Journey to Judea

One of our Christmas activities this year was to go to the Journey to Judea put on by Countryside Baptist Church in southern Olathe.  It's an hour-long outdoor tour of maybe 15 or so vignettes covering events from Exodus on through to the Resurrection.  Brent went with us, and while we waited for our group to be ready to go, we enjoyed some cookies and hot chocolate.   Clara sat in a chair and specifically requested Uncle Brent to sit by her, which made her really happy.

We then went out on the tour.  The girls pretty much refused to wear their coats, and concerned people asked us if we had coats for our children.  We assured them we did, but they seemed skeptical of our parenting.  But it really wasn't that cold out, and we knew they would ask for them when they were cold enough, and they did.  You walk from station to station, through the trees to each one, so there is a fair amount of walking.  The tour was quite good.  The actors were all from the church, but they were all skilled.  There were even live animals.  For example, there was a sheep representing the ram caught in the thicket after God tells Abraham not to sacrifice Isaac.  The sets were surprisingly elaborate too.  The empty tomb vignette, for example, had actual massive stones in place with a boulder that had been rolled away.  It was there that my favorite moment of the night happened.  It was around 10pm at that point (we started at 9 because the earlier slots were sold out), but our kids were still doing well, despite all the walking and the late hour.  Our group had about 25 people in it, and we were all listening to the monologue given by the actress representing Mary talking about being at the tomb and Jesus not being there.  During her speech, she said something like, "But the tomb was empty!  What had happened?!"  It was a rhetorical question, as this was a monologue, not an interactive session, but Joshua had been watching with rapt attention and before she could get to her next line, little Joshua blurted out, "I know!  It's because he came back to life."  Most of the people in the group cheered or clapped or laughed because it was so cute.  Joshua didn't know any better.  He just heard Mary ask a question, and he was pretty excited that he knew the answer, so he yelled it out.  People came up to us afterward and said to us and/or Joshua that it was great to hear him know the answer and to be so excited to say it.  So that was a nice little moment in our evening, and we enjoyed it overall, and I think we'll probably try to go again next year.