Have you ever seen the movie “Private Eyes” with Tim Conway and Don Knotts? I know I saw it many times with my sister and we always thought it was so funny. I haven’t seen it in a long, long time but somehow, I think it probably isn’t as funny as I thought when I was little. One thing always stayed with me from that movie though, the word Wookalar. I don’t remember the context of it in the movie I just thought it was a hilarious name for a monster, I guess I still do. To me one of the funniest things I can tell a student, of any age, is that there is a Wookalar in the bathroom just above the sink. Most of the time they know I’m just playing a joke that only I will think is funny and most of the time they are also correct. Just above the sink is the mirror and the joke is, “they are the Wookalar”. Even typing it, the thing makes me laugh. With our students we are still meeting outdoors under the carport of the mission house Bronwyn and I currently occupy. We open the church doors closest to our house so they can have access to bathrooms and last week I just couldn’t help but ask a few if they had seen the Wookalar. They knew it was going to be dumb and to them it was, to me however it was amazingly funny. Just saying the word Wookalar is funny to me. I found the scene from the movie if you want to check it out. If you decide to watch it all let me know if it holds up.
A few days later we were meeting, and I hung up a picture from the movie of the Wookalar. Again, they did not think it was funny but what they did think was funny was holding up a picture of me and saying that I was the Wookalar. Honestly, whoever wrote that movie should just be happy anyone remembers it 39 years later. Speaking of mirrors, as a camp director almost every summer I had to deal with “Bloody Mary”. If you aren’t familiar with that its when you go to the bathroom and turn off the lights and she appears in the mirror. There are several variations, like you say her name 3 times or twelve or whatever and then she kills you or haunts you but all basically the same thing. After it would start, I would always do the exact same lesson about how our eyes adjust to light and so the reflection you are actually seeing is your own as you become more accustom to the dark. I loved when it happened because it gave me the opportunity to talk about how amazing the human body is and how clear it is that we were designed by a Master Designer. Look, I know people who have already decided that the eye, like the rest of the body, just came about through evolution. But to me that takes much greater faith than trusting that there is a Great Designer and He created us and as it is written in Psalms 39.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
And not only is there a Creator but there is a Creator we can know and have a personal relationship with. Because it also says in Psalms in chapter 100:
3 Know that the Lord, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Our Creator lovingly made us and now calls us into a relationship with Him and calls us His people. Anyway, I already know you’re going to pull that Wookalar joke on someone, please tell me about it when you do.
Brett and Bronwyn 