The Christmas play

Jaan loves the theater group that he is in at church. They performed their Christmas play a few times over the past week, and they did a wonderful job! The first performance was supposed to be for schools, but they couldn't do that because of the flu quarantine that is going on. So, instead the local Christian institute invited children and families from the war zone (more photos). The kids from the church preschool came, too. I also sat in the back and watched. Then the second performance was for the general public. That's what my photos below are from. There are more and better photos here.

The play is based on the movie Hugo. Taras, the youth leader, likes to take stories or characters and write plays about them with a gospel message included. So, Hugo lives in the Paris train station and has a secret automaton left to him by his father. In this version, the automaton's purpose is to tell the story of Christ's birth. The Christmas story was clearly presented in a very entertaining format. Jaan has been very actively involved in all the practices and building the stage sets and more. His part in the play was a porter at the station and being in the crowd constantly hurrying back and forth; he catches Hugo for the inspector at one point.

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Jaan and Taras
(I did take this one from "Uncle Kolya.")

The tackle:
Grand finale:

Afterwards we went to a restaurant for pizza and borsch. Before the play we had been at the Agape Christmas party. We had thought we'd have time to eat there, but they didn't start with food, and we had to leave before it was time for that. For the last half hour that we were there poor Asya stood with her hands behind her back and stared at the full tables. Then she had to go across town and sit through the whole play. Of course we had to reward all that patience with her favourite food! And the actor in our family ate a whole pizza by himself.