More rehearsals

After helping at ASELSI, dance practice continued with lots of fun and hard work!

Playing tag before starting practice.

Practicing the angels' dance.

ASELSI's Christmas party

Again this year, we were blessed to take part in ASELSI's annual Christmas party.  They invited in a few thousand people (who signed up ahead of time) and gave them a bag of food and Christmas gifts for the children.

My dance team of 21 kids, called Arise! (in Spanish ¡Levántate!), met at 6:00 a.m. at a local gas station and walked together to ASELSI.

We joined a group from Texas that came to help put on a show at the party.

We presented our dance to three different groups of attendees.   The kids pretended to be the shepherds dancing for joy with their staffs after seeing baby Jesus.

Everyone had a great time, and the kids and I want to go back next year!

Elsi, Sohanny, Karen, and Sheyla

Brayan, Manuel, Ricardo, and Brandon

Christmas dinner stolen

For the past few months there have been a few hens and a rooster living in the street about half a block from our house.  A family owned them and put out food for them each day.  Having chickens running around isn't unusual here, so we didn't think much about it.  The rooster was noisy with his cock-a-doodle-doo-ing, but we tried to ignore him, since we figured he was about to be a meal for the family that owned him.

Our maid just told us someone stole all of the hens and the rooster!   The rooster was going to be the family's Christmas dinner.   How sad!  Somehow knowing that a thief stole the rooster takes away the pleasure of regaining a quiet street.

Worried parents

Well, maybe the kids are starting to listen... I (Heather/Erica) have been telling them that they have to come to practice if they want to dance in the final performance.  Makes sense to me.  With 22 kids in the dances, they have never all come at one time, and they have never all come ON time.

This morning Michael and I had an interesting visit from the parents of two sisters on the dance team.  They came over to our house, sat down to chat with us, and finally told us the reason for their visit:  their family had an activity during the time of our next dance practice.  They had come to ask permission for the girls to miss one practice!  In fact, the parents said that if I required it, they would send the girls to practice instead of the family get-together.   These are girls that haven't missed a single practice so far and always come on time. 

Wow.  That is very unusual here.  Several of my dancers actually come without the support of their parents.  Not that they don't want their kids to come, they just don't care what they do.  So I am impressed that the kids keep track of the schedule themselves.

I felt bad for scaring these two sisters, but I was glad they wanted to dance!  I reassured the parents (who are actually leaders in our church) that it would be fine for the girls to miss a practice! 

Dance practice

Our dance team, ¡Levántate! (Arise!), has been practicing two days a week, on Tuesday and Saturday mornings.  ASELSI's annual Christmas party is coming up this week, so we are trying to improve the details of our shepherd dance, which we will perform at ASELSI.

The shepherds dancing with their staffs.

All but one came to practice!  Amazing!

We are also working on the dances of the angels and the wise men.  We will present all three dances at our church's Christmas service.  There is dialog in between the dances about the joy that Jesus gives us.  I love working with these kids!