Adios

Lilli Ramirez blessed us with a Flamenco dance entitled "Adios" as MasterWits held our closing ceremonies. Lilli and her husband, Hector, are artists in residence at Belhaven College in Jackson, MS, but the former YWAMers have a vision to found a performing arts center in Madrid.

Peter Jennings is on the phone

...and CNN is on hold. The Green Grocer is planning on featuring our pears. Amazing what one article on the cover of the New York Times can do.

Dad's pear made front page of the New York Times

Last night my Dad was re-elected as president of Southern Oregon Sales, a pear packing house in my home-town of Medford, OR. This morning one of their pears was featured on page one of the New York Times. Those annoying stickers on fruit are being replaced by tattoos, burned into the outer layer of the skin by a laser: Tattooed Fruit Is on Way. Unfortunately the online article doesn't show the photo. For now, Dad's packing house is the only one set up to use this system for pears.

The unGong Show

Broadway level quality one night, complete craziness (and immense fun) the next.

We're in the country now

The Kavanaughs, who founded and direct the MasterWorks Festival, invited the faculty and families out to their home amid the Indiana corn fields. Their neighbors own shetland ponies. Kathryn Wilder, 11, poses with 2-month old Triple Time.

Oh WOW.

During worship tonight we opened with songs about dancing before the Lord, and the Dance dept. brought them to eloquent life. We prayed over the dancers since their performance is tomorrow night. That led into an enacted prayer in which a dancer led an audience member's spirit to dance. From there, hearts were opened up wide and some very deep requests were covered through enacted prayer. In other words, very real prayer requests were taken and members of the theatre department and some that were from other disciplines took the roles of those being prayed over. One actor plays the role of the Lord in each prayer. God moves in the tableau, and without words, brings his will to bear on the situation. Some of the requests were so deep we were all weeping, but refreshed and (Lord, hear our prayer) healed.

I'm spent.

In Christ alone,
Rich

The World's Greatest Romance

Last night Carol Jaudes, who was on B'way in CATS for five years, blessed the MasterWorks Festival and the Winona Lake community with her 1-woman play, The World's Greatest Romance. It told the stories of Susannah Wesley, Fanny Crosby, and Evangeline Booth. Carol brought her Broadway-level sense of excellence to the piece and moved us all.

We moved right into another hour and a half of continuous praise and prayer. This time there were several with deep needs that came to the surface. We prayed over them, and one girl even experienced a healing. I can hardly wait for the next worship experience!

Welcome Carol Jaudes & Patricia Mauceri!

Carol, who performed in CATS on B'way for five years, performed "You Know Me." Her intro was a reading from Psalm 139, which had been read by one of our students that morning in our worship service.

Patricia Mauceri has already been recognized on campus as Carlotta Vega from One Life to Live.

Good Bye Susie

We bid fare well to Susan Somerville Brown, who was an instructor for the first two weeks. We're striking a pose in honor of her work in CATS.

Now they're really going!

Thank you Lord for our liberty.

An early 4th

The concert tonight, if timed properly, will end with the 1812 Overture as the city's fireworks (moved to match the festival's orchestra schedule) errupt over Winona Lake.

Student Recital

Ben Crisman and Irene Kao just performed a delightful scene as Peter and Anne from the Diary of Anne Frank.

Improvisational worship

The MasterWits performed comedy improv tonight. We closed it out with enacted prayer and then went into improvisational worship. If they were a bag of popcorn, they wouldn't have been ready until five minutes to curfew. I don't think two seconds ever went by before someone would lead out with a song, prayer or scripture reading. We worshipped the Lord for over an hour and a half, and I think everyone was truly surprised when curfew came around. It's my prayer that this kind of full worship will continue when we meet tomorrow night.

Them's fightin' words

Bob Borwick was our latest master class instructor here at MasterWorks (MasterWorksFestival.org). He is the fight choreographer for Taproot Theatre in Seattle, so he taught us how to stay safe in fight scenes, how to fall without breaking something, and how to respect our fellow actors.

In this shot he's hanging out wth some of our students after a round-table discussion he did with Harvey Johnson, the director of our play, and myself. The topic was finding work in the theatre.

Faculty Recital

We just got back from a fabulous MasterWorks (MasterWorksFestival.org) faculty recital. Besides all the world-class musicians, Harvey and Susie did us proud. Harvey Johnson (director from Pittsburgh) portrayed the title role in a monologue from Othello. Susie Somerville Brown (B'way's CATS) closed out the evening with "Think of Me" from Phantom of the Opera.

Billy Sunday's Field

Billy Graham is preaching this evening in NYC, and I hope you'll pray for his ministry. This morning I just got to perform my short work, "The People Jesus Knew," in this tent, set up on the same field where Billy Sunday (and later, Billy Graham) preached in tent revivals. This morning it was for a group called Men Following Christ. These guys have a vision for this field to be filled with thousands the way it was when the Billies were preaching.

End of week one

We've just finished our first week of MasterWorks, and we're all pretty wiped out. Three wonderful weeks to go!!!

Jellical CATS

Susie Somerville Brown, one of our great theatre faculty here at MasterWorks is teaching our students dance steps from the Jellical Ball from CATS. She was in the closing company of the longest running musical in Broadway history.

Peter Parros

6/21/05 3:50 pm
Peter Parros, Dr. Ben Harris on As the World Turns, is doing his first of two Master Classes here at MasterWorks.

He opened by saying "Can anything good come from Nazarth? Can anything good come from soap operas?" He's showing our students that there can.

His testimony is very inspiring, and he laid out a paradigm for acting.

6/22/05 4:07 pm
Now he's working with our students on their monlogues: great stuff.

Compassion

Joyce and I sponsor two children through Compassion: Riquelmys in the Dominican Republic and Wendy Yoselin in Honduras:

The sponsorship process has been delightful! We know we're impacting their lives in a significant way by the letters, drawings and pictures we receive from them. And those letters, drawings and pictures (not to mention their prayers!) impact our lives as well.

I've travelled with Compassion to Bolivia and Honduras, so I've seen first hand that sponsorship money is being used wisely. In fact they made the The American Institute of Philanthropy's list of Top Rated Charities.

You can read my journal with pictures, and watch a video of my last trip:



I hope you'll choose to sponsor a child today. It will change the world for both of you: Sponsor a child Now!