Rome If You Want To

The title is a play on words.  I know it is supposed to be spelled "roam."  Daddy initially thought it would be fun to have that old B-52's song playing as our walk-in music, but ultimately we went with something a bit more triumphant and a more brassy.

We started off our newest series this morning, calling it "Romans" for the first time, whereas before it used to be called "Gladiators."  Since this has a focus on the book of Romans, and isn't really made up of gladiators so much as Roman soldiers, we thought the new name was more appropriate to what it is the series is all about.  You can see Madison above, one of the heralds, one of the twelve characters on stage this morning, and that was just for the skit portion alone.

We had a great service.  The message was about love, as this Thursday we have Valentine's Day coming up.

“Love must be honest and true. Hate what is evil. Hold on to what is good.” Romans 12:9 NIRV

“These and other commandments are all included in one rule. Here’s what it is. ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’” Romans 13:9 NIRV

“I am absolutely sure that not even death or life can separate us from God’s love. Not even angels or demons, the present or the future, or any powers can do that.” Romans 8:38 NIRV

From start to finish, the service was really solid, the easiest launch we had for a series with such a huge cast.  That had a lot to do with Mommy, who worked really hard on costumes this week.  People walked in and were ready to go with some great costuming.  Check out Mr. Clint here, just part of the Roman Legion.

It's going to be a great series. Every single scripture and every single message is entirely based on the book of Romans.  Inside the devotional, everything is Romans.  Inside the message, every sub-point and every passage - all of it is from the book of Romans.  It's going to be great...

What is so wonderful is the enthusiasm of all the actors and volunteers involved.  Across the different campuses, you can see actors dressed up in similar costumes, all embracing the theme we have going this series, dressed up as Roman soldiers - and one campus even built their own chariot!

Here, we introduced our characters and our bottom line of the day, and our ongoing story.  Daddy is going to have to write that - amongst other things - the following weeks.  But it should be a lot of fun to do.  This is a genre that seems to be easier to write for, and there's a bit of material already written here, so that should make things easier in some respects.

You can see one slight modification here - instead of trumpets rented, we got vuvuzelas for the heralds.  So Madison and Skylar are blowing these things, and honestly, it probably sounds a lot better than the rented trumpets we had before.  Plus, and this is a nice bonus, we don't have to deal with this local musical instrument place, which was a pain to deal with last time.  And the vuvuzelas actually look fine there with the girls using them.  They sounded awful, just like a vuvuzela is supposed to sound, and it really added to the humor of the whole moment, as you'd expect some grand brass instrumentation.  Instead, it sounds like a swarm of bees, or a large creature passing gas.

Anyway, it was a great morning at KidPak.  We're in Ancient Rome now, where we'll be for about eight weeks, and things are looking great.

The rest of the day was a bit of rest, homework, piano, studies, and a little Minecraft too.  We read tonight, and started our new Romans devotional as well.  It was a good day, and a great morning - but this is the kind of morning that wears you out!