For the last two days I've been struggling with a strange task: mountain-making. You see, since our VBS this year is set at Philippi, on the border of Macedonia. I'm going to be Lydia, the seller of purple, and hold the lessons and singing time at our prayer meetings down by the river; hence I needed a river. My plan was to throw some blue cloth on the floor and pin it down with a couple of potted palms. Well, life is more complicated than that.
First of all, we are using the youth room/adult Sunday School room/ladies former quilting room. The built-in decor is frilly and mauvish furnished with a lovely white couch, love seat and coffee table, a piano, class room tables, an overhead projector and Video Screen, a ping pong table, and a pool table. It's a big room, OK? Which is exactly why I need it. Sixty children moving around and doing motions to songs need a lot of room.
Here's the problem: We can move most of the furniture out, but the piano and pool table have to stay. So we decided that the pool table could be a pool of water and waterfall...onto the blue tarp river along one side of the room. Then a board member suggested that we make a mountain on the wall with a stream pouring down so it wouldn't look like the waterfall was coming out of the floor. (He's not heard of "willing suspension of disbelief" I guess.) Fortunately, the choir closet was stocked with three rolls of banner paper--green, blue, and black. It was a sign. I saved the black for the prison (Another story), and started making mountains.
My biggest problem was what to do with all the stuff on the wall. Now I know real mountains are lumpy...but this?
Yes. I had to cover not one lamp like this, but two, some shirts, a bulletin board, and the rack that holds the cues for pool, so I just sort of molded the green paper over it and made mountains that stick our from the wall. Yesterday it looked silly, specks of sunshine on the light side, splotches of shadow on the dark. If you squinted your eyes really tightly and stood clear across the room it was tolerable, but the fake water--strips of old swimming pool cover--just didn't cut it. When Claye came home for the weekend, she looked at it and gave me a few pointers. Trouble is, they all required a lot of work: more shading, paint the water, add a sky and add another mountain to cover another wall lamp. I worked about five hours last night, just folding, taping, stapling, shadowing, and snowing...yes snowing on the mountains, all the time praying, "Lord, where do I put this glob of paint? How do I streak this white? How can I attach the bottom of that mountain when it doesn't fit?" and the most amazing transformation is happening to that wall. Mountains are emerging from the fog. Look at this! I really can't wait to finish. I feel like I've got a rush of high altitude air. Now if someone will help me move the pool table into place...
