Monday, October 31, 2011

Judgement House

Judgement House is a walk-through drama with a little bit of a Haunted House feel, which is why they are typically done during the week of Halloween. We transformed eight rooms at the church into full set-designed rooms.  Guests walked to each room and experienced, first-hand, this very powerful message of the gospel.

I was asked to be a tour guide - the one who leads guests from scene-to-scene to watch the production.  The tour guide will talk about each scene beforehand and then explain each scene afterward.

My first group happened to include my parents, sister and grandmother.  No pressure, though.  They're probably barely paying attention to every single minuscule move that I make.

And unfortunately, this is when my undiagnosed A.D.D. kicked in.  The county agreed to park an ambulance outside the church as a (really awesome) prop.  As the tour started, we walked by the ambulance and I was all like, 'Wow.  Look at those lights.  I wonder how loud that siren would be if he turned it on.  Is he going to turn it on?  Surely not.  That would be so distracting.  Hey - is that Jimmy Lussier driving that ambulance?  I haven't seen him in forever.'

And the next thing you know, I'm walking in the wrong door - bumping into the tour before mine.  Nice.  It's kind of hard to build credibility as a tour guide when you can't even make it to the first scene.

Being a Type A personality, mistakes really upset me.  This is precisely why I'm thinking about moving to Type B, possibly even Type W.

We walked through all eight rooms including a morgue, a hospital room, Heaven and Hell.  The best part about being a tour guide is that you get to see the raw emotion people feel when they watch this drama.

Bailey was cast as an angel for Heaven.  As if she could be anything else!

And the Heaven scene is the most personal one for guests.  The man who plays Jesus walks up to each individual person and talks to them.  Many tears are shed and many lives are saved during this moment.

But my mom was there as a proud grandmother.  So she edged up closer to the platform and was using her iPhone to film Bailey singing her song, occasionally waving hello to her granddaughter.

Mom literally jumped when Jesus touched her on the shoulder - kind of  like a napping high school student who wakes up when the teacher calls her name in class.  Afterward, we joked about how this might actually happen to Mom in Heaven.  Jesus will be all like, "LOL, Linda.  Go ahead and finishing filming Bailey.  It's cool.  I'll TTYL."

113 people were saved this week at Judgement House!  I was so honored to be part of this amazing, life changing event.


Judgement House Oct. 2011 (Sunnyside Church of God) from Xstream Videos on Vimeo.