Reformation Day 2007

We've made it a tradition at Heritage to celebrate Reformation Day (Oct. 31) every year as a church. This year, also being our first year in Tennessee, we decided to extend our fellowship a bit and invited another church in our area to join us.

Now, before I get too far ahead of myself, let me back up a bit. About two years ago, at one Reformation celebration, we had a potato canon contest and that was when Daddy first mentioned a certain idea of his: a trebuchet contest. How, when, or where it was all going to work, he wasn't sure, but he kept thinking about it. At the beginning of this year, he sent an e-mail over to the leaders of Covenant Family Fellowship, the other church in our area, inviting them to our Reformation party and also challenging them to a great trebuchet contest; building trebuchets that would launch 7-10 lb. pumpkins. Later in the year, CFF accepted and the planning began. In order to fit the trebuchets into our day, we decided to give this year the theme of the Scottish reformation. Then Daddy had another wild idea: that we would all dress the part! Yes, the men would wear Scottish kilts and the ladies Scottish dresses. And we kept that part a secret. That meant that all the women would be busy sewing while the men worked on the trebuchet. Our work didn't begin until the middle of September. We milled all of the lumber off of our property, which saved a bunch of money, but was also just cool. (sorry, Mrs. Lingo, but I just had to use it!) None of us had ever built a trebuchet before or sewn kilts, so this was quite a learning experience. But those can often be the most fun! We enjoyed much fellowship every week since then and finally got the job done. At the last minute, we decided to quickly memorize King Alfred's War Song so that we could all sing it while in our Scottish attire. As our big Reformation Day drew near, we were all so excited! We just couldn't wait! Dad's vision was really happening! So here's how it all happened.

On November 3, last Saturday, we started off with a brunch around 10:30am: oatmeal with dozens of wonderful toppings. We all just enjoyed fellowship for the next hour or so, till the CFFtrebuchet showed up. And indeed it was a fine trebuchet! Everyone turned to see their work and cheer them on as they drove by. That was the cue for the Heritage folks to start heading down to the Stouffers' place to prepare for our grand entrance. Alright, now just take a minute to picture this: about 40-50 people, many of which were children, going to one house to all change clothes as fast as they possibly can. Can you say chaos? But it was great! Once everyone was ready, we all hiked up into the woods, squeezed (and I mean really squeezed) into two suburbans, and rode to where our trebuchet was hidden. I think we had about 20 people either inside one car or hanging off of it. Anyways, we got down to the trebuchet, tried to be as quiet as possible (nearly impossible with 40 people), and once the flag was attached to the main beam, we all climbed in the back of the truck or on the trebuchet. Dad had his drum and once we started rolling down the field, he began playing. About halfway to our destination, we all sang King Alfred's War Song at the top of our lungs while grinning from ear to ear till finally we were to the battle field.

Once we had everything set up, there was a coin toss to see who would shoot their trebuchet off first. CFF won, but deferred to us, so we prepared for the first shot. The pumpkin was put into the sling and the countdown began. "3...2...1...FIRE!" As soon as the pumpkin was in the air, wild cheers rose up out of the crowd. Our pumpkin went approximately 144 yds. out into the field. It actually went farther that we had seen it go in previous shots, so it was a nice surprise. Next up was the Covenant Family Fellowship trebuchet. They loaded up, began the countdown, and the pumpkin went soaring through the air as more wild cheers arose from the audience. We had decided that each team would get 3 shots and while we were loading for our next shot, CFF shot off their remaining two pumpkins. While theirs didn't go quite as far as ours, we had to give them credit for fast loading/firing and consistency! All three of their pumpkins landed within about 3 ft. of each other! Pretty good! For our next shot though, we picked up the biggest pumpkin out there which proved to be our downfall. We fired and the pumpkin slipped out of the sling and rolled backwards about 30 ft.! It made for a good laugh, but didn't help much in distance!

After firing the trebuchets, we enjoyed more fellowship, got together some games including volleyball, bocceball, boffing, football, and I'm not sure what else, played instruments, and just had a wonderful, relaxing afternoon. We had a big BBQ dinner and then sat around the campfire while Dad talked about John Knox and the Scottish reformation. After that, our day was formally over, and slowly people started to go back home to prepare for the Lord's Day. We did end up having a few families who were staying on the farm with us join us for a short dance which was really a great way to end the day.

It's amazing to think how much time, work, and effort we all put into this big Reformation Day which was over within just a few short hours, but I don't think any of us would have had it any other way. It was worth every bit of everything we put into it!

Here is a photoshow that I put together of our wonderful day.

And here is one of all of our preparations for the big day.

Also, for more pictures and thoughts about our day you can check out this blog, as well as this one, and this one.