Week 34

HOLY WEEK

Day 231: Mar 29, 2015

Today was Palm Sunday. This was the first Palm Sunday service that I have been to where there weren't palm leaves of some kind. Instead, we walked to church first from the east (the direction that Jesus came from when entering Jerusalem) and then we walked past the building where we have church and eventually turned around and walked to church from the west (the direction that Pilate would have been coming from). It was a cool way to start Holy Week. I spent most of my day working on a storyline/script for a skit based on Noah's Ark. It will be very similar to a skit that I did in youth group 6 or 7 years ago. The goal is to keep it fairly short because it will be part of our easter vigil. Apparently, the whole service is going to be something like 3 hours long and we will be walking around the village listening to a bunch of different stories and readings. Although our skit is second, my goal is to start things out on a funny/fun note. I will have a bouncer Noah, a pregnant female God, a flying stuffed animal bird with a pine branch taking the place of an olive branch. It is going to be very similar to a Sunday school telling of the story which I think fits well with the story. Noah's ark is one of the first stories that children learn so pretty much everyone will know the story. After church, I even went down to the craft cave and painted an ark and a rainbow to act as the set pieces. It would be fun to actually build a little ark and have our Noah finish it on stage but there is no way I could build something before Saturday and actually do my job too. Plus, I think it will be funnier to have Noah “build” the ark by unfolding and taping the painted ark to the wall. It should be good, I just have to find a time when we can run through the skit at least once. I didn't actually write out the skit word for word so it would be good to go through it so my actors know what I am looking for.

Day 232: Mar 30, 2015

Today was pretty chill. I read my book, enjoyed the outdoors-it smells like spring, and went to an art show of the two artists in residents here. The amount of beautiful art that they have gotten done in the last few weeks is amazing. Their work is beautiful.

Day 233: Mar 31, 2015

Today was pretty great. We had a grill night for dinner- burgers, salmon, slaw, and malts. I helped man the grill which was crazy smokey but a bunch of fun. Other than that, not much to report.

Day 234: Apr 1, 2015

Today we had a passover seder which was nice. I made bagels for lunch. The would have been pretty easy to make except that we didn't have regular flour. I have to use a mix of cake flour and gluten which meant that the bagels soaked up more water than they should have. That resulted in longer and uneven cooking. It was incredibly frustrating but in the end they still tasted great which is really all that matters.

Day 235: Apr 2, 2015

Lent is officially over. We had a vespers service where we cleared the worship area of everything. The chairs, everything.

Day 236: Apr 3, 2015

Because we emptied out the worship space yesterday we had our good Friday service while sitting on the floor. The other exciting part of my day was that I got three packages today! One was a box of wood game pieces for a game of Catan that I am making. It was way more exciting than you would think. The other two boxes were easter baskets from my mom. It was wonderful. Not only that but I also got two letters from my little cousins. I love getting letters from them. They just make me so happy.

Day 237: Apr 4, 2015

Wow today we had the longest worship service that I have ever attended. It was a 3 hour vigil. The first half was the telling of multiple stories. I helped to tell the story of Noah's ark and I would have to say that our portion of the first half was, by far, the most entertaining part. We had a pregnant female God, a lazy, tired, and slightly sick Noah, a rejected sabertooth tiger and a few happy stuffed animals. We also found out, today, that the directors got a new pet bunny. They are thinking of naming it Pebbles. It is grey and still pretty small and feels like my cat. He even snuggled up to my neck, right after he left little presents all over my lap. Luckily bunny poop is dry like raisins.