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Dooood!!! Ima post something on da BLOG!!!!! :D


Man oh man did i do some work on all these folks!!! Haha, we all got our exercise for the day :) But doing these more upbeat, really exciting dances is something that we've not done too much of before in Alive, which is good! It's a great way to just worship God and have so much fun while doing it. Like Jillian said, this song just makes you want to jump around and sing and smell flowers and give people money, and jump around, in joy, of course. And its just so great to be able to do this fun fun dance, when we perform it i really hope that some random people who aren't part of it will just start worshiping like they never have before, it'd be great!

So this thursday i should be finishing up the choreography for it :) And... maybe finally starting to learn the Fear Dance!!! It's another more upbeat song, but its a bit more Hip Hop-ish, which is REALLY different. BUT GOOD! :) It's an amazing song ("Afraid" by J Moss) it has awesome lyrics and my dance teacher has been teaching me a dance that might take a bit more... time... :) than what we're used to, that is. I should be able to teach Ashley a bit of it and we'll see how it goes!


But the thing about doing dances is that, its a great form of worship for the dancers, but not always necessarily the audience, depending on the situation, of course, and with the yesterday, today, forever dance, I'm really wanting to just give a visual to the joy that song brings out in me, and many other people! And with that, i just really hope people will worship while watching, we encourage random jumping if thats how you worship! :) I know that when we perform it, God will do great things, like he always does. Here's to God! This is in his hands :)
-Flail instructor Austin :P


-ALIVE

His joy...

and welcome to dance practice :) cute Maider took some pics on thursday so i stole them from her and am posting them. here is the group shot...all of us trying not to look too overwhelmed :)

and here is our wonderful choreographer/teacher...

another group shot...possibly looking slightly less overwhelmed...:) and having so much fun
some of the super cute girls taking a little break from dancing :)

this was so fun. i have always admired people who have the gift of dance. there are just those songs that you hear that you just want to jump around and praise God while you're listening to them. however - if you are like me and not exactly what you would call "coordinated" :) then you just imagine being able to dance out what you are feeling on the inside. so learning this was just really cool - because NOW when i hear the song...and i really love this song (if you havent heard Yesterday, Today, Forever - see the video in the last post) - i have a picture of the movement in my head and i can just picture/dance that dance filled with the joy that is happening on the inside instead of just random jumping :) so i still admire the people who have the gift of dance - so beautiful and SO powerful. but i will embrace this little chance to participate in this way of experiencing God's joy and just giving it a channel to pour out of me! :))) so i just encourage you to find a way to express the joy that God is filling you with and fully experience it! let His joy fill you up and come out in whatever way He desires...just be open to it. ;)

-ALIVE

Yesterday, Today and Forever :)

oh so fun :) last night we had dance class. intense dance class. haha...

and sarah, erika and i joined in this time. so glad we did. it was so fun.

have you heard the song Yesterday, Today and Forever by Ryan Stevenson? if not - please take a moment to listen to it...and i bet you a million dollars you cant listen to it and not dance even a little bit.

its just such a HAPPY song! God never changes! and He is calling us to Him.

and i just LOVE the picture of just trying to reach His heart with all we have - our worship.

anyways...so Austin has been working on choreographing a dance to this song and asked if we could take some time on a thursday night and learn it. so we said sure - that would be fun.

so last night we started by reading Psalm 19...

i highly recommend reading it...i am listening to Francis Chan's Crazy Love, and in it he talks about this passage. the psalm says that God's handiwork declares His glory. Francis points out that God created the world. His handiwork is His creation...His art. God's art declares His glory. and it was like God was saying - "i made you creative. i want you to have a passion for allowing me to make art through you..."

He is creating through the gifts that He has given His children. His art is declaring His glory. so when we allow Him to create through us - its His art. and as we allow Him to move us and create through us - His glory is declared!!!

God is strongly suggesting that we creative types spend our time being creative and creating with Him - the most creative being that has been or ever will be...that is our ministry. that is our calling. no, please God dont make me do what i love in order to serve you! :) i mean seriously? what a crazy blessing! what are we waiting for??? He is just getting me so excited about intentionally letting Him loose in my life and just following- whereever He leads. oh man...so good.

the last half of the night we spent with our hearts racing, not breathing, and stumbling over our feet...haha...BUT eventually, after some work and instruction - we learned part of the dance! and it was so fun to learn (even for the "non-dancers") and just worship while doing it. loved it. and it looks so cool! we made some of the ppl who mastered it and made it look cool do it while we recorded it so i am going to post the video here - you can get a glimpse of what we worked on :)

not sure what we'll use it for or when - but God will use it when He wants to...

so thanks team for being good sports :) and thanks austin for creating the dance!

have a BLESSED weekend...

-ALIVE

Give Me Your Eyes: Part 4

Practice #2 at St. Joes = success! :) i was really excited to go tonight and work with the group. we brought 5 of our team members along and there were 8 from st. joes. so a really great group! and it was even better because our favorite dance teachers were there ;) it went really great. and it was really cool to watch austin teach the whole group. :)

they learned it so fast and by the end of the night it looked so great.

just praying that it will stay FRESH in everyone's minds until next wednesday when we perform!!!

:)

i really love working with a different church, its fun to see the two teams working together. and i am just beyond grateful for the whole team. just being willing to come to church on tues night and give up their evening to learn this dance/drama and work on it...such a huge blessing. and to just see God using their gifts...love it.

so thank you team members that came with...God is going to use this. He has put it all together in record time and it is turning out better than we ever thought it would. just a few weeks ago we were sitting at caribou with absolutely NO idea what to do along with this song. haha

but here we are now...God always comes through. always. He is faithful to the end. He will accomplish His purpose.

love it.

what an AMAZING God we serve. :)

the ONLY bad part of the evening if i have to find one was when sarah walked into the sanctuary and pointed out that we were wearing the exact same outfit. from the hair, to the shirt, to the jeans, to the boots. yeah.

there is no picture...we didnt want to record the moment. haha...but im sure we looked SO cute and so cool leading the group looking exactly the same...

oh man...just God keeping us humble....;)

but it was a very productive and fun night!

this week for our ALIVE meeting we are learning a new dance :) so fun!

-ALIVE

quick look at 2010...

Hi friends!
crazy to think its 2011 already...but here we are! its been another whole year of ALIVE. everyone's been looking over the last year and all that has happened and so i was just looking over the blog and remembering all thats been happening this year. and its just crazy to look at all that has happened in just one year. time has gone so fast...and it has been QUITE the adventure.
quick recap over the last year with ALIVE...............

January - decided to go to Mexico for a youth mission trip!

February - take a break from ALIVE...start working with mission team :)

March - LOTS of rehearsal time...

April - we performed The Project: Hosea!

May - mission trip plans changed some when a few team members ended up not being able to come...not the highlight of the process, but definitely a time of learning to depend on God for leading - and our faith growing hugely in the process. also held the first annual El Award-O's? so fun.

June - performed Set Me Free drama for Revolution, held a worship night as a send-off for the mission teams heading out, and went to MEXICO! such an INCREDIBLE trip. God truly blessed us.

July - took a break from meeting for a few weeks...

August - painted a backdrop for the Relentless room at church
September - performed the drama to the song Dear X by Disciple for the See You At the Pole Rally

October - performed The Bride drama for both the youth group on wednesday night and on sunday morning for church. pretty intense stuff...

(video from sunday morning version- if it shows up cut off, you can watch it on the website http://www.edinbrookchurch.org/MEDIA/WEBVIDEOS.HTM)


November - did some arting on the stage on a sunday morning for the finale of Pastor Ivan's Morph series. love the arting :)

December - made art as a team, played with Light Arting, had our Christmas party! :), and started working on the drama/dance for St. Joe's - Give Me Your Eyes.

we have been busy and im just really really excited to see what this year has in store for us!!! we already have quite a few, semi-huge projects in mind......:) so we'll see what God does with them.........

-ALIVE