Art Life 2011

Art Life is a camp for youth that focuses on the arts and how to use the gifts that God has given you to glorify Him. I heard about it through my pastor and his wife who invited me to come and be a counselor this year. Their good friends, Bob and Teressa Nix,  from the Abiding Place Ministries are the ones who started the camp and put it on each year. I didn't know what to expect and was unsure exactly what I would be doing at the camp but I really felt that God wanted me to go. The camp was in Waxahachie at Southwestern Assemblies of God University (SAGU).

We stayed in the dorms. I shared a suite with Terri and her two daughters. Terri goes to my church and is a teacher at Central High School in Beaumont. I just love her so much and her daughters are the sweetest girls. They were so excited to get to come to Art Life.

I was excited to find out that as a counselor I could take any track classes that I wanted. They had a dance, music, drama, and media track so I decided to do the dance track. I love dance and took ballet, tap, and jazz from 3-14, but I haven't danced since then. My pastor's daughter has praised danced for us at church before and it was so beautiful. Ever since then I have wanted to learn how to praise dance so this was really exciting for me. Teressa's daughter, Jessica, owns a Christian dance studio and is a dance instructor in Humble and taught the dance classes along with some of her instructors. They are all such beautiful dancers and amazing teachers. Click here to read about all the teachers. All of our classes started off with prayer and Bible study. We studied what the Bible says about dance and who danced in the Bible. They taught us that through dance we can worship and glorify God and minister to others. We learned to dance for an audience on one (GOD)! It was so much fun! I literally took dance classes all day long and haven't been that sore in a VERY long time! I couldn't move my neck to the right for a whole day :)

I tried to take as many pictures as I could so here is a look into Art Life 2011.....

Hannah, Terri, and Rachel dressed up for Super Hero Night. Each night was a theme night.

Hannah and Rachel helped dress me up as Super Teacher!

This picture cracks me up! This was Mission Man (my pastor) and Drama Queen (my pastor's wife)...it was appropriate since she taught Drama classes and he taught about Mission's at the camp.

Drama Queen's cape

Some of the kids dressed up as Super Heros

One word...Adorable!

Mission Man and Bible Man (Bob Nix)

Some of the kids at Nerd Night

For nerd night I wore a t-shirt tucked into my shorts with knee high socks and flip-flops. Check out Kathy's fanny pack :)

Some of the boys at Nerd Night

Nerd Night costume winners

This is a picture of the Hip Hop class. The guy in the green shorts flew in all the way from New York to teach at Art Life and is such an amazing dancer. He does different forms of dance like Hip Hop, break dancing, and pop and lock which is so amazing to watch! I plan on posting a video of it later.

Kathy dressed up for twin night with Teressa

Playing games

Katie on the right taught the drama classes and is such a sweet and very talented girl.

The cutest twins by far in my opinion :)

There was one set of triplets at twin night

Teressa and Bob Nix have four kids and all four of them came and helped out at Art Life. Here they are doing the flash mob dance for us all. Yes, they taught us a flash mob dance and we did it at Chic-Fil-A on Friday. It was do much fun. I have a video of that too :)

Dance Class

Hawaiian night

Learning a Hawaiian luau dance

How low can you go? This is Will, the dancer from New York, and he made it under that with no problem..amazing!

Getting ready to play a game where each team had a pair of sweat pants and a bucket of water..they had to soak the pants in the water and then put them on, hula hoop three times, and then run to an empty bucket and ring them out. the first team to fill the bucket wins.

It wouldn't be youth camp without a water balloon fight. 

What can I say about this...she is so adorable :)

Doing the flash mob at Chic-Fil-A

Me, Rachel, and Hannah at the performance on Friday Night

I was put in the beginners/intermediate dance group and this was us performing on Friday night for the parents and campers.

On Friday night, all the different tracks performed for the parents what they had been working on all week. My dance class danced, the advanced dance class danced, the drama track did a play, the music track performed worship songs the kids had written and recorded, and musicians played. It was so moving and beautiful to see the kids using their gifts and talents in a way that glorified God. That was the whole focus and point of the camp and I feel so blessed to have been a part of it. I was prepared to go and help out and empty trashcans and was surprised to find out I would be able to take classes myself. It was such a refreshing time for me spiritually. I will miss all the wonderful kids and adults I met.