Dance Inside Me God

 by Cammy Brantzeg

I love mission trips for the stories.  It is through the stories that I get to know the people.  The fact that they trust me enough to share their stories with me is humbling.  

The "Dance Inside Me God" story is Tony's story and it gives me joy to share it.  On our last Friday, we went to the Mosaic afterschool program.  I brought some crafts from the US for the kids to make.  Ornaments for all the kids and then beaded candy canes for the younger kids and beads to make bracelets for the older kids.  They don't have access to the fun crafts that we have in the US so I try to bring something new down for them when I visit with mission trip teams.

The bracelet making was a fun time of singing, dancing and the kids being creative making unique one of a kind bracelets.

Tony noticed the teen boy with the bracelet pictured above.  "Dance Inside Me God".  What a joyful creative phrase!  This boy dances with the gumboots dancers that Sazi has trained.  He loves to dance and this bracelet became one of the stories from our trip.  

Dance inside me God.  

As I was reading my God Writes a Better Story devotion this morning, the phrase "hope is a habit" showed up.  In the devotion, it talked about a boy who lived in difficult conditions in Malawi that had a quote above his bed  that read "Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond."  It was a constant visual reminder to him.  

This made me think about the boy's bracelet being a visual reminder to him which made me think about the bracelets that I started accumulating on my trip to South Africa.

I am a visual learner.  I like the idea of visual reminders.  I like the thought of my bracelets being a visual reminder for me to remember stories, moments and to pray for people.  I am sure I will switch my bracelets around from day-to-day but these are the bracelets that I ended my trip with and that I am currently putting on each morning.

• The first bracelet I bought in a Franschhoek market.  The beads are made out of paper.  It is not a fancy bracelet but it reminds me to look for the beauty that is in simple and ordinary daily life experiences.   
• The second bracelet is my Beautiful Mess bracelet made out of the leftover beads for when the kids made their bracelets.  It reminds me that life is messy but God can make something beautiful out of the messes.  
• The best way to describe why I put the word LOVE on my bracelet is to share the mission statement from Hopewell UMC.  Just as Jesus did, we actively and tangibly love God and love others in ways that transform the world around us.  
• The next two string bracelets are from the October trip.  We made these bracelets at the afterschool program in October.  They do not come off.  You tie them in a knot and they stay there.  Initially, I thought that was a little crazy but now I am happy they are always with me.  These bracelets are a reminder of my friends in South Africa and the people who traveled there with me that are always with me in my thoughts and prayers.  
• The last bracelet we handed out at the Mosaic afterschool program in October.  It has the Bible verse "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life."  Psalm 23:   The 23rd Psalm has been popping up in my devotions for a while.  I will continue to reflect on these verses and see what God wants to teach me and lead me through them.

These bracelets will be a daily reminder to me to remember people and their stories, that hope is a habit, to look for the joy and to pray.

They will help me to remember this moment in time, this boy and his phrase...

Dance Inside Me God!