For those who don't know Liza

I recently wrote this for a friend who requested such copy. There are many who know me (Scot) but not Liza, or vice versa. So, in the third person, I put these two paragraphs together. I know it's a bit long, but I thought it might be encouraging for those of you reading and praying that don't know Liza or I. Thank you again for all the battles you are waging in the heavenlies. Pray for Liza's headaches and that she would be able to sleep. We are still here...trusting...waiting.

Liza was raised on the Sunshine Coast in North-Eastern Australia and has been dancing since she was 5 years old. She began teaching dance as a teenager and has been passionately involved in the intersection of ministering the gospel and performing arts. Her overriding passion is to see the reconciliation of arts and the local church in such a way that brings respect to the gift and honor to the ultimate gift Giver. She has been involved in arts-missions all around the world for more than a decade, most affectionately in the Ukraine and South America. Liza and her mother Sonja started a ballet school here in The Woodlands area that has now been alive for more than 13 years. It began as Sonshine Dance School and is now Excelsior School of Dance and Performing Arts. She also danced professionally with Dance Ad Deum of Houston for fours years before realizing a long-time dream of starting her own professional company. That dream came true in 2003 with the founding of Ballet Excelsior of Houston, Liza’s own professional dance troop, which currently has 9 professionals and 6 trainees. Besides here at home, they have already traveled and ministered in New York City, Los Angeles, Missouri, Sydney Australia, Poland, Russia, Bulgaria, and Greece. Almost all of these trips have utilized the arts, including professional orchestras, solo musicians, singers, and choirs, coupled with the ministering of the Word of God to reach the lost. This is Liza’s passion – ministering the saving gospel of grace through the arts, which fortunately pervades language barriers. Her 27 years of dancing has been focused in that direction. We hope there are many more to come.

In the middle of this adventure, Liza and her family moved from Australia to Canada, and then from Canada to Houston, Texas. She met and married Scot Pollok in 2000, while he was a student minister at The Woodlands United Methodist Church. After serving at that church for almost a decade, Scot and Liza decided that the timing was right for Scot to enter seminary, a long-time dream of his. He did so in the fall of 2003 and is close to finishing the extensive Masters of Theology degree from Dallas Theological Seminary (attending the Houston extension campus). He hopes to be finished in December of 2008. While in school, Liza and Scot found a church home at Faith Bible Church – formerly Faith Community Church. They have been highly involved and connected into the Young Marrieds group there and have found a new family in their small group. During this time God blessed Liza and Scot with a beautiful baby boy in an unconventional way. After several painful years of an inability to get pregnant, a local adoption from a Christian teenage girl simply fell into their lap. Their son Andrew Reeve was born in June of 2004 and they brought him home from the hospital 24 hours later. When Andrew was 7 months old, Liza miraculously got pregnant with their second bundle of joy, Isabel Grace Ingrid. A family of two quickly went to a family of four as both Liza and Scot continued to work and serve in ministry. Thus their life now is consumed with family, serving the church, studying, and dancing. Although it is hectic, they wouldn’t have it any other way.

See more of Liza's dance school including pictures at http://www.balletexcelsior.org/