a beautiful morning of walking the streets of Doylestown and touring the Doylestown Castle, drinking coffee and tea and crocheting while watching "North and South". It was an invigorating and inspiring kind of day. We were preparing for a Masquerade and raising money for Pregnancy Ministries through donations from the event, when it suddenly occurred to me. I could do the same thing with my desire to begin a ballet ministry! Why not raise money for a missions organization while allowing friends of mine who know ballet to learn a production? It would be the first step in gauging interest from dancers in the area, and it would give me more experience, not to mention offer the opportunity of raising money both for this future dance ministry and for the needs of others. Since November I have had many friends, and young dancers who have been supportive and have volunteered countless skills and resources to make this production possible. We will be performing on May 9th Shekinah Ballet's first production "Give Me Jesus" in Shippensburg Pennsylvania. We are excited to have Bloom Dance Studio and Neshema Dance Company join us for guest performances and we are excited to see how much money we can raise for Street Kids Philippine Mission, an orphanage that a friend of mine promotes. Yesterday I acquired beautiful flyers printed by my good friend, Laura Jeu, and last Friday we had our first rehearsal with the younger group of dancers. It looks as if we will have about twenty-five dancers worshipping on the night of the show. It has been a tremendous amount of work, but I am learning that delegation is a huge part of bringing everything together.

A Lady

A Lady. The word seems quite important to me, a summary of everything I want to be. It is, after all, a big part of the focus of Maidens of Virtue. As the potential future director of a discipleship ballet school for girls, I have tried to be a mature, mannerly, sophisticated lady for many years, and have almost succeeded a number of times; but I always get nervous and soil the white linen table cloth at the tea party or realize that I have said the wrong thing in an introduction. In recent years, I felt a strain on my social life as I found that I pressure myself to say just what a lady ought to say, but instead the wrong thing escapes my lips. I want to teach my girls in Bright Lights (our discipleship group) how to be ladies also. Just the other day one of my girls asked me why I emphasize being a lady so much. Perhaps it is because a lady is respectable. A lady is virtuous, noble, and beautiful. All the world respects her strong yet gentle spirit. Perhaps that is also why I like ballet. To me, ballet is the perfect expression of all that a lady is. Strong as steal, graceful as a bird. The problem is that I am not a lady all the time. That is, I do not act like one. I am foolish and say the wrong thing. I giggle too much and act immature. I seem to be very good at doing exactly what I do not want to do sometimes.

In many ways being a lady has become something that is more important to me than almost anything else, but being a lady is not what is most important. Being a lady is secondary to being a woman after God’s own heart. My daily focus is always on proving myself to be a competent, independent, beautiful woman when in reality my focus should again be on Christ. The funny thing is that when I am loving Christ with all my heart and loving others, I am truly being all that a lady should be. Who cares if I introduce the older person to the younger first or vice versa at an important social gathering? Who cares if I scoop my soup spoon away from myself or not? Am I loving my God and King? Am I serving and glorifying Him? I create for myself many rules to help me hold myself together. Anything from food guidelines to courtship standards, but when it comes right down to it, all these things arte futile efforts that will lead me only to realize failure apart from Christ. It is the grace of my loving Lord and Savior and His sanctifying work in my life that will bring about a truly noble character. Everything else seems rather superficial. I have failed in all of these areas this year, and the girls that I mentor know it; however, rather than being dismayed by my failings, my compulsive foolishness, my lack of a heart focus on God, and an over-all immature outlook on the responsibilities of my life, I am encouraged to see that God keeps reminding me to turn to Him, to love Him with all my heart. My life this entire year has been submerged and saturated in His grace, and my testimony is only that of a weak, redeemed sinner turning her eyes one more time on Jesus. A lady? What’s that? I am God’s handmaiden. 

 

All I Have is Christ

The last of the marshmallows were eaten and the Apples to Apples game had begun when I began to think back through the events of the week. I was filled with joy in serving. It had been a fun filled week of getting to interact with and mentor young ladies at Daughters of Destiny Camp in North Carolina. Looking back, I identified my hesitation to start. I had not known whether I could be a good counselor as I had been struggling with my own immaturity, lack of focus on God, and discontentment over the summer, and did not feel that I could set the godly example that I wanted to set over the week to the 15-18 year old girls in my cabin. God was gracious to me. I was able to share with the girls that my struggle for contentment had been met with God's grace. The girls responded with encouragement and so did my senior counselor. I was encouraged to realize that this is exactly what I wanted to do with my life-serve through mentoring, through building genuine relationships. Then I came home. I realized, that I had to give up something that was taking my affections away from God. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I gave it into His hands, and He took it fully away. Now all I have is Christ, and I can fully serve Him in the same way that He allowed me to serve Him at camp, undistracted

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"Nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:39

Growing Seedlings

For a few years I have wanted to learn more about caring for children, but the opportunities have been slim. After looking throughout the Summer, I found a job working close to home nannying for toddler siblings named Lorelei and Finley. Lorelei is almost three years old, and Finley just turned one. I began this week. We have been playing, having lunch together, and reading books and singing together. It is such a privilege to be a part of these young children's early years. They may not remember me in the future, but I believe that I can help to make a difference in their young lives. Today I asked Lorelei if she knew who Jesus is. She said that she did and that He was in her heart. I asked her about sin, and she said that she didn't know what sin is. Over the coming weeks, we'll do fun, simple activities that will help her to understand the gospel as well as help her grow as a lady. Nannying is a great opportunity for me to understand better what is involved in caring for children as well. As I am preparing for Maidens of Virtue to become a ministry for young ladies, I also think that this job will help me both to know how to help mothers and to know how to encourage young ladies who are wishing to care for children. It's going to be a growing experience and a blessing to help train these little seedlings to bloom!

"Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one's youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; They will not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gates." Psalms 127:4-5.