RCC Kids Present: The Best Story, An Imperfect Christmas Pageant

In mid-October, I started working part-time for our church (Reston Community Church.)  I was brought on board to lead the kids ministry, everything from organizing our volunteers to implementing new curriculum.  Seeing as we were approaching Christmas time, my pastor asked me to do the a kids pageant for the Christmas Eve service.  We ended up doing the pageant during the regular church service time due to scheduling constraints with the school where our church meets, so we had the big show yesterday!

Doing a pageant is a TON of work!  I adapted a script that I found online.  My mom helped me sew 18 costumes and I worked on the finishing details, as well as creating 5 sheep costumes by gluing over 1600 cotton balls to shirts and hats!  A guy in our church builds sets for a local theater company and he came up with the idea of building a life-sized Bible that we could use to tell our story.  Someone else painted the set and another person made the drawings to hang inside the Bible.

My throat had been feeling a little sore heading into the weekend and my voice was a little froggy sounding, but yesterday, I woke up hardly being able to get a word out.  After drinking a lot of tea, I could either whisper or speak in a voice that kind of sounded like a goose's honk.  It doesn't sound any better this morning.  My sister had laryngitis a few months ago and it took her 4 days to get her voice back, so I know this may take a few days.  But, the show must go on - and it did!

Folks at church had to help me lead the kids through our on-stage walk through before the service started and another friend jumped in to help direct the kids on stage in the final Nativity scene.  A couple of our two year old boys either weren't there, or refused to go on stage, so we put Tyler in costume and he made his second stage appearance as a sheep (last year, he was the baby Jesus)!  Brennan held his hand and did his best to shepherd his little sheep brother on stage.  I forgot to get the video rolling as the show started and missed the first line, but did manage to get most of the pageant on video.  If you'd like to check it out, here is the video of the performance: 

Did you notice that it took Brennan a couple of minutes to get Jesus' family tree drawing hung just right?!  People were cracking up that he was being so particular about hanging it straight!  All in all, I think the kids did a great job, the stage microphones did a decent job and I believe the audience enjoyed the story!