God just blew my mind!

We never got all five faculty members who were my former students together for a single photo, but this is Jonathon Shaffstall, Brad Cain, and Kathryn Ballantine.

All week I've been performing, teaching and directing at the Salvation Army's TAM Conservatory, where we've been meditating on Acts 1:8, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth."

This morning during the send out I shared with the community how the Lord had been speaking to me about his long-term plans with the Conservatory. The Territorial Commanders, William and Lorraine Bamford, addressed our students after many faculty and students shared, and Commander William Bamford pointed out that we're approaching 1500 students who have been trained at the Conservatory, and many have gone on to do great things for the Lord. This year four faculty members had been my students at TAMC years ago, and one other was a student at a Christians in Theatres Arts event in Puerto Rico. I asked faculty members to stand who had previously been a student at TAMC, and I believe there were nine!

We had a BLAST catching up with Sean and Cath Gaffney, who taught me so much about writing, acting, and teaching!

So, this morning I was on faculty at TAMC with Brad Cain, who had been my student at TAMC 15 years ago. Then, tonight Sean and Cath Gaffney messaged me that they were in NYC and asked if we were free. Sean was on the faculty at Regent University while Brad and Cath (Sean loved being a professor dating a student!) were working on their M.F.A.s in acting at Regent together.

But wait, there's more! Sean and Cath were in the city to see Samantha Sturm, who the three of us taught...wait for it... about 15 years ago! Samantha is now in her sixth Broadway show, CATS, and that's the Broadway show that brought Carol Jaudes, the founding director of TAMC and Susie Somerville Brown into their first collaboration.

OK, so now it gets really interesting: Samantha was 14 when we worked with her. On Thursday Susie worked with my students, who were 14 and up, and this morning a 14-year-old student of mine at the Rocky Mountain Christian Filmmakers Camp a month ago was staying with her family at our place while we were at TAMC.

So the only four 14-year-olds I believe I've ever worked with were connected by this day.

Ryan Livingston was my student for acting, and though he was on faculty to teach visual arts he used his flair for performance in the presentation of their artwork.

Lord, raise up all of our students to co-create with You, the only One who could have even thought of arranging that many Divine appointments in a single day to blow my mind and encourage me to pray all the more diligently for my students, no matter their age!


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