The Dance

Dear Grace,
           This has been a good weekend. On Friday I helped out with a fundraiser dance that we held at Noah's reception center. My teacher, Mrs. Gardner, who arranged the whole thing is one of the most extraordinary people I have ever met in my life. I've never met anyone so kind, someone who cares so sincerely about people. Lately I've lost faith in myself, and I've often looked at the bad things happening around me and thought that nothing I do will make a difference, so why should I bother trying, or worse, why should I let myself care? It will only bring me grief.
           But helping out with this dance has made me realize that any action I take, no matter how small, can somehow help someone somewhere. Mrs. Gardner told me a story that touched me and inspired me. An old man was walking along the beach one day when he came upon a boy who was running along the beach throwing stranded starfish back into the sea. When the old man asked the boy why, he replied that he was saving the starfish's lives. The old man snorted and said, "Look around you boy, there are hundreds of miles of beach with more starfish than you can ever get to. You'll never be able to make a difference."
           The boy looked at the old man for a minute, then he turned, picked up another starfish and cast it back into the sea, "Well," he said, "I made a difference to that one."
           After watching Mrs. Gardner's love an dedication to these people she had never met that she was helping, I found hope again. It's true that I don't have the power to change the entire world, but to at least one person, I do have the power to change their world. Just by holding this fundraiser dance, my Medical English class was able to raise almost two thousand dollars in one night. With that money we were able to buy 271 mosquito nets to protect families in Africa from malaria. That's somewhere around a thousand lives we've helped save, and it's all because Mrs. Gardner stepped up and showed us that we could do something.
           Another thing I had an epiphany on was my belief in prayer. I lost faith in prayer for a long time because I kept asking, "Why should I bother praying for anything? If it's not God's will, it's not going to happen, so why should I bother asking for anything if it's only going to happen his way anyway?" I had a hard time believing in prayer at all for a long time, and I kept everything I prayed about to "thank yous" and "thy will be done" prayers, until eventually I stopped praying altogether. But that night, at the end of the dance, Mrs. Gardner told me about the tribal leaders of the villages we were buying the nets for. She told me about how all the tribal leaders had gotten together to speak about all of the children that were dying in their villages because of malaria. They had all prayed together for a miracle, that somehow a way to protect their people from disease would come. "It's just cool to realize that we were the answer to their prayers."
           Her words struck me then, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about them. I realized that if everyone just sat around doing nothing, believing that nothing they did could make a difference, (which is just what I've been doing) then nothing would ever be done to help these people. Nobody's prayers could be answered. Our actions literally can become the answers to people's prayers. And maybe what we pray for may not be what the Lord has in store for us, and maybe the way he answers our prayers are never in the way we would expect. But one thing I realized is that it's still important to pray for what we want, because God can't send us blessings if we aren't asking for them.
           For example, I'm not saying that praying for someone to live only to watch them die is something we shouldn't bother with. Of course we should pray that they live, because we want them to stay, and we love them and need them. But sometimes their time here is done, or they have greater works to perform on the other side that we can't possibly imagine, and they must be taken from us. If our prayers for them to live are unanswered, we shouldn't turn away from him in bitterness. We should then pray even harder for comfort and understanding, and pray that that person is being taken care of on the other side.
            Well, I'm done being serious for now, so I'd like to share some fun things I did at the dance on Friday night :) So I was wandering aimlessly around because none of my friends had arrived yet, and I ran into a girl from my College Writing class. Neither of our friends had showed up yet, so we decided to randomly ride the elevator up and down and check out the other parties that were going on upstairs. A couple got onto the elevator with us, and the guy asked if he could go to the second floor. I replied promptly with a teasing "NO!" and my friend added, "Yeah, we're going to keep you in here forever!"
            We all turned a little awkward and then started laughing until the couple got off on the second floor. Then me and my friend laughed at each other and went back down to the dance. Andrea showed up soon after that, and we commenced playing volleyball on one of the available courts with a few other kids. Halfway through the game, some idiot spiked the ball right in front of me, so I threw up my hands to protect my face, and, would you believe it, I felt my pinkie finger crunch under the ball. I shook it off, but it kept hurting for a long time, and when I looked back down at it five minutes later, it was all crooked looking and swollen to twice its normal size. It was only then that it occurred to me that it might be broken, and when I couldn't bend it I was convinced that that was the case.
            So THEN, Andrea and I hopped in her car and sped down to Walmart (the best store mankind has ever known!) to get me a finger-brace. After getting there, we found the finger-brace, but rather than buying it and putting it on right away, what did we do? We ended up in the toy isle sword-fighting with foam swords. Andrea is amazing :) Then I bought myself three Hershey's bars to keep the dementors away, and it made everything better.
            Well, that's all I can think to write about now, so I'll just end by saying that I love you and I hope all is well with you.
                                                                              Love Always,
                                                                                                     Katie Jo

Gone Too Fast!

Dear Grace,
                   I can't believe how lazy I've become about writing to you! I'm sorry I haven't written in so long. Much has happened since I last wrote. About a month ago, I went to my dance class for the last time. I went into the bathroom to change into my dance clothes, and there I discovered my dance shirt had a massive stain on it. I was mad about this because I couldn't wear the shirt with a big stain covering most of the torso (how the stain got there, I really have no idea) and I was wearing a long-sleeve shirt, and I didn't want to work out in that and get massive sweat stains on that, and it was then that I suddenly realized that I just didn't want to go to dance anymore. It's funny that it took a stain on a shirt, but it made me realize that I wasn't enjoying dance anymore. I didn't have any friends there, and the dancing itself just wasn't enjoyable to me anymore. And so, I packed up my things, walked out of that bathroom, walked out to my car, and I have never returned to dance class since.
            It’s not something I’ve ever done before. Sure, I quit drama after I realized what a sucky program Timpanogos has and that I didn’t fit in with that group of people, but I waited to quit until the end of the play. After that I didn’t touch the drama department at all. But quitting dance was much different. It was the middle of the season, and I didn’t quit because I felt like an outcast, or because I hated the director. On the contrary, I love Collet to death, and abandoning her was what broke my heart most of all. But now that I’ve decided to leave, I feel it was the right thing to do.
            I was shocked today, though, because I found out that Colleen (the older dance teacher) passed away today at 1:15. At first I couldn’t believe it, but I called Andrea and asked her about it and she confirmed it. Colleen Collins Smith has finally moved on and gone to rejoin her husband in heaven.
            I’ve been babysitting a family up the street from me. They have six children, all of them under the age of seven. Their names are Esther, Brent, Corbin, Andrew, Talitha, and the baby. They’re an amazing family, and those kids are so awesome. We’ve all become so attached to each other in the last couple of months. I actually babysat them on Valentine’s Day so their parents could have a nice evening out together. It was better than sitting at home by myself, watching sappy movies and eating ice cream and moping about my lack of a lover, haha. So we had a lot of fun, we watched Tarzan and we played with a balloon and goofed around a lot.
            Andrea and I hung out together for a while before I babysat, and we exchanged Valentines gifts and watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which we enjoyed very much J. She was actually in a play recently called Charlie’s Aunt, and she played Charlie’s Aunt, Donna Lucia D’Alvedorez. I went and visited her several times during rehearsals and took her cinnamon rolls and treats of the like. You’ll never guess who was playing Charlie. It was an old friend of mine who used to live down the street from me when I was like three or four, and his name is Wesley Morgan. Haha that was pretty fun to see my old childhood playmate up on the stage, especially since he’s kind of a football jock, and you don’t see those very often in the drama programs.
            Something random! My voice teacher, Amanda, has signed me up for a singing competition in March, so that should be exciting. I’ll be singing two very pretty songs, one of them is called The Light In The Piazza, which is about a woman discovering love for the first time, and the other song is called Children of Eden, and it’s about Eve sharing her wisdom with her posterity. They’re both gorgeous songs, and I hope that I’ll do well in the competition. Mom and Dad and I have also been hoping that I might be able to get a few scholarships through my singing if we get lucky. We’ll have to wait and see!
            Man, I can’t believe how fast the years have gone by. Now that graduation is looming so near, just three months away, and then college another two months after that, I find myself looking back on my life and wondering where it all went. I feel like my whole life has slipped away through my fingers, and there’s no way for me to get it back. I can’t believe eighteen years have already gone by. Three of my friends are engaged, and another one who’s younger than me is already married. I’ll be leaving home and stepping into a whole new world at the end of the summer, and I don’t know what’s to become of my life when that time comes. I don’t know where I’ll be or who I’ll be with.
            One thing I do know is that I’m grateful for what I have in my life now. I’m so grateful for my Mom and Dad, who are always there for me and are always looking out for me. I am grateful for my best friends in the whole world, Alyssa and Andrea, who have always loved me and accepted me for exactly who I am and who I have shared endless laughs and good times with. And I am grateful for God, who has been beside me since the day of my birth, and will be right there beside me every step of the way when I move away from home next year. I don’t know what the future may hold, but as long as I have my family, my friends, and my eternal father, I won’t be afraid.
            Well, that’s all I can think of to write about tonight, but I just want you to know that I love you, and that I’m thinking about you.

Love Always,

                        Katie Jo