Our first Nexus: Groovy 60′s Theme, was a blast! Members and friends enjoed a few hours of Rock Band, Just Dance, fellowship and delicious snacks provided and prepared by our wonderful staff. (Thanks staff!) About halfway through Nexus, everyone met in the gym to participate in games that were popular in the 60′s. It was entertaining to me to see how many kids had troubles with these simple games. With all of these advances in technology and the smount of texts and facebook messages it can take just to meet up with your best friend for lunch, I guess we forgot that there are more simple things in life (that are still tons of fun!)

We had an efficacious Chicken BBQ last Saturday at New Covenant. There were certainly some challenges we had to overcome due to hosting the pick-up at a different location, but all things considered, it was a very enjoyable and productive day. Thanks again to everyone who supported Shining Light by buying a BBQ and thanks to all of the members who braved the cold and helped out last weekend! We couldn’t have done it without you!

On Sunday we had our last chance rehearsal for our trip to Riker’s Island. I’m sure that most members would agree with me when I say that it might’ve been our toughest rehearsal to date. Tensions ran high as we watched our performance from our last show at Northwestern Academy Boot Camp. Having the video was a big help, when we’re up on stage it’s hard to understand the vision that the choreographers had or whether or not we’re in sync as a group. As we watched the videos Kelly talked us through them and helped us improve the dances and the visual impact that we we strive for. We ran through the show as a group and tried to implement the new techniques and tighten everything up. By the end of rehearsal, everyone was drained. We still have a few things that need brought together so hopefully everyone found some time this week to practice a little more!

Our first two shows went great but as we head to Riker’s Island we need to really get in our heads in the game. The audience at both of the shows we will be presenting to are very different from what we have experienced thus far in the season. I believe that we can handle these crowds with no issue, because we have God on our side. He blessed us with these wonderful performances and meaningful fellowship time to prepare us to walk into Riker’s with our heads held high and with our message on our faces. We do have some adjustments to make with this trip to NYC. We are blessed enough to stay in the New York School of Urban Ministry (NYSUM) this year. This is a big change for returning members, we’re used to sleeping on the hard floors of a gym in Harlem every other year. NYSUM is going to be a new experience that everyone will have to work with, although I don’t think anyone will have much trouble adjusting! If you haven’t checked out the pictures that Jeff took, make sure you head to Shining Light’s facebook page and see where we’re staying. The hardest part of this weekend will not be being patient with each other or remember the steps to our songs, it’s going to be remembering why we are there and the message that we have to share, the message that we Want to share.

Please keep our group in your prayers as we leave tomorrow bright and early and for the duration of trip and a safe return home! Along with our performances at the Robert N. Davoren Center and the Eric M. Taylor Center of Riker’s Island, we will be participating in NYSUM’s Homeless Ministry and attending Redeemer Presbyterian Church.

I’ll be sure to fill you in with the delightful details of our entire weekend once we’re home!

Brightest Blessings,

Kimberly

As our local season came to an end we had major changes and really important rehearsals to tackle. The challenges were many, the obstacles were (at times) a struggle, but our continual support for each other and the dedication of our team helped us rise above all our adversity and achieve our goals!

Quickly after our Glenn Mills performance in February, we began work on a new song called Declaration-This Is It! Sharie and Megan were patient and gracious with walking us through their choreography, but we only had a few weeks to learn it and incorporate it in the Milton Hershey show. The pressure was on and time was of the essence with choreography as well as vocals.

Milton Hershey came and went and we debuted Declaration as an encore! We came on Saturday evening to set up and then preformed for their Sunday morning Chapel Service.  Over 1,200 junior and senior high school students were packed into Founders Hall. They were a great audience that pumped us up and really made us feel at home.

After that we had one rehearsal to learn and prepare our new song Hero with our new choreographer Darius! He drove all the way from Washington DC to come lead us through a grueling extended rehearsal. We had to fit what would normally take us 3 weeks to learn into one Sunday evening. Personally, my head was swimming with all the killer dance moves we learned as I drove back to school, and the next day i was hurting real bad. Darius really pushed us to not settle for mediocre dance moves but to really apply ourselves and use our talents to glorify the Lord. I can only speak for myself but I really hope we work with him again! It was refreshing to have his excitement, motivation, endurance and his amazing dancing at rehearsal,  and I was a little upset that we could only have him for one.

But April was here! And with it, the Manheim Brethren in Christ Church performance was upon us! Everyone was very tense about Hero going into the performance already but the show went off without any major issues. We had an extraordinary opportunity to invite people from the Water Street Rescue Mission as well as other Lancaster area outreaches and facilities along with the general public to come join us for the evening!

After that we had two more shows that were both open to the public to close off our season. We brought it close to home at Lebanon Evangelical Free church and then finished our year as usual at Teen Challenge Training Center. I always love Teen Challenge because we actually get the chance to sit down with the guys who live on the mountain and ask them real questions and gain wisdom from their life experiences. When we separated into small groups we had a unique chance to get to know our audience. It was a really rewarding and enlightening experience.

After the show we got to continue praising our God with some worship songs and then two testimonials from the audience. It was beautiful to hear how God moves in their lives and how much things change if we only turn over the reigns to the God of love and pledge to give all  glory to Him everyday. 

This end of my Junior year in college has been a busy and stressful one. Growing up seems like it never gets easier, and the pressures to conform to the world never get lighter. Being able to come to Shining Light every weekend and make intentional time in service to and for God has been a rejuvenating blessing in my life time and time again. No matter how exhausted I get, (in every sense of the word) it is never too great that I can’t give more.

More updates really soon— NEXT STOP:

SHINING LIGHT TOUR 2011

GREAT LAKES/CHICAGO!

After ringing in the New Year with our Nexus New Year’s Eve Gala, we were off to a wonderful start at rehearsal getting ready to incorporate our new drama and song selections “Born to Rock” and “Rock What You’ve Got”.  We have now successfully preformed it twice! Our Northwestern secure facility performance was it’s debut, and I can speak for everyone when I say the excitement was overwhelming for us and the audience responded really well!

We got a tremendous amount of feedback from the men at Northwestern by mail! So many of them sent us letters of encouragement and appreciation shortly after our preformance. It is always such a pleasure to hear from those who felt compelled to action by the spirit and hope of Jesus Christ.

Here is an excerpt from on of the letters:

Hello Shining Light! Thank you for coming to Northwestern Academy for your program, I really really appreciate it. It made me think about what I need to do to get back home and do what God wants of me. I make a lot of mistakes in my life. I was involved in a gang. I sold abused drugs, my friends and family tried to help me, but they weren’t enough. I am convinced by you to live God’s way, listen to his word, and be the best person I can be. I am a Christian but I haven’t been praying lately. I am going to start praying again today…                                

  Codie, NW Academy

It is inspiring for many of us to hear such a strong message in response to our ministry. It’s also a nice humbling reminder that we aren’t just planting new seeds, we are nourishing and watering seeds that were planted by those that came before us in the audience’s lives. Especially this time of year when school work is hectic and weather leaves some of us pretty negative (guilty as charged) it’s always a breath of fresh air from the mouth of God to hear feedback like this!

After Northwestern we had another Nexus event! The anual Superbowl party! But as is Shining Light custom, we are all about having fun and building community, but Service is what we do. So just this weekend we had another show, this time in Allentown, PA at Life Church open for the public and local ministries. I also felt lifted up by this show. The audience was attentive and supportive of our presentation and we enjoyed a sincere and authentic talk-time as well!

It seems lately that the themes of peer pressure and how we spend our time have been a constant theme, and the questions probed by those in the audience afterward were no exception.

Jeff has been teaching us and focusing small groups a lot on how we use our gifts of time, talent and money to further the kingdom and not our own selfish goals. This ties very intimately with peer pressure because so many times we can buy into the American dream that’s all about me, and what can help me, and what do i want for me. Being a follower of Christ challenges us to go against that grain and current to stand up for what HE wants. Being in Shining Light is always an encouragement because we’re all striving to make our lives less about me and more about HIM. It’s always nice after a hard week to join together to recharge, recenter and be prayerful for the next batch of challenges we will receive through the week.

I continue to be thankful for this ministry opportunity we have, even though it’s getting harder to stay as comitted as my life progresses and college changes and get’s harder. I never regret my decision to stay, even though I know that I could be doing a million other things. It is safe to say that 2011 holds big things for Shining Light, and I am prayerful that God continues to go before us and pave the road so that we may just choose to follow His lead.

Until next time, dear friends,

Be kind to one another.

After the excitement of Teen Challenge, we had a wonderful preformance at North Western Academy Boot Camp. For many of the new members this was their first time in a boot camp, and everything (thankfully) went off without a hitch! We’re going through a bit of transition this year and having to find tasks for everyone to do! So many wonderful new people have joined us that we now have a surplus of ready hands during setup/tear down. NW was the initiation of training the new members in all of our set up tasks! Many of them took to it brilliantly and displayed a comfortable grasp of what we expected from them in New York when we set up again.

Only a few weeks later we were off to NYC! The Lord went before us to the Big Apple, and we willingly followed and had a wonderful experience! For the first 48 hours we were almost literally going nonstop. Leaving early in the morning to arrive at Riker’s Island in the afternoon and set up for our first maximum security preformance in the Robert N. Davoren Center! For weeks prior we had been talking up this experience and now it had finally arrived!

Our first preformance was nerve-wracking as usual, but went wonderfully without many outbursts from the audience. They were uproarous during talk time, but relatively focused, and Officer Oliver even invited one man to come and bless us with his gift of song, since we blessed them. His song got the whole crowd to join in and they were truely enjoying themselves! It was amazing to see them all unified behind the same thing, working together.

After tearing down we heading back to our old familiar resting place in NYC– the Salvation Army in Harlem! It was nice to be back to the living- on-an-air-mattress lifestyle, and the next morning you could tell who had forgotten what it was like since tour! Myself included, we were one tired group of kiddos that Saturday.

But we got up and got going and into a new facility for us on the Island! Day two was held just across the street in the very same place that the popular rapper Lil’Wayne was incarcerated in just a few months before. The audience was very receptive and respectful here, and a mix between older men and adolescents. After all was said and done and we were getting ready for dinner, you could finally see us all beginning to relax. Our two days of go-go-go! were coming to a close. Oh, and did I mention we had surprise guests? Three of last years leaders and long-time members came and spent the day with us on Saturday! It was wonderful to see Chase, Andrea, and Robert (as well as Mom and Poppa May) and for them to see how the group has grown and evolved since they’ve gone off to college!

We headed back to Harlem the long way, to swing by Times Square at night! Only a minor hiccup when one of our busses was hit by one of those hasty NYC Drivers! But once we got to the main drive and saw all the lights and people, it was beautiful! There is truely nothing like the big city at night! Some among us had never been to New York and were starstruck, pushing up against the wide windows of the bus in amazment while thousands of people poured around us on the sidewalks and pavement. It felt more like we were in a submarine, under the sea in a coral reef of amazing colors and creatures. Everyone following their own little stream, moving sussinctly and coexisting smoothly. In short, it was beautiful to see and to watch my fellow members marvel at.

The last day of our trip was spent attending a wonderful service at The Journey Church, and then enjoying a leisurely monument find in Central Park! We split up into small groups and dissapeared into New Yorks back yard! It was a fantastic time to bond as a group just as we were, tired and all. We were all in search of 5 landmark monuments in the park, and we were supposed to take our picture with each of them. It was a fun time, were I handed over the reigns and the girls lead, and we wandered as we wished.

Afterward, we were homeward bound, and the satisfaction of the trip was something we carried with us through the following weeks.

More on what’s been happening in a day or two, Kelly and Matt say I need to space them out. =) I guess this one did get a little lengthy… Oh well, tune in for another installment of SL Blog!

Thanks for reading! Stay warm out there!

-Eva

Fresh from our first preformance at Teen Challenge, it’s hard to look back at the rehearsal weeks we have had since I last wrote and compare the two! Both have been so awesome for completely different reasons!

Obviously we have been preparing in our rehearsal times for all of the choreography and vocals, which has been stressful and fun. But more than that we have been preparing our hearts and minds to do this ministry. By now we have communicated that the experiences we will face are going to challenge us to see life from someone else’s perspective, and many times we will not like what we see. We wrestled with the way we think and view our audience and the way God views them. In my small group we flipped it around and also discussed what they expect from us and their view of us before we even walk in the door.

The next week we discussed the nearness of God, and how we can sometimes let our momentary feelings sweep us up and then to ease our guilt, we tweak our morals. Through these weeks we’ve been doing what has affectionately been titled the “Small Group Shuffle,” where we try to find the right combination of people in each group to benefit everybody. Though we try to keep conversation more deep than shallow, it was a challenge to open up to people without certainty that next week you can build on the foundation you set the week before.

When we finally got settled and our groups became more concrete we began to truely dig into who God is. We discussed who He is in our eyes and who He promises he is to us. We talked through how God is personal; He thinks, plans, feels, creates and does all of this with us. After setup was complete we watched a video that helped us step out of a Christian perspective and view the world through another person’s eyes. A man who doesn’t believe in God, but leads a moral life and is a good person presented his view on life and religion, that made a lot of us stop and truely examine the importance of knowing what we believe, and why we believe it.

After a change in venues for our Teen Challenge show, we thankfully ended up in Tri-County Worship Center. And with optimistic hearts we set out for what will undoubtedly be the first of many awesome Shining Light shows! Despite yesterday being a twist on the usual Teen Challenge show, it was clear that God went before us, even before we knew we would have an abrupt change in plans.

The new members were nervous and downright frantic at times. They were so conscerned with the choreography and where to be when; it was a flashback for me of my first show, and how nervous I was. “Which song is next??” “Where do we go now?” and “I totally messed up!” could be heard in whispers in between numbers. But afterward as I walked around and asked a few new members how they felt, they were excited and eager to tell me that they enjoyed it! It was a huge relief to finally see weeks of preparation finally create the whole show and have it just pull together like that!

The pastor at Tri-County spoke breifly and his brother actually taught a lesson after our preformance. It was a passionate sermon from the book of Hebrews encouraging us to prepare our own hearts before trying to minister to others. I thought this was a very appropriate message especially for my fellow peers in Shining Light. Even the best intentioned among us can get too caught up in commitments and loose sight of the true reason they do it– Jesus.

We look forward to more fun at rehearsal next weekend, and I will try to be more dilligent about posting!

Until next time, folks!

Peace & Blessings

Eva

After that, we moved into small groups. What audiences see is the performance, but an integral part to the Shining Light experience is our small groups, because they provide a means for the members to hear and speak about what is going on Shining Light, church, and in their personal lives so we can pray for and encourage them. Leaders aim to make the groups as comfortable as possible, and to include everyone, which can be a major chore. My small group is wonderful. We have a great balance, and everyone offers insight on whatever we’re talking about. Today’s discussion was about our reactions to Teen Challenge and our concerns and questions about Shining Light’s NYC tour, coming up in November. Members of my group had lots to share. A few said their favorite part at Teen Challenge was when the men gave their testimonies. Another said that his favorite part was the show itself. I said my favorite part was the time spent before, having small groups with a few of the students who were almost ready to leave the program. We then discussed the NYC tour, and how we would get to know each other better and how the Riker’s Island performance is always a treat.  We also discussed some of the perks of exploring the City.

After that we had a snack, and then we went back to work.  We started up again by doing our “Boot Camp” exercises, which are geared to make our group more synchronized in our motions. The left and right sides of the group faced each other and we observed each other’s motions. This transitioned us to the part of rehearsal where we run through the songs of the show in order. We had some time to correct minor details in songs, but for the most part, it was just a run-through. Kelly explained a few of the songs to us using different words so we understand the meaning of the song instead of just sing and dance aimlessly.

It was a great practice and morale was high.  Keep up the great work Shining Light!

Last night in my devotions, I was reading in the book of Matthew. In chapter 4, verse 19, Jesus says to Simon (called Peter) and his brother Andrew, two fishermen, “Come follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” I was thinking of how we can apply this to what we’re doing in Shining Light. God has called us out to be a light in one of the darkest places in the world–he has called us to witness, and to tell our stories, and to encourage. What we have found in Him is appealing to others, and through His power, we can bring others to Him. We are fishers of men.

Hope to see you all Sunday, October 18th at Teen Challenge Training Center in Rehrersburg. Thanks for reading =)

Have a blessed week!

There’s a lot of choreography to practice…I’ve found it to be much more fun and helpful to practice with friends, because you can help to build each others confidence and desire to put 100% of yourselves into whatever you are doing.

Last night we were fortunate enough to have a special guest performance. Jeff Bohn’s brother, Hans, a member of the Boston Pops Symphony that plays in Symphony Hall, shared with us his talent on the trombone, with Jeff accompanying him on the piano. It was really cool to see the two brothers sharing their love of music through their talents. We thank Hans for lending his time and talents for our group to enjoy!

It’s probably time for homework..ah, the life of a college student!

I’m glad we got to meet with our Small Groups again this week. My group had both thought provoking questions and discussion that allowed everyone in the group to either learn something new or to see something from a different perspective. Sharing prayer requests and joys is often my favorite part of the session because I hope to connect with the girls in my group on a personal basis. I think it’s going to be a fun year : )

We had even more prospective members join us this week than in previous weeks…keep em’ comin’! Don’t forget to bring your friends this coming Sunday, September 20th for Friends Night!

The group continued to learn vocals and choreography for a new song that will be added to the program, and it was encouraging for me, as a third year member, to see those who haven’t had any formal dance training (and those who have discovered it may not come as natural to them as to others!) to keep pushing through and giving  it their all! Great job to all of you who keep a smile on your face the whole time! =)

Last night was also the first night of small groups! The girls were split into four groups, and the guys into two, and we will be periodically meeting in these small groups to connect and have group discussion. As a small group leader, I know that I am pumped to get to know my girls better and make connections that will allow us to tackle the tough stuff in life!

Dancin’ into next week…

See ya then!