The Crazy Stuff That Goes On Around Our House

I'm a pastor's kid, which means that I have to remember the names of about 150 people are without asking too much. (And most of the people are either related to each other, white haired old people, or both.) (About half of the people in church are cousins either by birth or marriage. About half of the non-related people are shut-ins, don't go out much in the winter because it's cold, or migrate to Florida like birds when it's cold. That gives me plenty of time to forget their names.)

Around church, I acolyte, altar guild, help with Confirmation, sew quilts for LWR, visit people with Dad, take messages, relay messages, and get to chase salesmen away with the magic words, "Actually, this is a parsonage, so we'd have to ask the church council." (And then have to explain what a parsonage is.)

Confirmation class is the goofiest thing that I've helped with. There are five people taking it between the ages of seven and twelve. (Two others hang around because their older brother takes it.) Normally, it goes something like this:

3:00--Dad and I get to the church.
3:15--Kid 1 arrives. He asks if we have the treasure box today. I say to ask Dad.
3:20--Kids 2 and 3 arrive. They start playing ball with Kid 1. (Once, they managed to smash a light-bulb. I'm not sure how they managed it because the light bulb was on a window ledge behind a Christmas tree.)
3:25--Kid 4, his grandma (who helps, too), little sister, and little brother arrive. The little brother asks, "What are you doing?" really excitedly. He does that even when I'm just standing there waiting for Dad to tell me what to do.
3:30--Kid 5 arrives. Dad starts corralling the kids to the table. We sing, pray, and Dad starts teaching the lesson. Kid 1 asks questions about everything from "When did Abraham live?" to "When are we eating?"
4:15--We eat. (Popcorn, lemonade, and cookies.) At least four spills are required to take place in this time. (I'm getting skilled at wielding paper towels.)
4:45--Dad tests memory work. Most people remember it after the third try.
5:15--We sing, sometimes have the treasure box. The treasure box currently has sticky reptiles and amphibians, jelly slugs, paper airplane kits, ice-cream poppers, and stuff like that. (Somehow, Kid 1 got a jelly slug stuck to a beam. He tried to get it down, then I tried, then got Kid 2, who's three inches taller than I, who did manage to get it down.)

The thing that makes it goofy is Kid 1, who asks questions all the time. He needs to go read an encyclopedia. A lot of them are good questions (like "How do we know the Bible tells the truth?") and some are off topic (like "How does popcorn pop?"). But the kid never gets all the questions answered because half-way through the explanation, he asks another one. (He also falls out of chairs. I have no idea how, but one minute he's sitting in a chair and the next he's lying on the floor.)

The Confirmation class kids really like it when we do something around the church, like set up for Communion or burn palm leaves or fill candles. (Dad told me to tell about the candle oil and the first thing I said was, "DO NOT DRINK THIS! It is not water! You drink it and you die!" Then Kid 1 asked why, and what we'd do if he did drink it, and Dad said, "Make you throw up then call the ambulance." Then had to explain how to make somebody throw up. Nobody drank the candle oil.) Last Wednesday, the kids helped me with the altar guilding for Ash Wednesday. They put up purple paraments, new hymn numbers (even the four year old helped), filled candles, mixed ash with olive oil and put crosses on each other's foreheads, filled Communion cups, tried wafers (they taste like Styrophom when fresh and are even worse when stale), learned about why there are five crosses on the fair linen (the cloth that's on top of the altar; it has five crosses for the five wounds Jesus had), looked at the button that turns the sound system on, and learned about the Divine Service. (And were told the story about the time Martin Luther spilled some consecrated wine on the floor and so licked it up.) That was a full and pretty smooth class. It hardly ever happens.