The Algona Nativity

I only wish it was closer. If it were, this year I'd take my whole family to see the Algona Nativity, the POW museum too, because it's fascinating, but especially the Nativity. Last year I went alone a couple of weeks before the Christmas rush so my tour was richly personal--just me and a gentleman who could not have the loved Algona's own story more. The visit was worth every minute of the trip, but my personal guide made the Nativity sing.

I could reprint what I wrote last year, but why not just listen in to the telling I gave it on KWIT.

But this year let me add just one more little story. That wonderful docent told me that once upon a time he'd taken an old preacher through, a Grandpa who brought a couple granddaughters with him, neither of whom were as taken by the whole business as Grandpa was or would have liked. They were getting giddy. Kids do. 

He said through all the tours he'd given, he'd devised a trick that sometimes worked, so he told the little girls to count sheep--there are 33. That ploy would buy Grandpa Preacher some time and maybe quell the uprising. The kids bought the plan, went in, spent the kind of time he'd hoped it would require, and came out bright-eyed.

"There's 34," one of them said. They'd done a good job, but they were wrong.

He says he wasn't hyper-critical about it, but he knew very well that those POWs had created 33 sheep. "Nope," he said, "you're wrong. I know. Let's go count them again." So the whole bunch went back into the scene, and he deliberately pointed them all out, counting as he went along. "So, there's 33," he told them.

And then, as he's telling me this, he started to tear up. 

"And you know," he told me his voice breaking just a bit, "one of those little girls looked up at me and said, 'We counted the baby Jesus too--he's the lamb of God."

I couldn't help wondering how many times he'd told that story while taking visitors through, but that little girl's wisdom still brought tears. 

That's a story I didn't tell last year, a story I've not forgotten.

Enjoy. https://www.kwit.org/post/algona-nativity