We have several people who we consider family heroes.  Having three daughters, many of these people we respect and esteem in our household are female.  And while these include some of the obvious, famous heroes: Mother Teresa, Cassie Burnell, Mary Slessor, we also have our share of heroes who will never have a biography published, but who have been very personal  examples of strong women of God.  There's Bev Boon, an unmarried career missionary to Columbia; Sister Maximillian who runs a children's home in New Hampshire for kids who have been 'failed by the foster care system'; and there's Pastor Laura-Leigh, whose church we visited last night.

Laura-Leigh is a retired teacher, and is now at sixty-something, the pastor of a small church in Auburn, Maine.  The church was scheduled to be closed six years ago, but she knew it was important in the neighborhood it's in.  Auburn is hardly a metropolis, but it a large city for Maine.  Furthermore, her little church is in a neighborhood in Auburn that is home to 25% of the entire city's crime.  The family next door lives on the first floor of an apartment house in which all other floors have been condemned.  Drug use and domestic abuse run rampant, the families are generally poor, and her little church is a lighthouse to this community.  She Laura-Leigh is an advocate for these people, and her congregation, which started with six people when she took on the church, is steadily growing.

Each year she has us up to do a Friday night "cabin fever reliever'" event.  Last night was a packed house of 80 or so people of all ages.  As we were unloading our props, we met a family in the parking lot who had never been in the church before.  They sat in the front row, and by the end of the evening, were very comfortable and had been made to feel very welcome.  Pastor told us there were several other families who were not 'regulars'. 

The show was good.  My 12 year old daughter, Rose and I did a very new partner juggling routine, I performed five different size balls and spit-juggled four ping pong balls, neither of which are regular parts of my set, and we did several illusions that are new since Christmas.  After the show, there were refreshments in the little fellowship hall, and many connections were made between the church and the neighborhood families.  It's an honor to be part of this event each year, and it's nice to expose Rose to such a terrific role model of what it means to be a woman of God.