So, the whole first part of the trip, I had been wanting to have some kind of crazy awesome God experience. As we got close to finishing the first week and were about to go to Bangalore for the location two (of three), my roommates were talking about how God was telling them this, or showing them this, or something of the sort. I was kind of getting a little frustrated; I wasn’t hearing much of anything. I saw a couple of pictures small pictures in the Red Light District, but was still contemplating what they were. I was wanting to have a “God moment” and it just didn’t feel like it had happened yet.
Fast forward a few days, to our second and last performance day at Chai316, in Bangalore. I This day seemed to be long and crazy, even though it was nothing like those long days we had while in Pune. We woke up and had breakfast and devotions with the Chai316 staff. Then we had to help them clean the building, so that they could open around lunch. I ended up being one of a few people to sweep and mop the cafe.. That’s a lot of floor. By the end of this process, it was just me and one other person. The last few days were long and tiring (physically and mentally), and I was exhausted.. But this was our job and I was going to make sure I finished (even if I didn’t want to).
Mckenna, who had started sweeping with me but then moved upstairs to the balcony, and I were the last two of our team to finish, probably a full 15-20 minutes after everyone else. We only had like 30 minutes until lunch, so I opted to try and take a nap to get rid of my migraine. When I “woke” (I don’t think I really slept), the migraine was still there. I had been having bad migraines the last few days, which had kept me kind of quiet in the bus rides and stuff. After lunch I was excused to rest to try and rid myself of the headache.
We ended up having a blocking rehearsal before our first show, barely giving us enough time to finish getting ready (or in my case, start getting ready..). Somehow we made it in time; we had our first show and it went well, as did the conversations with people afterwards.
The second show, however, was what made the day for me, and is still one of my highlights of the entire trip.
We started the show off by doing Light Shines Bright, which is a fun happy number we co-choreographed as a team; it ended up being our staple piece everywhere we went. In the middle of the piece, the lights went out, but we kept going! We even started singing, since we knew all the words. By the end of the dance, the music came back on for the very last part, in the correct place in the music! We all got back to our dressing room and started laughing. The joy of the Lord really was our strength in that moment.
The whole show went really well (I was almost in tears during Entangled, as well, which hadn’t really happened since being put in the piece), and so did the meet and greet afterwords. Falan and I were able to pray for a group of college students, which was really awesome. Great group of kids. After the cafe closed, we all went upstairs to take our bags and get our water bottles for dinner.
As we all met in the hallway to walk down together, we started talking about how the presence of God just fell on the second show, and just started sharing with each other. Anthony goes, “Can I pray?” and we all enthusiastically agreed and huddled up with our heads together. He began to pray for the students and the people, and for us as well. The more he kept praying, the more the presence of God fell. It was so heavy, we all sank to the floor just crying out to God. We were on the floor a solid 5-10 minutes just crying out to God, so overwhelmed. We prayed for so long that someone had to come get us for dinner because we were late. But none of us cared. What we just experienced was nothing to be missed.
Moral of the story? We aren’t worthy. We aren’t worthy to be loved by God. We aren’t worthy, weren’t worthy, to travel to India or anywhere else to share God’s love and glory. But for some reason, He called us. He chose us. He loves us, and He thinks we are more than enough and more than worthy. Worthy enough to go love on the people. Worthy enough to share Him to others through dance, through our passion.
But in the end, it’s not about us. It’s about Him. And He’s worthy of it all.
sumiko photography 