DANCING WITH PURPOSE

Donuts, juice, coffee, and … dancers ??? Did you notice something a little different in your hallway experience at 121 last Sunday? It didn't take long to realize The Broken Dancers were in town. The dance team, made up of graduates from Orphanage #3 in Penza, Russia, touched down in Texas this month for their third U.S. tour. The Lord has gifted these five young men with a great combination of gymnastic abilities, rhythm, and coordination. Alexei, Dima, Slava, Misha, and Yura have made the 6,000-mile journey from Penza to Dallas – Ft. Worth not only to entertain all types of audiences, but most importantly, to bring glory to God. The guys use their hip-hop talents to get audience members' attention, and then they share from their hearts about what God has done in their lives.

At some point in his childhood, each member of the dance team was taken to live in the orphanage, where they all continued living until they “graduated” into society around age 17. Two of the team are brothers – Alexei and Dima Shepelev. After seeing some hip-hop street dancers when they were teenagers, the brothers decided they could put together a team that could entertain in the same way. They were not believers in Christ at the time, but God certainly had a plan for them involving their new-found hobby. One by one, the boys came to know the Lord. In 2002, a team of Americans was visiting the summer camp where the boys and their fellow orphanage residents were staying. The team leader, Scott Werntz, saw the guys dance and knew God could use them in a big way on an American tour.

After mountains of paperwork and endless hours of rehearsing, the dance team made their American debut in February 2003. They performed in several churches, schools, and public venues in the Dallas metroplex and the Chicagoland area. Their second tour came a year later and found them in front of many different congregations, primarily in South Dallas, where the teens went wild over their dance style. After that trip in 2004, The Broken Dancers tried twice, unsuccessfully, to get visas for a third American tour. Never giving up, they gave it another shot early this year and God said it was time to come back by granting their visas.

Throughout their journeys of coming to the U.S. and attempting to come, the young men have experienced tremendous spiritual growth. Before going to their visa interviews this year, they prayed that God would show them whether He wanted to use them in Russia or America in March and that they would be content with His answer. They have learned that God's ways are not our ways and that He always has a plan. Alexei shares with audiences that initially he was bitter about being placed in the orphanage when he was 12 years old. However, he is now grateful for going to live in the orphanage because that's where he met Jesus. What a wonderful, eternal perspective.

All of the dance team members are now part of a ministry known as Fireworks, a program of Spoken For International Youth Outreach. Fireworks is an outreach in Penza, Russia that assists orphanage graduates in transitioning from life in the orphanage to the “real world”. The program provides spiritual mentoring and accountability as well as meeting physical, medical, and educational needs. Participants in Fireworks also receive guidance in life skills from local believers who reach out in the spirit of Deuteronomy 10:18 – “He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing.”

The message of The Broken Dancers is simple – God has a plan for each of us and we only need to seek Him then stand back and watch Him be glorified. None of the dancers has had what most would consider an ideal childhood, yet they are each striving to let God be seen through their lives. He is drawing people to their message not in spite of their difficult backgrounds, but because of their difficult backgrounds. Only a creative, sovereign God could take something Satan so obviously intended for evil and turn it around for good. The lives of Alexei, Dima, Slava, Misha, Yura, and many others like them, are amazing testimonies of that power.

To learn more about The Broken Dancers or the Fireworks program, visit www.spokenfor.org.

::Lori Bond

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