The Frantic Zone

We are now in the thick of it: music pounding, dancers twirling and popping, and artists drawing, sculpting, and collaging. If I could give you a head count I would, but it’s mostly a massive swirl of kids and teenagers coming and going, jumping classes, trying everything, with the energy we wish we had.

A couple of kids have already captured our hearts, as have the long term workers here. Everyone is in good spirits, grappling with the difficulty of the heat with wonderful grace, and flexing for all their worth.

And as usual, we’ve bit off more than we can chew. Asked to do some visuals for one song during the Friday evening concert, our initial brainstorm produced a Big Idea, which we felt was more a finale than a 5 min piece. Could we do it?

A quick consultation with the leadership team, and the decision was unanimous: yes, this was the closing piece. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

More prayer and brainstorms. And one ‘prophetic’ prayer walk—on the way home the first day from the school, we walked silently, asking God to give us divine inspiration, the word He wanted to communicate through us, to Baja, for these two weeks. I was astonished that, by the time we got home 10 min. later, we had it. (Well, we didn’t quite have it, but I knew we were close. And by the next morning, I had it.)

Another breakfast brainstorm and the vision refined. We were getting excited. Now, how to execute it?

Choosing graffiti as the medium, we sketched ideas, watched videos on You Tube for inspiration, and searched for the right theme and words. But for that, we needed divine inspiration; what was the word or words, what were the images, that would speak to these people? And how did we communicate our Big Idea visually?

The artists are in frantic mode now. I pulled three of our artists from classroom teaching and put them on the graffiti project. Measuring, making a supply list, preparing to do a mockup…break for lunch and cold showers. Return to the school, do a mock up, buy art supplies, cut stencils…break for dinner, another cold shower, and back to the school…evening debrief…24 hours to go…