Feliz Navidad from Chile!!
I’m sorry I’ve been a little off the grid with blogging this month. Between WiFi limitations and busy schedules, it’s been difficult to get a blog up. But hey! Here we are! It’s almost the end of 2017 and we are nearly halfway through the Race. What!?!?! Time flies! So let me tell you a story about what has been happening in recent times.
Theatre is one of my passions. Once I get home from the Race, I’m planning on going to university in Colorado and studying theatre so I can one day make a career out of directing. Ever since we arrived in Chile, I’ve been really missing being involved in theatre. It’s hard to be away from the things you love and are passionate about, but I’m doing what I can to keep myself connected to that part of me. I have spent nights here listening to musical soundtracks and singing/dancing around the church sanctuary. My friend Joel and I (we did Sound of Music together years and years ago, believe it or not) learned how to sing a duet from Dogfight the Musical. I write about how much I wish I knew how to write plays, scribble down ideas for musicals, gush about directors I love, and make doodles of how I would block those shows. I can’t wait until I get to be immersed in theatre again.
One day, Pastor Daniel (our ministry host) asked me what I wanted to do after the Race. I told him about my plans, concluding with “Maybe someday I’ll write a play”. He looked at me with a grin and said, “Not someday. Today.” I was very confused, to say the least. He proceeded to explain that he needed someone to write and direct (ahh!) a Christmas nativity play set in modern time. It was to be translated into Spanish and performed for the church on Christmas Eve…ummmm what?!
It ended up being a weird, fun process of writing, blocking, using Google Translate and a Spanish Bible to translate the play into really broken, confusing Spanish, casting my teammates and some kids from the church as teenagers, backpackers, and angels, and then trying to pull everything together in a grand total of two full rehearsals. It went really well given what few resources and little knowledge of the Spanish language we had. We decided to name the play “Motel Baby”, since modern day Jesus was born in the basement of a creepy motel in Santiago, Chile. #creativity
One moment that really sticks out to me is our last rehearsal before Christmas Eve. I had gathered everyone together to say thank you to everyone who had helped make the play happen and explain what I learned through the whole ordeal. We also decided to pray for the audience coming to see the show and the people who would be hearing the Christmas story for the first time. Since the play is set in Chile in 2017, we didn’t want to have Gabriel refer to Jesus as “King”. So we changed the term to “Savior”. As we were all praying World Race style (everyone praying out loud all at once), I was reminded how we were given the opportunity to tell the story about our Savior to people who might not be saved, and how blessed we are to have each other to gather with and proclaim the Good News. Even if our Spanish accents are ridiculously terrible and I’m really not the best at writing plays, I’m so ecstatic that we got to do it.
So, thank you, God, for letting me direct my very first play and for letting me tell one of the most beautiful stories ever.
(Below are some pictures from the play. The first is Javi and Connor (aka Mary and Joseph) and the second is me, Jacob, and Abby the Backpackers (aka the Three Kings) and Colby and Camryn (Herod the Mayor of Santiago and his assistant).
