During this week here in Phuket, we’ve been helping out a team of Canadian missionaries who came here after the Tsunami. Thailand is a largely Buddist country, and for the most part, to be Thai is to be Bhuddist. The team has been given a few amazing opportunities to come into schools and share the Christmas story with the students. These guys worked really hard at preparing a 1 hour program to take to different venues… two parks, two schools and an English club. They did an amazing job pulling together a nativity play (I made the costumes and brought them with us), as well as another little skit, some Christmas carols in Thai, and a couple of games.
Our family was invited to be involved in the play… I helped with a little intro skit about all the different Christmas traditions people around the world use to celebrate, Joel was Herod (though really wanted to be sweet baby Jesus), and the boys were shepherds.
We did the play for the first time at a park on Tuesday night. For the last few months the team has been going to this park, which is beautiful and well used, and happens to border on a very poor neighbourhood. Every Tuesday night the team comes with hockey nets and sticks and play street hockey with the kids. They usually have about 20+ kids show up. As soon as we parked and started unloading the faces started appearing… these little guys look forward to having all these big Canadians playing with them once a week. Doing the play for them was fun and a bit of a gong show with little guys wandering onto the “stage” mid scene… so cute. We had fun playing hockey, coloring, and doing the play with the kids, who all went home with a treat bag. A great chance to do the play once through with an audience before the next day at the school.
And that’s where we spend Christmas Eve. We did two “shows”, one for the preschool-grade 3 and one for the 4-9th graders. There were about 500 kids in EACH group…. it was insane. The play was a hit, the games were so fun for them (we did the one where gifts are wrapped in many layers and you pass it around your table until the music stops then unwrap a layer, do it all over again until someone gets to the gift—you know the one.) It was soooo cute to watch. For the younger group, we passed out a candycane and a Thai story of Jesus’s birth as they left. Watching those little hands “wai” us (their gesture for thank you--putting their palms and fingers together infront of them, and a little bow)… it just melted us. I could have packed up a couple dozen of those kids.
They fed us an amazing lunch and then came the older kids… the ones more our kids age. It was a mad house! As they were coming into the “cafeteria” Joel-the-giant got a lot of attention. Again, they loved the play and afterwards there was time for “mingling”.
Joel – would just hold his arm straight out in front of him and kids were trying to jump so their heads hit his hand--- endless entertainment. It all sequed into armwrestling.
Brodie – first dazzled a small crowd with is “stupid human tricks” (popping his shoulder out of joint) which led way to arm-wrestling with other boys until his poor little spaghetti arm could take it no more.
Me – these kids LOVE getting their picture taken, which was exactly what I wanted to do too! So between the odd request for a close-up look at my braces, I was mostly a photographer for Thai’s next top model.
And then there was Adam.
I don’t know what to say except that it was probably close to a Jonas Brothers Tour experience. As soon as it was time to “mingle”, about 100 young ladies produced cell phones to take pictures of Adam, had him typing his phone number into their phones, and was signing autographs.
I was amused on a number of levels, including the fact that I don’t own a cell phone that takes photos.
As for the star himself, he enjoyed every split second of his 15 minutes of fame.
It was a pretty great Christmas eve.
