The purpose of that title is to "hook' ordinary HSB readers... aka people who wouldn't normally read my blog. :) Who wouldn't want to see pictures of a mime presentation? Obviously you do, or you wouldn't be reading this! Be patient for a minute; some background is required...

Last year, AIM (our mime troupe - more info on AIM here) was invited to do a presentation at Young Christians' Weekend, an annual event that Silver Dollar City does. SDC opens for a weekend before their actual opening date, brings in a bunch of Christian music artists and speakers, and invites youth groups from around the country to be a part of it. It's really neat. But I digress.

Last year, we took a subset of our team and did two presentations at YCW. It was pouring down rain. Mimes dashing through Silver Dollar City in a pouring rain... not a pretty sight. However, since we were presenting indoors, it did make for a really big crowd!

This year, it only sprinkled a little bit, and crowds were smaller, but I was really proud of the team. They did a great job (notwithstanding whatever Jessica says to the contrary!).

We arrived at the City at around 11:00, and split up to eat lunch and ride some rides before meeting at the Saloon (the venue for our presentation - it's totally clean, really!) at 1:30. Jess, Jo, and I were paired with Madison and Jarek, two younger members of the team who had only been to the City 2-3 times before. So we let them ride all the rides they'd never ridden, plus some of their old favorites. It was really neat to see how much they enjoyed themselves!

We met back at 1:30 and stood around for about 20 minutes while the group before us (the Skinny Improv) finished their show. We were presenting at 2:30 and 4:00, so we ran through transitions and then the team members ran backstage to get their mime faces on.

I'm going to give you a rundown of the show that is kind of a composite of the two presentations, since there weren't that many differences between the two. If something happened only in one presentation, I'll note it.

The theme of the show was "Where Are You Going?" We opened with a fun song, Satan Bite the Dust. The setting for the song is an Old West saloon, so it was a very fitting opener for a presentation in the Silver Dollar City Saloon! The song is not quite funny, but it is very fun. The props are very flamboyant - police vest (with Sherriff badge) for the Christian, petite cowgirl hats for the servers, red cape for Satan. Demons hide under card tables, get conked on the head, and get thrown around the room. Josiah told me one detail that I had not noticed before: "We play cards with Satan, and he cheats!" Below: a representative scene from Satan, Bite the Dust. See if you can pick out the servers, Christian, and demon.

After Satan Bite the Dust, Jory (founder of AIM and co-director of local team) came up and introduced our team and the theme of the presentation. Four of the mimes stayed out on the stage, holding their poses from the end of Satan Bite the Dust. Suddenly, one of them got up to leave. The ensuing conversation was something like this:

JORY: Amy, where are you going?
AMY: (shrugs, points to mouth)
JORY: Oh, mimes can't talk.
AMY: (pulls a paper out of her pocket and hands it to Jory)
JORY: (reading paper) You're going... to be famous.
AMY: (goes off into the corner to admire herself in a mime mirror)

Then Josh gets up - he's going to be rich. Then Jessica - she's going to be the greatest! Finally, Aaron gets up.

JORY: And where are you going?
AARON: (pulls note out of pocket and hands it to Jory)
JORY: (slowly reading) You're going... to the bathroom. Guys, we have a show to do here!

It was absolutely hysterical.

Jessica almost smiled in her frozen pose, that's how hilarious it was.

Then Jonathan comes out carrying the Truth banner, and Jory explains that that is where we should really be going - toward truth. That sets up the next song - Truth March.

Truth March is a song that, as its name implies, involves a lot of marching! Essentially, God sends "marchers" out into the world carrying the message of truth, demons attack and defeat the marchers, God sends Jesus (who Satan crucifies), then Jesus and the truth marchers come back to life, and truth is victorious.

Below - the devil's brief moment of victory.

Below - truth's ETERNAL victory!

In the second presentation, the demons that attack the truth marchers came out about 30 seconds late! They are supposed to harass each person (with headaches, stabbing them in the side, etc.), then lasso them together and push them down. Well, they had time to give one person a stomachache and lasso one group before the cue came to push them down. The marchers kind of pushed themselves down. :)

In the first presentation, another pretty major mistake was at the end. We have two banners that come out at the end: one says "Every Knee," the other says "Shall Bow." On one East Coast Mission Trip presentations, the banners got switched and it said "Shall Bow Every Knee." Well, I think we've one-upped that, because in this presentation, it just said "Every Knee!" A certain brother of mine forgot that he was supposed to come up with the other sign, so that was... interesting.

The next song was Voice of Truth. In the first part, a guy (Ethan) confronts his boss with the truth, but his boss refuses to listen. The situation is compared to that of Peter walking on the water and losing his faith, and needing Jesus to pull him back up. There's this neat scene where Ethan actually steps into the scene and becomes Peter. Then a girl (Amy) is chewed out by her dad (Ethan's boss) for reading her Bible. This is compared to the story of David and Goliath. At the end of the song, Goliath is toppled, Peter is pulled from the waves, and the boss/dad, along with Amy's family and Ethan's co-workers, becomes a Christian. It's a neat song. It was originally choreographed for 8 people, and gets kind of chaotic with our 17, but the team did a good job of making it work.

Below - Peter walking on water

Below - ending pose. God looks kind of... scary, doesn't he?

Next - Not 4 Sale. A two-person mime done by Ben and Jacob. Below: the devil tries to choke the Christian with his tie (sounds wierd, but makes sense when you see the song):

The next song, Devil is Bad, is very fun and mimey. It's very similar to Sin Chair (another song we do) in that its primary purpose is just to entertain the audience, and it has little in the way of a moral message. (The chorus: You are the devil and the devil is bad / You are the devil and the devil is bad / You are the devil and you are bad!) It's all about humorous ways that the characters defeat the devil - for example, by pulling a bench out from under him and hitting him in the face with an apple. Below: Eve gives the devil a good beating while the other mimes look on.

Next was In the Light, a song that follows a girl's spiritual journey: from God-focused to world-focused to desparate to Christ-killer to redeemed to God-focused.

Below: Kaelie (main girl), 3rd from left in front row, doesn't fit in with those who "want to be in the light as You are in the light."

And finally... COURTROOM. A very intense song that asks "Where are you going - heaven or hell?" It always gets a huge round of applause in the really dramatic parts: when Jesus ("your defense attorney, who has never lost a case!") comes out to defend the Christian sentenced to hell, when he tells the Judge how he died and rose again, and when the Judge reads the book previously full of the Christian's sins and says, "The blood of Jesus must have worked... because there's absolutely nothing in this book."

Below: Satan tells the Judge, "This one deserves eternal judgement in HELL!"

Below: "And I know my name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life!" (side note: this is a very good illustration of the enormity of our team! Look how HUGE it is!)

This is our team (sans 3-4 people who had already taken their makeup off):

Good night! We're leaving before dawn cracks tomorrow to spend a week skiing in Colorado, so I need to get to bed. No posts for a while... sorry. Hopefully this will tide you over... for a day or two. :)

Hi everyone,

I just want to encourage you to check out Pennies for Heaven, the website for a great project that I'm blessed to be a part of. We're working on some really cool stuff for the site, including a blog/journal, so check back often for updates!

Here's a bit of info about Pennies for Heaven:

"In November 2005, ACTION Impact Missions (AIM), a nationwide discipleship and creative evangelism ministry, received an offering of $1400. After prayerfully considering the best use for the money, AIM decided to give $100 to each of the fourteen AIM teams across the USA and issued a challenge: to multiply the money to further the Kingdom of God (Matt 25:14-30)! The local AIM Branson team has taken its $100 and converted it into 10,000 pennies, which the team is distributing throughout the community, requesting a $1 donation for each penny. Every aspect of the project is organized by a group of young people from the Branson team who are committed to the goal of Pennies for Heaven: seeing Branson’s tourists come to know Christ!

7 million tourists visit Branson each year. These visitors think they are coming to experience Branson’s shows and entertainment, but we believe that God has brought them to the area to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ! Our goal is to get the Gospel of Jesus Christ into the hearts of each of these tourists, inviting them to then share their new faith with others. Through this “ripple effect,” Pennies for Heaven has the potential to affect lives all across the country! A single penny, or even a single dollar, may be small change, but when we put $10,000 together, they can make a BIG CHANGE in the lives of people all across America!"

So yeah. I'm really excited about this ministry, and I'm believing that it's going to make  a huge change, not just in Branson, but throughout the country! I'm one of the "group of young people" that's leading the project, and it's been a great learning and growing experience for me.

Well, I was wondering when I was going to have time to write about Family Camp, but Jessica bailed me out. :) Since she wrote a couple of detailed entries about it, I'm just going to direct you to her blog if you want more info. I know I said I would try to post about Family Camp, but it's just not going to happen. Sorry! I hope you can forgive me!

And there was MUCH rejoicing!

If you don't know who Jenny is, let me refer you to my earlier post that I wrote when I found out that Jenny was going away. She came back yesterday! Actually, she was supposed to come back the day before, so we could see her at practice yesterday. But her flight was canceled, so she came in yesterday.

AIM's Midwest Family Camp is this weekend. It started today and runs through Monday. Our family is not attending camp because of some prior commitments, but we were planning to attend the Team Showcase today, so that Jess and Jo could present a few songs along with the rest of the team. Then yesterday I was asked to teach an elective class on video editing before the showcase. So the three of us arrived about half an hour before my class so I could set everything up. Come to find out, there was another class going in the room that my class was going to be in, so I couldn't set up yet. Hmm.

But then, through an adjacent doorway, I caught a glimpse of a very short person with very blond hair doing a very good job at leading the class that was meeting in that room. JENNY.

Jessica and I walked quietly through the doorway into the class. Jenny's face lit up when she saw us, and she got up and gave us each a big hug! "I haven't seen either of them for six weeks!" she told the class. "More like three months!" I replied. We sat in on the class for about twenty minutes before I left to set up for my class.

Jenny had been gone on the North-Central Mission Trip for six weeks. We got to see her one evening right at the end of that mission trip, and then she was in California for six weeks. She must have been outside an awful lot in California, because her hair, which used to be a dirty blond, is now very bright blond - almost bleached, but it's natural. And I'm told that she's become quite a surfer. Wow.

But anyway, surfer or not, Jenny's back, and that's all that really matters for me right now! It's going to be great having her back at practice again. I've really missed her, and I know I'm not the only one.

I'll try to post some more highlights from Family Camp tomorrow, but seeing Jenny was definitely the high point for me!

And that's official.

Jenny, as I mentioned in a previous post, is my friend and mentor. I did not elaborate on exactly what that entails, so I suppose I will do it now.

For AIM Branson, there are about four "sessions" every year. At the beginning of each session we welcome new members and hold a session training camp, and at the end of each session we hold a Final Presentation showcasing all the songs we have learned.

Last session (spring 2006) there were two older AIM teams. One (the Evangelism team) was directed by Kristi and Jorge, and the other (the Promo team) was directed by Jenny. Jessica, Josiah, and I were all on the Promo team, so I got to know Jenny fairly well and the more I knew, the more I liked her. ;) Then, this session, there is only one team, which is being directed by Jory, Tess, Jorge, Kristi, Jenny, and Kristina - often all at the same time. It's sometimes quite confusing.

Anyway, this session, each SALTeam member is being mentored by one of the members of the HQ Team. The guys are being mentored by Jory and Jorge, and Amy and I are being mentored by Kristi and Jenny, respectively. Each SALTeam member meets with their mentor for a few minutes (in theory about 20 minutes, but in practice about two) at the end of the SALTeam meeting each week, right before the regular practice time. Our mentors ask us how we're doing, what our prayer requests are, and how we have been doing on the character traits and goals that we have been working on. They also (in theory) call us at some point during the week to check up on us.

Through this time and through Jenny being my director, Jenny and I have grown pretty close. I love her to pieces (don't worry, that's a good thing!), and respect her tremendously. So, when Jenny left in mid-June to help lead the month-long North-Central Mission Trip with AIM, I was sad, but consoled myself with the thought that I would see her again in a month.

The final stop on the North-Central was Springfield, Missouri, about 45 minutes north of our house, and the Branson team was invited to see the final presentation from the workshop the team had been leading. However, this presentation was canceled because the workshop students couldn't make it, so we were all invited to come hang out with the team and hear stories and possibly see a couple of songs presented.

Jessica and I decided to go, because we really wanted to see Jenny again (even though we would be seeing her again at practice in just five days), and because Jessica's friend Lizzy, whom she had met at a workshop in Kentucky, was on the mission trip. Several of our friends - Amy, Rachel, and Cody - wanted to come as well, so we picked them up and drove to the church where the team was. I got lost along the way, but that's another story.

When we arrived at the church, Jenny met us at the door. We all screamed and hugged and Jenny said that she was hot and sweaty and we said that we didn't care. She led us into a room where the team members were staying. It was a really neat room. I guess it was the youth room. There were a bunch of plywood steps, each about two feet higher than the one below it, going higher and higher up toward the ceiling, and perched atop the plywood were a bunch of couches. There were quite a few - maybe about 15.

The team members greeted us warmly and we spent a couple hours exchanging stories about presentations gone wrong and receiving letters (not good on AIM mission trips!) and talking on cell phones while riding bicycles and all sorts of random stuff. Cody made himself comfortable with the guys and we girls talked... and talked... and talked... and talked... and - well, you get the point.

Jenny and I chatted for a few minutes. "I didn't know how much I had missed you until I saw you again!" I told her. And it was true. We had missed her at practice, I had missed her as my mentor... but I didn't know it until I saw her. Then I missed her so much... even though she was right there! I guess I had to make up for all those weeks of not missing her when I really should have.

We asked the team if they would be willing to present a song for us. They didn't want to, but they pointed out that they had to do whatever Jessie - Jenny's twin sister and the director of the trip - said. When we asked Jessie she said that they could present one song. Yes! So then we had to choose a song. The final choice was Take You at Your Word, a high-energy, dance-y song that AIM Branson had just started learning two weeks ago.

One of the girls went out to the van to get the prop Bibles for the song, as another helped Jenny, who would be presenting the song with them, remember the song's complicated steps. Jenny knew the song well, but she was accustomed to teaching it - backwards (known in AIM-dom as "mirroring"). It's difficult to adjust from mirroring to presenting normally. Jenny had had to do it once before, in practice a few months before, and it was a complete disaster. Backwards turns, wrong hand forward... you name it, Jenny did it backwards, and almost fell over a couple of times. It was very entertaining.

Anyway, back to the present. It took Jenny a couple of minutes to get the steps down, and as she practiced, we AIM Branson girls climbed up the the very top couch and watched carefully as the presentation began. The team did an excellent job with the presentation, with every movement crisply and perfectly executed - with one exception: Jenny.

Jenny was still in mirroring mode, and we watched, in stitches, as she struggled to present the steps normally. The team spun to the left... Jenny was left standing alone on the right. The team jumped to the right... Jenny ran back from the place on the left to which she had jumped. It was not pretty. It wasn't as bad as it had been that one time in practice, but it was pretty close.

As our clapping for the presentation died down, one of the students informed us that it was now AIM Branson's turn to present Take You. Uh-oh. The 16-member AIM Branson team had begun to learn the song two weeks ago, but still had only a rough idea of exactly what was going on, and had not yet been taught the very beginning or the very end of the song. There were only four presenting AIM Branson members there: Jessica, Cody, Amy, and Rachel. The Promo team, including Jessica and Cody, had learned the song last session, but Amy and Rachel were in the dark, and four was really not enough to do Take You effectively. We needed more people.

First we tried to recruit Kristina, who had been trying to pick up the song as the team practiced two weeks ago, but had not been taught any of it. She said she couldn't do it because she had no earthly idea what she was doing. Fair enough. Next we asked Kristi, who had taught us the song, but she refused to do it. Jorge? An emphatic, "NO WAY!" They even asked me, but I had a very good excuse, seeing as I wasn't a mime! Finally Kristina was forced to participate. The North-Central team settled back, relaxed, and prepared to watch what would be The Worst Ever Presentation of Take You At Your Word.

As the song began, Kristina (remember, she had no idea how the song begain!) walked tenatively onstage and began to mime reading a Bible, as was normally done later in the first verse. The mission trip team members burst out laughing as Kristina realized her mistake, and Cody spun out as he was supposed to. Jessica spun out next, Amy and Rachel trying to follow her lead. Then the first verse began, and so did the spinning and jumping. Kristina jumped the wrong way and had to scramble back into the correct position. Halfway through the first verse, there is a cue where everyone is supposed to freeze (of course, nobody knew that cue) and one person is supposed to step out and start narrating. Thankfully, Jessica knew the narrator part and everybody pretty much froze at about the right time. Then the chorus, which everyone had practiced dozens of times, began. It started off OK, but soon poor Kristina was spinning and jumping every which way. The North-Central team was laughing so hard that I think some of them were crying.

The song continued like this until the bridge, where a complicated "box step," which was learned in groups of four or six, had to be done. There were five presenters. It was a mess. Disaster. Catastrophe. Whatever you want to call it, it was not pretty. I don't think anyone fell over, but quite a few people were bumped around. The end was a lot like the beginning, except worse. Kristina and the others who didn't know what they were doing were relieved to leave the stage, but Jessica told me afterwards that she had a lot of fun. "It's fun to laugh at mistakes... your own or others'," she said. I agreed, and we got to do both!

It was nearly 8:00, so it was time to say goodbye. We went around giving hugs to the team members, and two each to Jenny. As I hugged Jenny, I joked, "Man, I don't know how I'm going to live the five days until practice on Thursday when I'll see you again."

"Yeah..." she began to answer. Then, "Wait. I'm going to be gone to California!"

No way! "I wish someone would have told me that! How long will you be gone?" I asked sadly.

"About a month," she replied.

I thought for a minute, and then said, "Well, I need an extra hug to go that long!" We embraced, and she promised to walk me out to the car so we could hug one more time before I had to leave.

More goodbyes were said, and then more, and then even more. Finally we got everyone out to the car - Jenny had to push the girls into their seats as she hugged them - and Jenny and I shared one last hug. Man, I miss her so much already.

They say you never know what you've got till it's gone, but I think it's more true that you don't know what you're missing until you see it. That's certainly true for me with Jenny. I've never had any really close friends, and I've never had anyone, other than my parents and one friend from my early childhood, that I've really, truly missed as much as I miss Jenny. I miss her so much. But at the same time, it's wonderful to have someone that you love enough to miss them, if that makes any sense. And to think that until tonight I didn't even know it. I MISS JENNY!!! And that's official.

We had a presentation down at Plumb Nellie Days in downtown Branson on Saturday. It was announced via email on Monday. Since it was announced on such short notice, it was a Response Team (non-mandatory) presentation, and by Thursday, only Jess and Jo had signed up. It was hoped that Jenny and the interns would somehow be enough to make up the difference.

Then, after practice, Jory made an appeal for presenters, and about eight others volunteered. Jorge and Kristi went home, relieved. Andrew and Jenny stayed to present.

The lineup was Pledge, Honor, Spirit, Gifter, End, God Bless.
(Translation: Pledge to the Flag, Honor to Serve, Spirit of America, Gifter, End of the Beginning, God Bless the USA)

We (or shall I say, they) practiced like wild people for an hour and a half Thursday night, and then arrived 45 minutes early Saturday morning to practice. It was rough. Everyone forgot everything, and that's not much of an exaggeration. Jorge made a run back to Rolfs' house to get some props that were left behind.

We arrived at the presentation location in true AIM style, fifteen minutes late. That's about when I realized that I had forgotten the patriotic CD. Thankfully, I had Pledge, God Bless, and Honor on other CDs, but no Spirit. Throughout the first presentation (there were two, one at noon and one at 1 PM), Andrew tried in vain to get his mp3 player to play it, but we finally had to punt the song. :( We were able to get it running in time for the second presentation, thankfully.

I didn't see much of the presentation itself, since I was busy trying to get Spirit to work. I did notice that Gifter was... shall I say... interesting. There were only three girls, and four angels were required for the song, plus Eve. Ethan and James have a lot to learn about angel technique. Jessica posted on the AIM message board about some of the things that happened during the presentation; you can read her post here.

In addition to all of the problems that you can read about in the above post, there was one other complicating factor: it was hot. Really, really hot. Standing in direct sun in 90+ degree weather for two hours is no fun - plus, you can get a really cool mime tan if you don't sunscreen before you put on your makeup. ;) It was so hot that some of the people were starting to get sick. In fact, Jenny told me afterward that during End, her knees were wobbling, she was seeing stars, and she felt like she was about to pass out. Lovely. She said she thought it was because she hadn't eaten any breakfast, so Kristi went to get her a corn dog, which she told me afterward took her two hours to finish. Why am I not surprised? As Jessica put it one time: "Jenny is known for not eating much at all. She has no breakfast or lunch and eats only a small dinner. She lives on coffee." This is completely accurate.

ACTION Impact Missions (AIM) is a ministry that our family has been involved in for about a year. AIM choreographs songs using mime, drama, sign language, and other visual arts to communicate the gospel (to see some of our presentation videos, click here). There are about 15 local teams that present these songs around the nation.

AIM's national headquarters is here in Branson. Right now there are six people (hereinafter referred to as the "HQ Team") who are fulltime workers for the national ministry, plus their kids. They are:
- Jory and Tess Rolf - Founders of AIM and head of the national ministry. They have two sons, Banner (4) and Nation (2), and are expecting a third child in July.
- Jenny (or is it Jennie??) Stafford - AIM Missions Director. My friend and mentor. :)
- Jorge and Kristi Madrigal - Interns with AIM. They have three children: Nicky (5), Lily (3), and Gabriel (6 months).
- Andrew Vandever - Intern with AIM. Jo's favorite computer guru.

Jess and Jo are with the Branson AIM team as presenters. Andrew was on the Branson Younger team, but there is no Younger Team this session, so he is not currently involved with AIM. Normally we have two older teams and one younger team, but for the summer we have just one big older team. There are 17 people on our team right now. That number includes me, the only non-presenting student (a Roberts is the exception to every rule). I have been involved in AIM as a sound person/go-fer since September. In January I went on a 10-day mission trip to Louisiana with AIM, and later that month I joined the SALTeam, the local student leadership team.

Now that you know a bit about what AIM is, hopefully you'll have some idea of what I'm talking about when I refer to it in future posts. ;)