In my last post, I wrote about how we are currently in Texas with our daughter, Rose, who is a nurse in Houston. I left off with us travelling to the Austin area with our oldest daughter, Jp0, who lives there. She and her husband, Sam,, are actually in Leander, and suburb of 80,000+, still bigger than any city in our home state of Maine! They have a nice home in a peaceful neighborhood, and it was joy to get back there for the first time in a couple years. Rose and her fiance, Temi, met us there a few hours after we arrived.
In truth, we could have spent the whole time at Rose's place in Houston, as Jo came over and spent time with us there as well, but we scheduled a two night stay in Leander because we had been contacted by Teen Challenge of Round Rock (near Leander) to do a show for their teen girls' home. The invitation from TC actually came before the trip was scheduled, but we knew we'd be down there sometime over the summer, so we agreed to come prepared to do one once we solidified our own plans. I'm so glad we did.
Teen Challenge is an international mnistry that was started in the 1960's by David Wilkerson of "the Cross and the Switchblade" fame. It is a Christ centered rehab program working with youth and young adults dealing with life controlling issues ranging from addiction and gang membership to self-injury and perpetual running away from home. We had done a show at the Round Rock TC two years ago when we were in the area, and have done shows for similar homes up in New England.
I was concerned about the quality of my show for two reasons. First of all, there's been some - but limited- opportunities to practice my juggling since arriving in Texas. Secondly, we travelled light; we didn't even check bags, so I was limited with what I could bring. Fortunately, our daughters all juggle, so they had props waiting at this end, and I could pack more illusions. As it turns out, I did an hour show, plus an interactive time afterwards, so I had enough. And, as for lack of practice, well, I could have juggled better, but it was not too messy at all.
One of my favorite things that happened that evening was that the girls, ages 14-17, had a chance to just be kids. They laughed, eagerly volunteered to participate when given the chance, and whispered back and forth, "Did you see that? How'd he do that?" When I used the dove pan to produce a stuffed animal dove, I explained that we have doves at home, but we couldn't fly with them. Thn I told them how we just had two doves hatch the day or two before we left. Sue pulled up a picture on her phone that we were ble to show the girls. Newly hatched doves are featherless and have to grow into their beaks. The girls couldn't believe how ugly they were.
After a lot of fun, the show moved to a more serious point, in which I shared this poem I had written years ago:
Beautiful Girl
It clearly resonated with several of them, and when I said I'd leave the book for their house, they were negotiating who would get it first. God, use the show and the book as a vessel of your grace and healing.
After the show was over, complete with a machete juggling finale, I had time to teach a few of the girls the basics steps of three ball juggling. Even stafff got involved, and it was a lot more laughs. We didn't come to Texas to do shows this time, but I'm so glad that it worked out that the Round Rock TC invited us back the same summer we had to be here anyway.