Every four years our stake participates in a multi-stake (Kent, Maple Valley, Renton, and Auburn) dance festival. This was our stake's youth conference for 2012, and since Landon and Mason are deacon they got to participate in the deacon dance, which was a "Tinkling" Philippine Dance. For the six months before the dance festival they would practice every other week learning the steps to their dance, it was a lot of work, and at times very discouraging but in the end it paid off when they got to perform with over 1000 other youth in the area at the Sho-ware Center in Kent.
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| Landon and Mason with their good friends, Caleb and Jonathon after the final performance. The "Tinikling" dance is a pre-Spanish dance from the Philippines that involves two people beating, tapping and sliding bamboo poles on the ground and against each other in coordination with one or more dancers who step over and in between the poles in a dance. It was a difficult dance for anyone, but especially for growing deacons. Zeke spent many of the practices with the deacons so he knew how hard it was. On the day of the performance they practiced out on the blacktop in the hot sun. The ground was hot and the boys worked hard. After the first performance, Zeke felt a little teary knowing how hard these boys had worked, and how all that hard work showed.  |
There were many other dances performed by that youth that we enjoyed. Each time the youth would come running out on the dance floor excited and it would give us chills to see their excitment. Most of these kids don't dance on a regular basis so it was impressive to see them do so well. 
After the dance festival was over the boys were exhausted, but so glad they had this opportunity.
Way to go Landon and Mason! We are so proud of you!
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