"The Iron Rod is not a weapon!"
Last night for family home evening, we read and re-enacted the Tree of Life vision from the 8th chapter of 1st Nephi. I'm not sure how much Zeke was able to glean from it. Well......now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure he gleaned absolutely nothing. That aside, it is a pretty good story for children because it's easily visualized and interpreted. Elizabeth set up our tree (artificial ficus complete with rice cakes for "fruit"), river (blue bed sheet), rod of iron (wrapping paper roll wrapped in aluminum foil), spacious building, etc. while I had the important task of choosing which of Zeke's figurines would represent each of the characters in the vision. Homer and Marge Simpson won the roles of Lehi and Sariah, naturally. This really small grumpy guy who came with one of Zeke's train sets was Laman. Ernie from Sesame Street was Lemuel. A handful of dinosaurs and miscellaneous figurines played the parts of the people in the spacious building. We wanted Zeke to play Nephi, but that went about as well as can be expected with a squirmy 3-year-old. After re-enacting the vision we had Zeke stand on one side of the room and gave him instructions to use the rod of iron to walk along the path and get to the tree and fruit. This was his interpretation of these instructions.........
I'm still wondering how he came to the conclusion that we were actually asking him to take the Rod of Iron and bash the Tree of Life until the fruit fell off. I guess he did physically use the Rod of Iron to get to the fruit so we can't completely discount his version. We did make sure to explain that the Rod of Iron was not intended to be a weapon of any sort. Maybe next week we can see how a three year old interprets some of the visions from Daniel. Yikes.
Posted in: on Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at at 1:58 PM
Brooke and I were dying laughing at the Tree of Life/pinata. I don't know which part was my favorite; When Zeke gets a high-five from his dad after he almost chops down the Tree of Life, or the lightning quick moves at the end when the Rod of Iron is almost implanted into Pott's head? It's really a toss-up. That was some quality family home evening time.
That is hilarious. I am actually quite impressed as to the length of your family home evenings. Great job.
P.S. Thanks for having us over for some Rock Band/Real Band practice. Mark had a great time and now talks of wanting to play drums.
wow. i really want to come over some time for FHE at your house. ours mostly consists of safety scissors and glue sticks (if we're lucky).