One of the areas of my day tp day life that has taken quite a hit during the corona virus pandemic has been LOL, the team of middle school jugglers I coach and have been coaching for many years. Our school is not permitting field trips of any kind, and even if it were to, the vast majority of our venues are not allowing outsiders in. So this week we tried sometihng different. We did a show for three different audiences similtaneously: a home schoolers group that meets at Windham Christian Academy each Wednesday, WCA's high school, and Ossipee Valley Christian School's student body 20 miles away. OVCS was connected to us via Zoom, while the other two groups were socially distanced in our school library.
And what a show it was. It was by far the most responsive audience we have had so far this year. The fact that we actually had people live in the audience, of course, helped this to happen. But LOL certainly rose to the occasion. We opened with the Wise and Foolish Builder parable, and Nathan played the role of both builders brilliantly. I told him after the show that he was by far the most foolish builder I've ever taught; he knew what I meant!
Many of the audience members commented to me afterwards that Zech has made tremendoius strides in his acting form when he was an 8th grader, and he does, if fact, have several major roles he has grown into. Maddie as always gave a solid juggling performance. She doesn't do any of the advanced tricks yet, but she always be counted on for consistency. I don't think she knows how to drop!
We thought Tanner would be abset for the show, but he was not. This is really good because he is our only stilt-walker this year. Naturally he plays Goliath in "David and Goliath" because the stilts make him head and shoulders taller than anyone in the class. Actually, head, shoulders and half a torso taller! Tanner also juggled two balls and a battle ax for the first time in a show.
A subplot that was playing out sithat the high school portion of the audience kind of invited themselves at the last minute. This made many of the young performers nervous, some begging me to ask them not to stay. After all, most of the high schoolers have been in LOL in the past, and, well, some of the middle school girls get really nervous around the high school boys just walking past them in the hallways. But I allowed the older students to stay, and the performers had to press on. And press on they did. Afterwards, some of the students who were most newvous having the older kids there said they were glad they stayed. I reminded them that, when people ask to be present for a Gospel presentation, we should always be ready to welcome them.