From: joytwilliams@gmail.com
To: dancechapelhill@gmail.com
Sent: 3/17/2009 10:35:24 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: Brazil Update
Oi! (This means hi in Portuguese)
I want to share with you all the opportunities that have happened since being in Brazil. This mission trip and public health projects have given me experiences I could not have imagined.
We had a chance to go into some schools and I did the play that I wrote and directed that God gave me in an instant. The play touched on subjects that are hard to talk about--domestic violence, street violence, poverty, death, sharing your faith. Meredith, a member of our team, said that it moved her to tears, and it´s hard to move her to tears, she says. I am very thankful that everyone was willing to do the play. Jonathan did a good job. He was the main character and he had previously said that he did not like to get up in front of people or be in the spot light, but he did it. He also did the music which was really great. Tommy, played the father, and he really got into character and it was funny to see him practice on the side lines--he was mostly practicing being drunk. These are the only two people from the praise team from my church that were involved in the play. My dad asked me who from the praise team was going, so I thought that I would include this detail of their participation in the drama. The pastor´s wife and his children also participated. I was amazed at how 11 people were able to come together to make this happen. God really worked it out, it is an honor for me to have been used. The attention is why I consider it an honor--but it belongs to God.
As I mentioned earlier this is a missions trip with my church in Carrboro, Church of the Harvest. Our purpose was to share our faith by using how God has changed our lives. Which is why the the drama and public health workshops where I will use dance is so important to how I share my faith.
I also danced several times throughout the week. One particular time, I danced in a chruch, I preformed with them. I learned the choreography and did the dances with them during worship, and then they gave me a solo. That was awesome, and the message that Justin preached afterwards was appropriate for how I was feeling. It was about worshiping God although your prayers are not answered.
I also had a chance to rededicate my life to God, to try to meditate more on the scripture. I would rather focus on God´s work and enjoy seeing the world and people as God sees them. I believe this is most beneficial for everyone, and mostly for hearing God´s voice. For a 28 female, it is quite easy to think more on getting married, having children, and although valid thoughts, I would rather spend my moments doing good than wondering when my next date will be.
I also had a chance to share my story on self-esteem. I played the game with the students to introduce the idea of hardship, and then I talked about how I was 28 years old and still am crossing a bridge of being a confident person. I confront many different ideas of how I should think of myself, how mature I should be, what I should have by now, but those are the standards that I used the use as a bridge, now the bridge is Jesus, my filter of how I interpret information has changed, and now I look at my life through how I understand God´s word. I told them that during my youth I spent years of being unhappy with who I was. People seemed to listen to my story with interest--not that their approval changed my desire to share, but it was nice to have their respectful attention. And even one person approached me afterward and asked to have my email to talk more. That was validation that someone could understand where I was coming from. We seemed to relate on a lot of different subjects, this person and I. This person knew English perfectly! And I had mentioned that I wanted to be a model as a profession for a long time, because all I believed I had to offer was a pretty face. That was all I heard from people when I was younger, so that was all I thought I could be. LIE. God-esteem is what I am aiming for. It threatens a lot of my existance--such as giving up on holding grudges, being resentful, things that give me power against other people, but God wants it to be different.
Wow--that was really personal. But I want to share this with you--maybe you will approach me, and we can partner to continue to help each other find true peace. On a really hilarious and unexpecting note, we have been followed by camera crews the whole week we have been here in Brazil. A friend of our host knew one of the city council members, the mayor, and had asked him to help us with transportation. Our host met with him and the mayor agreed. So he provided transportation but also all week we were either in a newspaper or on TV, it was really funny to me to see all this. And it was fun. I have one of the newspaper clippings to show you.
I am learning children´s songs in Portuguese and learning how to dance the Samba. I am leading a stretching clinic this afternoon, a fancy way of saying that some people want me to show them some stretches. And tomorrow I am teaching an English class. I´m excited about what will happen this coming week, my heart has changed so much since being here already. Is it even possible to come back a totally different person. (can´t find the question mark character)
I´ve spent Sunday sleeping till 8:30am and going to a Catholic mass service. Afterwards I took a delightful stroll in the hot sun to the open market, where we got many fruits and vegetables for the house. I´m staying with a mom, dad and their two daughters, ages 6 and 10. We are spending the early afternoon cooking, eating olives and drinking delicious drinks filled with lots of healthy stuff. I´m amazed at what God is doing here in Brazil :0)
Thank you all for being a part of this process.
Love,
Joyous
From: joytwilliams@gmail.com
To: joytwilliams@gmail.com
Sent: 3/29/2009 3:45:10 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: Back from Brazil
Oi! (Remember this word is hi in Portuguese)
Bon Dia! (good day)
I am back from Brazil and this is the first opportunity I had to write. And currently it's 3:30am. The absolutely latest I remember staying up ever in my life. This might be compared to the times when I stayed up late studying for especially hard exams in college, but this is usually about the time that I called it quits.
I want to briefly mention the events that happened the last week I was in Brazil. As you know the first week was action packed with 22 of us from the US, from my church, doing various tasks related to sharing our faith in Jesus Christ.
Well the second week was a more intimate version of me sharing my faith through dance. I had three engagements the second week. The first was at a school and I spoke to teens from ages 13-16. There were about 44 teens. The focus was to take them through my life hitting major points from my childhood, Colombia and Mali.
I was excited about showing them dances to highlight major points and events in each country. The dance that talked about my childhood was received fairly well. After talking for about 15 min. I stopped the class, had them get up and do with me the short phrase that represented feelings and events in my life. They participated fairly well. This was not a dancing group. By the time I talked about Colombia, and talked about how God got me there, they were physically half in. I started to show them a traditional dance from Colombia, their neighbor, and they didn't appreciate it as much as I did. They listened and tried to do as I said, but clearly they were being tortured. I stopped it quickly because they were butchering the movements and I was getting upset. I just moved on to Mali, West Africa and decided that I wasn't going to show them any movement from there. That seemed to be ok with them. In fact, they insisted that I didn't show them any more movement. Again, this is a non-dancing group. I decided to spare them the torture and me the frustration. But I had to say something to rub in the fact that I was unhappy with my plans being changed by their disinterest. And I had the upper hand-- I had a mic. I said, 'thank you for your participation and great listening skills. We will not be doing any movement from Africa, and you will never know what it was.' Such a sad and untrue statement. I felt bad after I said that, so I demonstrated. That just would have been an awful way to end the class with those words.
So the Q & A went really well, and I've been emailing several of them since being back in the States.
The second engagement was for a group of dancers. It was an awesome experience. We talked about my story of faith in action. How I wanted God to open my eyes to see people as God sees them, and to respond to their needs. I taught them a dance that I choreographed for my church from the song 'Give me your Eyes' by Brandon Health. I had them talk about different characters that they see on the streets daily that they bypass or help or maybe don't even think about (some options to many). The point of this was to put out information that we take in daily, and to personally make a decision about how we feel. The choreography was my story that they were retelling. So although one participating could not believe in God or the theme, they were telling my story. The only thing that mattered was for them to take the dance class. It was really fun. At the end Diego Batista, the city councilor, who organized our media coverage the week before, showed up. That was intimidating :0)
The third dance workshop was the one that I was anticipating the whole time I was in Brazil. It was for a group of women which ranged from all ages, 8yr. old-50+ years old. Their were about 36-50+ persons. We had two hours where we were together dancing, crying, sharing our stories and putting movement to it, and by the end we had gotten closer and had ended our time together with a dance phrase about breast cancer. I had a newspaper article that said that breast cancer was the leading cause of women dying in Brazil. And in many countries within Latin America that is true. The Komen Foundation had donated several materials for me to give out, mainly with pictures, showing women how to give themselves breast exams and how to regulate the exams. I had a few materials that I put together using the healthinfotranslations.org about breast cancer and other topics that I printed out in Portuguese, that was definitely appreciated. We also talked about men getting breast cancer, which is almost not discussed at all. It is more rare, but men need to be educated on the signs and how to check themselves.
I have to briefly tell you of the family that I stayed with. They poured out love to me daily, moment by moment. The 6 year old, Alana, on Tuesday over a mid-day snack, when we were talking about me leaving and what day etc. , said, 'I don't want Sunday to come'. It was very sweet. She would always say to me, let's play dance. She knows the word play in English, so in her mind, you can play tag and you can also play dance. :0) cute isn't it?
The 10 yr. old, Maya, has a great sense of style. She did my hair one day, in pigtails-- but very pretty. And sent me out of Brazil with a new outfit. She got her mother to buy me a pair of different color pants and a bright orange top ( I nearly screamed when I saw the top, orange is my favorite emotional color) I was floored with surprise that they had gone out of their way to do such a kind and unnecessary gift. It was beautiful. I had to wear it the day I left, how could I not? The day I left, Alana and Maya were doing my hair and putting on my make-up for the voyage home. The mom also gave me a pair of her heels to go with the outfit. Need I say more...REALLY! Either I looked horrible the days I was with them or they really were pouring out love. I believe and know it was the latter. :0) Trust me.
I think I looked like a Brazilian woman, only the way I walked was a bit off. I normally don't wear heels, and the heels that I do wear fit my feet--these were too smaill. I wanted to honor her gift--but it was unreasonable. I had to give the shoes back at the airport. By then it was clear it wasn't working out.
I loved my time in Brazil. It was God inspired I'm sure. I will be starting graduate school in the fall for Public Health at UNC at Chapel Hill. AAAHHH PRAISE GOD! The process was horrific, so really this is DIVINE. How I will fuse dance and public health together on a large scale? I'm not sure. I'll leave it to God to show me the way.
Thank you for your support and reading!
Hugs
Joy