Soaring on Wings Like Eagles   by Jerri-Lynn Jurgneit                                September, 2008

 This is a testimony of how God moved in me and through me during the Worship in Motion Workshop hosted by my church, Muskoka Christian Fellowship. On Friday night (the night before the workshop weekend began) the leaders of WIM asked if they could pray for me to release "the dance" in me throughout the weekend. I had offered to walk in carrying the Canadian flag, during the parade of nation’s dance that the WIM team was planning to do on Saturday night.

 I was apprehensive and shy to even participate but I felt that I needed to be obedient to what God was asking me to do.  As the team prayed they received a picture of me dancing in a white dress which looked to them like a native regalia dress.  As I was dancing they said it was as if I had "wings like that of an eagle”.  Little did they know (but God did) that the dress I was going to use for the parade of nations dance was a white leather traditional native dress.  My older sister had given me an eagle feather to carry as I walked (danced) with the Canadian flag.  

The eagle feather had been given to my sister by a Christian native elder when my sister was asked to dance in Germany.  The feather was to represent the freedom that Christ has given us as his native & non-native children.  My sister felt that she was to hand this same feather to me to remind me to “be strong and of good courage and not shy or afraid to do what God was calling me to".  After the team was done praying they felt they were to ask me to "dance" during a warrior song and also during the parade of nations.  I went from walking in with the flag to dancing throughout the entire song.  Yikes! I hesitantly said "yes" to the team and asked them to pray for courage as I am shy about native dancing in public. 

In my heart I have always had the dream/desire to dance before the Lord as a native woman in my native regalia.  I never thought that this would become a reality within the church. I had had a lady pray in Kona, Hawaii for me that I would fulfill the call on my life to dance before him in my native dress.  The dance I would do would give me a vision to help launch me into what I was created to do as well as affect those who are watching to embrace what God was saying. 

Thankfully we serve a GREAT GOD who desires for us to be all that he created and knit us to be within our mothers' womb.  He has plans for us that become our dreams and desires.  Jeremiah 29:11 states this very thing.  As I danced that night before the Canadian Flag I felt like I could have flown.  God gave me the energy, stamina, courage, and strength to dance.  I danced from my spirit, an intercessory dance which felt had been waiting for years to emerge. It was a dance of intense freedom.  Freedom for me and the battle against fear of man, and judgment of what the church would say or do as I danced as the "true" me in a church setting. Freedom for the native Canadian community -especially native Canadian woman who have faith in God in particular who are yearning to dance before the True One who is the creator and the Lord of our native dance.

 It was also a call to the greater church of Canada to embrace this move of freedom and pray for the native Canadian community to rise up, declare their creator to be Jesus Christ and be all that they were destined to be. After the dance was done I was physically spent but filled with a renewed excitement to be a native woman who is free to dance before the Lord.  I literally felt as if I had "wings of eagles” and could have soared to greater heights with the Lord.  I am sure I did in the Spirit. Isaiah 40:28-31 says it all, “Do you not know? Have you not heard?  The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.  He will not grow tired or weary, and increases the power of the weak.  Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."

As I am no longer shy and afraid, I pray that God will continue to use me through native dance and/or testimony to bring  Glory to Him of what He can do and is at work doing within the body of Christ.

It has been over a month now since Barb Trudel and I returned from spending two weeks in Kenya. We, along with Annette Ganzenberg and Margaret Morogo from the Kaibeyo Children’s Home spent a week in Nairobi, interceding for and attending the DOVE Africa Conference where Alan Vincent shared a powerful message from 1 Samuel for the Kenyan people. The conference, held in a massive, colorful tent, complete with sawdust, took place on the land that will soon be home to the DOVE AFRICA Prayer Tower.  The opportunity to meet and spend time with DOVE leaders from all over Kenya and even India was a real joy!  During our second week in Kenya we traveled to the Kisumu and Eldoret regions, soaking in all the beauty of this wounded country and ministering to many women in both communities.

Since arriving home, I have repeatedly found myself having to answer the question, ‘How was your trip?” It is a difficult question to answer simply.  We have read of the horrid strife that Kenya experienced this year but having the opportunity to witness the outcome of such senseless damage with my own eyes moved everything from being ‘far and remote’ to ‘real and near’! 

I am still filtering through all the images that now represent Kenya to me … a young girl, sitting in a gutter, wearing a torn and filthy dress with no shoes on her feet, chewing on a stale crust of bread; a grandmother, homeless because of the violence - temporarily housed in a 10 x 12 tent in a Displaced Persons Camp, caring for ten grandchildren, all orphans; a young woman crying in my arms as she shared a testimony that is an echo of so many others I heard – hurting, rejected, seeking a reason to love when no love has been extended to her; Kibera, the tin city on the outskirts of Nairobi, home to over one million men, women and children -  living in surroundings that are beyond our comprehension; the children’s praise team at Kaibeyo, rejoicing and celebrating His love; so much joy…so much hope … so much pain … so much love and laughter … so much sadness and loss; prayer like nothing I have never experienced before – desperate hearts calling out to God; and one final image, that of a small malnourished child leaning against the entrance of the mud hut that is his tiny home, refusing all my efforts to get him to smile, looking into my eyes with a gaze that pierced my heart. 

These are my memories…there are many others that I don’t know how to put into words yet. It is amazing what God did during those two weeks!   I have returned home aching to share with others, hoping that they might hear in my words a call that stirs something deep within.   

We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.  2 Corinthians 5:20

Lynn Ironside

August 11, 2008