Francis David -- from scratch!

The folks at the UU church in Annapolis, Maryland had a swell idea to adapt the Flat Stanley project, so adored by elementary school classes for the past 40 years, with a decidedly UU slant; they made a "Flat Francis," as in Francis David, the Hungarian priest-turned-Unitarian who swept a trinitarian/anti-trinitarian debate in Transylvania in the mid 1500s and convinced King John Sigismund to change his own religion and to use the principle of religious tolerance to unite his ethnically diverse, war-torn kingdom.

It's quite a story. I have wanted to tell it to the children in the program since first hearing it at the Spirit Play training we held here in Fayetteville in May, but had not yet found the right circumstance. Well, Flat Francis arrived over the holiday break, fresh from Ohio!, and I got for Christmas the small scroll saw that I had asked for to try my hand at woodworking.

Francis David's time has come.

Because I am new to woodworking, the simple but elegant design that Ralph Roberts and the folks at Worship Woodworks came up with served as my inspiration for my very first woodworking project.

It was such fun to make. And since I used scrap wood and a donated basket, the only cost to the program was the peg people and the felt, totaling $5. I share it with the children during Children's Chapel on Sunday. I am So Excited.