The pirate ship gives a new meaning to “skeleton crew” and has some quirky rules. An excerpt: 

Captain: “Rule One: all lanterns must be blown out by nine o’clock, bed time, you know. Work must be done by the light of the moon.

            “Rule Two: if you go to a post that I have not assigned you, you must swab the decks for a week. I won’t have any pirate who works too hard on this ship! Makes the rest of us look bad.

            “Rule Three: when raiding a ship, you must grab as much loot as you can. Those who come back empty-handed will be spanked.”

Sailor: “Don’t you mean flogged, Captain?”

Captain: “Rule Four: No one into my quarters but me. So there. Now you know the rules. See you don’t break ‘em.

            “Oh, and Rule Five, of course, no one running away from God allowed on the ship.”

Jonah: “Is that a real rule?”

Captain: “Maybe.”

Lucario (stage whisper): “The master will have to hide the fact that he is running from God, which is impossible.”

As one might expect, a storm rose while Jonah slept. Rousing him, the Captain forced the crew to play a game of Go Fish to determine who would walk the plank. Jonah drew the cursed clown fish card.

Jonah ends up in a clown fish, eventually escapes, after praying, and goes to Nineveh. He preaches and converts the people there, then goes to sit on a mountain, where a monkey (who had been on the cattail, but escaped during the storm by sliding down the anchor to the lifeboat.) breaks off the cucumber he’s taking shade under and bonks him with it. Only in Orville’s version, the angels then come back and get the message of forgiveness through to Jonah, who goes off to help the people of Nineveh.

The scene changes were done by Juss, who flew his Latias (a pokemon) in front of our painted blue sky upon which Roland had pasted clouds that Orville and I cut out. (Ro also pasted the rain on the black storm sky.)  At the end, we had credits. (Jonah was played by Luke Skywalker, for instance.) This was an Evander Pictures Presents production of an Oberon Bible Story, and the special effects were done by Wilbur Clouds and Magic. (Evander, Wilbur, and Oberon are the boys middle names.)

Then, Orville spent this week at Theater camp, that happened to be at John’s church. He LOVED it. It was probably the first activity he’s ever done in his life that he actually did well at.

Next week, we begin our second movie: Snoring Beauty.