Honor and Faith Evangeline portray Christian missionaries about to be cooked for dinner

Family Filmmaking — Hawaii Style

The missionary couple comb the beach for food and signs of life

I suppose everyone has a different philosophy of what it means to enjoy a meaningful vacation. For my part, I want even my rest time to have a clear, understandable, family-building, Christ-centered purpose. I am grateful to my father for constantly giving me such memorable experiences. Such experiences soon emerge as “family-lore” — the great stories of our lives which we share with our children and inspire them and bless the ties of the community of life known as family. As a father, I aspire to emulate my own father’s example by crafting such experiences and building the “family-lore” of my own household. During our recent ministry trip to the Pacific, when my family had a little time for “R and R,” we purposed to build a few memories that would help us to further our mission of fostering unity and team spirit between our children, would parallel the work of our family ministry with Vision Forum, and would be a lot of fun. Our idea: have the children make a movie.

The missionary wife gasps as her husband is seized by tribesmen

Step one was to give the children a clear, obtainable mission: Write, direct, and produce a five- to ten-minute black and white silent film using only available resources, and spending no more than a few hours a day over the course of a week for the planning and execution of the project. The goal was not to make a “great Christian movie” as much as it was to have a great family experience where every member of our family was able to exercise their gifts and demonstrate team spirit on a highly creative, fun project for the glory of God. Step two was to give them a basic plot summary that they could develop into a story. The plot summary was as follows:

Natives spy on the missionary invaders

“Husband and wife missionaries arrive on shore of Pacific island and start preaching the Gospel to the natives who are less than receptive. A battle ensues that results in the missionaries being taken captive by savage warriors, dragged before three pagan princesses who rule over the tribe, and sentenced to the flame. The courage and faith of the missionaries leads to the redemption of one of the princesses who defends them before their execution. The leaders are convicted of their sin and repent and lead the tribe to Christ, which ultimately abandons its savage ways and becomes a people committed to the Lord.”

The missionary is overcome by hostile savages

Step three was to give everybody a role for which they would be personally responsible. We needed one person to storyboard and write the script; one person to direct; one person to be in charge of costumes and makeup (which basically consisted of mud and flowers); one person to find and prepare sets; and everybody to act. We were willing to scrap the historical accuracy of the costumes (i.e., no naked savages). By making the film a silent movie we eliminated the need for sound equipment (which we did not have) and allowed the director to shout directions to the actors when filming sequences. I agreed to operate the camera (a Sony HDV), but would otherwise stay out of the production. The final movie would be produced using the very basic iMovie program on a Macintosh. It took about two hours of HDV tape to produce the final ten-minute product (which is still being polished). Step four was to cast the actors: Liberty, Jubilee, and friend Lourdes would play Hawaiian princesses. Joshua and Justice would play the tribal warriors. Honor and Faith Evangeline would be our missionaries. Baby Providence would make a cameo as the grand tribal executioner.

Two Thumbs Up

Princess Jubilee pleads for the life of the missionaries

As with most things in life, everything took longer than we expected, but the time was well spent and the experience was a joy. When all was said and done, the project was a smashing success — one of the most memorable experiences we have ever enjoyed. (Last night, Beall and I were reviewing the clips and the outtakes. Honestly, we had a bellyache’s-worth of laughter seeing our little ones bring such gusto to their assignment.) By the way, our working title for the movie is Count it All Joy, taken from the fact that Honor recited portions of James 1 about 150 times during the shooting of the film.

The Making Of ‘Count it All Joy’

What is a movie without a few outtakes and a “making of” which is actually more interesting than the movie itself? After the film, we interviewed each of the children. Below, Honor takes time for some relaxation from the difficult task of portraying a missionary.

Honor takes a break from the rigors of having to interact with his demanding base of fans — which consisted of a very slobbery local dog and his baby brother

Liberty and Justice pose for a shot for our “making of” film sequence

The children wanted to demonstrate a difference between the dress of the tribesmen before and after their conversion, so they had the men grow moustaches and put on new shirts (Hawaiian, of course)

Twelve-year-old Joshua with his big sister in the Lord, and former tribal princess

The missionary with his former would-be executioner