The Snowball Reaches the Bottom of the Hill

Hello everyone!  I hope you're having a lovely summer!  Mine has been somewhat relaxing so far as I've now been home in SC for almost 3 weeks already.  This week, however, I'll be leaving to begin my travels to visit family and some supporting churches, making my way through Pennsylvania and all over the Northeast. 
But to update you on the anything-but-slow-motion last month and a half, I have some pictures to share.  I hope you enjoy them!  (Don't forget that you can click on the picture to see it bigger.)

First of all, being a group of the most fun and amazing teachers in the world, we often do special fun events for the school.  We did a "Christmas Extravaganza" in December and this April we did a school Luau!  In addition to great food and music, there were several games and competitions including hula-hoop and limbo competitions.  As you'll see in the third picture down, 10th grader Andrew surprised us all by winning the limbo competition! 



In late May we also had a Field Day for the kids.  (Here's a picture of me with my group of girls I worked with for the day.)



Beyond the usual mile run, long-jump, shot-put, etc., Micah planned a huge relay race at the end that included things like...

...spinning around in circles with your head on a bat... 

...finding a gumball in the bottom of a bowl of powdered sugar using only your tongue...

...and racing against the other team to run to the gate and back with a "human baton".

Sure there were first and last places, but everyone worked hard and were all winners in the end!

And then, of course we had our end of year Fine Arts Recital.  Some of the kids had been taking piano lessons from Miss Stephanie and dance lessons from me as well as learning monologues in drama class, so we decided to give them a goal to work for in each of these extracurricular studies and set a date for the recital.  In the end, every single one of our 21 students performed in some way.  Almost every single elementary and middle school girl was in one of the two hip-hop jazz dance classes I taught.  Below is a picture of the middle school girls posing after their performance and then a picture of me with all of the girls in my dance classes. 

I think one of the greatest things about teaching these girls dance is not only that they enjoy it and are learning about discipline and working toward goals, but that they are teaching me that you don't have to be perfect at something to use it for ministry.  God is concerned with a moldable heart more than flawless skills, and he has certainly used my limited knowledge and ability in dance to bless these girls and their families, giving me the confidence, not in myself, but in Him, to use me however he wills.  I fully intend to teach dance again next year and am even thinking about making this more of a ministry in Pucallpa sometime in the not-so-near but not-so-distant future.  We'll see what God has in store in his perfect timing. 

Thanks so much for reading, everyone!  I'll be sure to write again after I've done some traveling this summer.  I'm sure I will have a lot to say (as usual).  Thanks again and God bless!