the divine dance

What in the world does this gigantic fish have to do with "the divine dance" you might ask. Well, the divine dance was our senior high girl's retreat. It was a great book about who are we dancing for anyway. Are we dancing for Jesus? Are we dancing for others? I was blessed to be asked to go and give one of the talks to these girls. I love going on these weekends. I love being with this group of girls. Now what in the world is that big fish doing on a girl's weekend? One of the families in our church is so very generous with their farmhouse. They have allowed the entire youth group to descend upon this place and they have had a men's day at their place and they have allowed us to have the senior high girl's retreat there. My bedroom was this study . . .and the couch was right under this giant fish. I actually took a picture of it because I knew Mark and Glenn would love to see it. For that very same reason, I took a picture of all of these turkey heinies (I know that is not what they are . . .tail feathers, perhaps?). This was the view at the foot of my bed. I thought I took a picture of the cool sleeping loft where most of the girls slept but it was not on my camera.

Here is a picture of all the girls on Saturday morning - very early - 8 ish ...I was getting ready to give my talk and the weather alert radio was going off fairly often. This was one of those weekends in Alabama where the tornadoes are swooping through. We were supposed to stay all day on Saturday and play but the weather was so bad that we did both of the Saturday talks practically back to back and loaded the bus and skedaddled back to Birmingham. I love the way those sunglasses look on the girls. Number one reason is they hide the sleepy eyes :-) Number two reason is they look like I pasted stars on their faces.

Here are the adults - I'm on the left - hair clasp and all - no showers because we were on well water and it takes a lot of water to flush the toilet that many times. That is Jessie beside me and then Julie, our assistant student pastor and then Christy on the far right - the house belongs to Christy's family.

Here is the entire group - we always have to get a "t-shirt" shot. The t-shirts are really great. Our friend (and co-worker), Amy designed them. They remind me of a little girl and ballerinas. Amy used a great font on the back and she used these little wavy lines which remind me of little ruffles.

Several of these girls are going off to college this fall and I hope they know how much their church family loves them - we really do!! I hope each one of these girls knows that Jesus is the best dance partner and the best audience of all.