It all ends well...

I love teaching Sunday School. Well, let me amend that...I don't actually teach Sunday School, I am a Shepard. You see, our church does this thing called "The Rotation Model" and this is how it works. All the kids gather together for the first ten minutes of the Sunday School hour. Then they split into groups according to their grade in school. They then proceed to a classroom where someone is ready to teach them a lesson pertaining to whatever the theme of the rotation is...for example, we did a rotation about Jesus being a "fisher of men" and we had 6 classrooms set up to teach this lesson in different ways. There was a storytelling room where the story of Jesus gathering his Disciples was being told, and an art room where the kids took actual dead fish (no kidding) and dipped them in paint and made fish prints on muslin. (I don't really know what they were supposed to learn from that. I can tell you what I learned...boys are wimps. All the girls in my class picked up a gross dead fish and made the stupid fish print but none of the boys would touch the fish. Now, the woman who was in charge of getting the dead fish for this exercise waited until the last minute to get the fish and by the time she bought them, all she could find in the "not dismembered dead fish" category was partially dried smoked smelt. Do you know how much those fish stank? Plus, the room we did this in was really, really hot. I haven't smelled anything like it since my college roommate and I emptied out the 10 gallon fish tank and left the poor plecostemous in about an inch of water and then left for two weeks in the middle of summer. Yikes! In our defense, we forgot the stupid fish was there.) Anyway, back to the rotation thing. Each group of kids has a Shepard, and that is where I come in. I just take them to whatever room they need to be in. The idea is that one teacher will teach the same lesson 6 times (one week they will be teaching to the First grade class, and the next week to the Fifth grade class, etc. until all the kids have visited their classroom) and the Shepard's just make sure they get there and pay attention, etc. Well, I have been sheparding Brenna's class every week for the last 3 years and I like doing the sheparding instead of the teaching. That way I don't actually have to "prepare" a lesson and I get to see the same kids every Sunday so I know them really well and they are completely comfortable around me.

Last Sunday, though, was Easter so we did a special program about Holy Week. We kept all the kids together and took them through the Easter Story. In the first room they visited there were two adult men dressed up as Disciples and they reenacted the Last Supper (sort-of. I mean, there were 13 people at the last supper...) In any case, the kids took communion in that room and heard about Judas and the betrayal to come, etc. In the next room was the Garden of Gethsemane. There was a Roman Centurion in that room that told about the actual betrayal and how Jesus was led off to be crucified. The kids then left that room and passed by a huge wooden cross that was in the hallway and quietly entered the tomb. This is where I come in. I was to tell the last part of the story and the poor misguided church people let me pick my own costume. So, did I decide to be Mary the mother of Jesus and tell how I came to the tomb to anoint the body only to be greeted by an angel who told me Jesus had risen? NO. Was I the angel? GIVE ME A BREAK. Was I Peter who had to come and see the empty tomb for himself rather than take the word of Mary? PLEASE!!

I was the grim reaper. I dressed up in Brenna's Dementor costume. If you don't know what that looks like, see the picture above. Okay, so I'm in this totally scary black costume (with a hood that partially covered my face) in an almost completely dark room standing with my back to the kids as they enter. As if they haven't already been freaked out enough by the tale of Jesus getting lashed and crucified! (And let us not forget that Jesus went through all this for YOU, kids!! It's a wonder they aren't all in therapy.) Well, at least they were quiet...except for a few whispered, "Who is that?" I put a stop to that by lifting my arms and showing off the flowing black sleeves of my costume. I'm all about drama. However, I am not all about following the script because the grim reaper isn't actually in the Bible. Whatever.

Before I turned around I asked the kids in a deep voice, "Why are you here?" When they didn't answer, I asked again. Then I turned around. Slowly. When I took my hood off, the first thing I saw was our brand new Children's Ministries director sitting on the floor with about 5 Kindergartners in her lap. Did I mention that it was this woman's first day on the job? Hee! Hee! She must think we're a bunch of freaks to come up with this for Easter!! Well, I then went on to tell how the 3 women came to the tomb and the stone was rolled away and the angel came to ask them, Why do you look for the living among the dead?" and yadda, yadda, yadda. I looked scary, but I got to tell the best part of the story.