Wedding shower fun

These lucky ladies got their picture taken before the art project began

Praying for Amanda

Pretty soon you'll get to read a post here about our friend Amanda's wedding, but first you have to hear about her wedding shower!  It took place ten days ago, but I haven't been online much recently, thanks to load-shedding power cuts.  Oh yes, power cuts.  Just in case you're not familiar with what load shedding is, let me explain.  You see, sometimes the electricity goes out because there is a storm and a power line gets knocked down or something.  Then when the problem is fixed, the power comes back on.  That's the sort of power outage with which you're probably familiar.  And then there are power outages when there is some sort of issue that needs to be fixed, so the electricity company cuts your power for a wee bit while it's repaired and then it comes back on when they finish.  That's kind of like the storm-caused outage, except there has been no storm.

And then there is load shedding.  That's when there simply isn't enough electricity to go around, so the power company turns off half of the town for ten hours or so, then switches to the other half.  And, sometimes on special days, they turn off the entire town/region/country.  Right now we're in the midst of ten days (or so... one can't count on these things finishing exactly on time!) of such power cuts.  Apparently there is some problem somewhere that requires extensive repairs or replacement or something, so the whole country of Tanzania is enjoying a severe electricity shortage while the issue is dealt with.  It's pretty fun.  Ha.

Where was I... Amanda's wedding shower!

So, in honor of our dear friend Amanda's upcoming marriage, our ladies' Bible study group threw her a wedding shower.  Amanda wanted some of her Tanzanian friends to come, too, so I had to figure out some games that worked across language barriers.  I went searching online for wedding shower games, and found a few fun ideas that I could use as a starting point.  Not being one to follow recipes when cooking, neither am I one to follow game instructions to the letter.

One game turned out so well and is so multi-purpose that I thought I'd mention and recommend it (or a variation of it) here.  Here's what you do:

-Collect a bunch of pieces of paper that is blank on at least one side (ours had a draft of the JESUS Film in the Kabwa language on the other side, because that's the sort of scratch paper we cool missionary types have lying around)
-Collect as many pens as people in your group
-Collect books of the same number
-Choose a topic and judge

Distribute all of the above items and then tell folks that they are to draw a picture of the bride on her wedding day (or whatever else works for your group - a Thanksgiving turkey, a Christmas tree with presents, the new mother and baby, etc.).  A few artistic types will like the idea and everyone else will be annoyed that they have to draw.  Then tell them that they have to do it on their heads with NO peeking (see pictures above).  At this point everyone will be kind of annoyed.  But once they start, they'll all start laughing and it should be a good riot.

There is no time limit - when you finish, you're done.  It won't take long.  Give all the papers to the judge, who can hold up each one, talk about its merits (few) and issues (which are likely many), and choose the best (meaning, the picture in which the bride's head is actually attached to her body).

However, after saying all of that, I must confess that in our group, artistic talent did come in handy, because it was the art teacher in the group who had the best picture.  We all had a good time creating our scribbly pictures, but there was one picture that looked better than mine would have even if I'd been looking the entire time!