The Three What??

For Ethan's care package, I thought it would be a nice idea to send along a small nativity for his (and the other elder's) apartment. I was looking for something fairly cheap and even disposable. After all, I didn't want any of the elders to feel like they needed to carry it around for the rest of their mission. I couldn't find one anywhere in the area that I liked. Target doesn't sell them, the ones at the mall and Hallmark are too expensive. There was a $10 one at Wal-Mart but looking closely at the pieces, Baby Jesus' eye was just a blob of paint that really covered half of his face. Not cool at all.

So then I had the brilliant idea to have Mark make an origami nativity. He loves to make origami, and is adept at flowers and other beautiful creations. I actually pulled him out of school one day, and we headed to the library to look for a book with ideas. We found a couple of them, but nothing great. Then, we headed to Barnes & Noble and found the book "UBER ORIGAMI". What could be better? Origami, with a German title (although there was no umlaut on the U--shame on them!)

When we came home, Mark asked me to sit down with him to work on them a bit, and I figured what the heck. I had the good idea of starting with the three kings/wise men. I thought that if it proved to much work to make three sets of nativities, we could just send the three wise men, following a star.

After about four hours of sitting at the table and working on them together, we had our nine wise men. I stood them all up, and realized something:

I don't know if it's just me, but these look more like a gaggle of Klansmen than anything! You know, Ku Klux Klansmen. Granted, their coats aren't white, but they are undoubtedly the nine wise Klansmen. Even as I'm typing this, I'm laughing :-)

Needless to say, they didn't make it into the package. If it weren't for all of the hard work Mark and I put into them, I would have just thrown them in the trash. For now, they are still sitting where we left them--on the kitchen table, reminding us of who-knows-what...