What a wonderful life…it’s been a hectic week here at the Joshua building. All of us students and the staff are getting ready for the long hall/ hibernation over winter break. So Wednesday was the big day: Old testament, theology praper, Ragamuffin Project— surprising glitter project, and the grand finale of the Christmas dinner and Ginger bread competition.
Old Testament was awesome!! We learned about the Bible’s 2nd love story Ruth, Naomi and Boaz and the amazing man that Boaz was. After that discussion, we headed into what I thought was our saddest class because it was the last class for this semester. Our teacher, Kevin, was telling us stories about Transcendence and Immanence and let to conversation about sad stories of people dying and getting really sick.
Everyone finished presenting our Ragamuffin projects and the whole room was moved by stories, paintings, and poems. It was a really cool opportunity to hear people’s stories and see how grace is perceived differently for everyone. We finished our projects with a bang as we all were covered with glitter. This is an example of grace that is offered to us, even if we choose not to accept it. The point of the glitter was to represent that grace always sticks on us and never leaves us no matter what we do, or whether we believe we deserve it or not.
After the Ragamuffin projects concluded, we jumped right in to the preparation of our Joshua Christmas Party festivities to come later that night. We hurried to quickly prepare the classroom for our classy yet cheesy Christmas portraits, and then get all glammed up for the night. As we all made our way downstairs to the great room, it never ceases to amaze us with how well us Joshua kiddos can clean up. It’s quite humorous to reminisce back to Wildwood when none of us had been able to shower for four days and then to see each other dressed up to the nines. We had THE most wonderful Christmas dinner of cheese and pepperoni pizza, and were blessed with a surprise visit from the Christmas gorilla. After dinner, we all got to put on our best ugly Christmas sweaters and prepare for the real event of the night…the Pause family gingerbread competition.
The talent, imagination, and effort that went into some of the gingerbread creations was unfathomable- it was truly impressive. We had a replica of the Joshua building that turned out to be an insane asylum, there was an awesome tree house, an aircraft carrier, a ginormous B-52 bomber, a volcano, a hobbit hole, and many others. You could feel the tension in the room as everyone ran in after Bob explained the rules. Everyone was laser focused on creating the best possible creation. It was truly incredible to see what everyone had come up with and all the effort that was put into making it all look the best that it could. Of course this was all for a grand prize; a prize that can never be topped- bragging rights and your picture in the dining hall. The house that ended up winning was the Linderman/ Perez Pause family; they created a tree house with two different houses connected by a candy bridge- it was very impressive. It was so great to see how all the Pause families individually came together to create things as a family and it was so good to get to experience how close the Hume community all engaging in friendly banter and competition; it reminds us all of how lucky we truly are to be engaged in a community like this for the next year and possibly much longer after that.
-Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, from the triplets (Simone Cornelius, Cassie Meissel, Colby Hatfield, and Samuel Nelson; Room 222/111)
Check out the photos from the night here!
New Student Portraits here!