FAQs for More Heavenly Friends
Thinking about picking up a copy of More Heavenly Friends but have a few lingering questions? Watch the FAQ video!
Summary
Why are you not using the traditional icons that we see in our church? (0:42)
How did you come up with this idea? (2:32)
Do you really do this with your kids? (4:15)
What ages is this good for? (5:08)
What if I have an idea for something to make? (6:11)
Would you please do an unboxing? (7:05)
How do you choose which saints to include? (8:44)
How do people use the kits? (10:32)
Which saints are in Our Heavenly Friends and which are in More Heavenly Friends? (11:27)
What if I want to do this for my Sunday school class? (13:03)
Why are you using these illustrations? (14:12)
https://vimeo.com/364124088
Transcript
Hey, everyone! Today I'm here to answer a few questions about More Heavenly Friends. Now, these are questions I've gotten for Our Heavenly Friends, but I felt like we could apply them to More Heavenly Friends. And they could help you make a decision about whether to pick up a copy or not.
So I put some questions in here. One of these questions I came up with, so we'll have to see if you can guess which one that is. Now, let's see what we've got.
Okay, so this one is one that I got a lot for Our Heavenly Friends, but not so much for More Heavenly Friends. I think now, a couple of years later, people are kind of used to this decision that I made. But in when Our Heavenly Friends first came out, it was like a big deal.
Why are you not using the traditional icons that we see in our church? Why not be like the exact same icons that are on the wall in my church?
So the first reason for that is copyright, that I respect the rights of the iconography. I don't want to take their hard work and use it for my profit. I don't feel like that would be right.
The second thing is that a lot of the icons that we see in our churches are not icons at all. For example, the image that we are accustomed to of St. Apanoub is not, you know, the one where he's kneeling up to the side is not really an icon to begin with, not in the traditional sense.
And then the last thing is consistency. I'm an artist and I really care about design and style, and I wanted every saint to kind of match in style, the one next to it.
Now, I could have hired an iconographer for this. But iconography is a skill far above my financial abilities. If you're a church who's paid for an iconographer to write the icons in your church, you know that this is not, you know, this is a real talent and a real skill that requires a very specialized person, right?
You don't just draw an icon, you write an icon. And there's a lot of work and gold foil and all kinds of stuff that I frankly don't know that much about. But I do know that it would have been very hard for me to pay and iconography to come up with nine original icons that would have put it out of all of our budgets.
So maybe one day we'll find an iconographer to work with but for now, that is why we're not using traditional icons. Now, let's see what else we've gotten here.
How did you come up with this idea? So I think some of you have read about this before but the way I came up with this idea is I visited Abouna's home. Back in Egypt. I visited his little room and his parents house, and he had the headboard of his bed covered in the pictures of the saints, covered in the little stickers that we used to get when we were kids.
Now when I used to get them as a kid, I had no idea what I was supposed to do with them. I'm kind of a sticker hoarder, I don't really, I don't really like sticking stickers, because once you've stuck them somewhere it's over.
I hadn't really been introduced the idea of a sticker book yet where you could just like save everything in one notebook. But, but at the same time, I felt like it would be rude to throw away the stickers, or sometimes I would give them to mom to put in her purse. Especially when I was younger, I didn't have a purse to put them in.
And then as I got older, I would stuffed them in my Bible until my Bible was overflowing with saints, stickers, and none of those options work for me for my kids. But I did still want them to have an experience with the saints. I still wanted them to make friends with the saints.
And so when I saw my husband's headboard covered in the pictures of it, I was like Why didn't I think to do that? Why didn't I have you know, a headboard to put all of the saints on or, or something like that somewhere where I could keep track of all the saints that I've collected right over the years.
So Our Heavenly Friends and More Heavenly Friends features a poster that tells you exactly where to put the stickers so you don't feel like you're wasting them by sticking them somewhere random. And at the same time, they're not like crammed in your Bible or something like that.
So that is how I came up with the idea of just seeing my husband's headboard. Alright, let's see, what's the next question?
Do you really do this with your kids? Yes, actually, for Our Heavenly Friends, we went through saint by saint. And they put their stickers up, all in order. And we loved it a lot. We haven't done it for More Heavenly Friends yet. I've been so busy trying to get it out into other people's houses, that we haven't really had time to sit together and do it.
But a couple of days ago, they both came to me and like formally requested their copies. They were like, hey, when do we get our copies of More Heavenly Friends, which was really cute. You know, it's like that saying, The shoemakers. Kids don't have shoes.
So for More Heavenly Friends, they have requested especially that I bring it to them and actually I was fighting with my son yesterday about what were in the room. He wants to put it. So he's going to choose exactly where his poster goes. It's a big deal to him. All right.
Let's see what else have we got here? Some of them are stuck together. What ages is this good for? Originally, I had said that it was good for ages 4 to 11. Now, that seems like a wide range. Now even I've had people who two with two and three year olds have some success with it.
Basically, the differentiating factor is at some point your child is reading for themselves. And before that you're reading to them. So if this is a book, you want to just hand to your kids, then we're talking people who can read proficiently from third grade ish to fifth grade.
My daughter kind of feels like she's 11. She feels like she kind of out has outgrown it. But she really hasn't because the stories are simple. And the concepts are there. And I'm not afraid to use bigger words. So there's always vocabulary to learn.
But as young as two if you're the one reading and they're sitting on your lap, and you're introducing them to these saints. It's a beautiful thing. And of course, who doesn't love stickers? Every age loves stickers.
I would definitely say Middle School is not gonna have any interest in this. So don't go there.
What if I have an idea for something to make? If you have an idea for something to make that will benefit the church, please go make it.
I always like to say Coptic Dad and Mom was born out of this, like, waiting. I waited for someone else to do it, waited for someone to hand me these things, right? Like, as a kid, I wanted them to serve me as, as a youth. I was like, Where's my service as a servant? I was like, somebody served me I'm hungry.
And in the end, I was like, Okay, well, you know, if it's not, if no one's going to do it, then somebody has to step up and do it. And I think that you should step up and do it too.
If there's something on your heart that you want to do or make for the church, please make it. Please make it, okay? And I'm sure that everyone in the comments will tell you the same thing. So if there is something you want to make for the church, please make it we all need it.
Alright, next. This one's good. Would you please do an unboxing? (This is the question I made up.)
Ok. So now if you order just More Heavenly Friends or you order just Our Heavenly Friends, it comes in this big white envelope with your address and my address on the outside. And then inside, you have the workbook. And you have this little envelope that I'll show you in a second.
So first, the workbook comes with pages and pages and pages. 64 pages in this (60 in Our Heavenly Friends) but in More Heavenly Friends, Pope Kyrillos has such a rich life that he took… he took up too many pages. I don't know I couldn't cut anymore. Do you know what I mean?
So and then I have some cool activities, a coloring book and a couple of like posters or like infographics in here that I'm really proud of. And, of course, as you can see, our beautiful illustrations.
So that's the workbook and then over here you have the teeny tiny envelope, which inside it has not one, but two of the posters. Okay, so these posters are 11 by 17 are folded to ship easier for you, then they unfold and you can put them on your wall.
There are two of them. So if you have two kids like me, you don't have to buy two kits. This is--I've got your back on this. Okay. And then in here, you have the stickers, two sets of stickers and this is our adorable St. Mark with his lion and his Alexandria lighthouse. Okay, and so that is what comes in your kit.
Next question. How do you choose which saints to include? Okay. So, um, several ways.
First, I'm trying to cover all of the main saints. First, I want everyone including let's say like a convert to have access to the saints everyone talks about all the time. I want them to know the saints like St. Apanoub or Saint Marina, the ones that are like common lexicon, you know, for us as Copts. And so I try to cover the common ones first.
But I'm also trying to introduce some diversity, make sure we get enough women in their different races, if possible. Whenever I can make, just show off basically, how rich the experiences of, of the church are like, we have old people, people who grew to old age, we have martyrs who were martyred at a very young age, we have virgins who were never married, we have mothers who had children, we have, you know, like all kinds of different ranges of lifestyles.
I'm trying to sort of make it clear that every saint who lived for Christ did not necessarily have an identical lifestyle, if that makes sense. They're not all monks. They're not all soldiers. They're not all nuns.
They all have sort of a story to tell. And they lived their own life that God called them to, their own life in Christ. And so we have people who are meek and quiet and humble, there are people who are loud and strong and aggressive, like, say demand who's like, you know, sends her dad back to his death? Because she's like, what were you thinking?
So I love that I love that our church's so rich, and I'm trying to, you know, cover all the bases with every kid. So that's kind of how I decide who goes into it.
How do people use their kits? So, for me, personally, what we do is, it's like a bedtime story. We read a saint at night and we then I can bring up that saint for either the rest of the week, depending on if I did it like once a week, one once a week, or if I did it, even just like you can do that all in two weeks if you want.
I do have people who use it a kind of as a homeschooling curriculum. They kind of stick it into their homeschool system.
I also have people who... One tasoni was telling me that she uses that kind of to give their kids a monthly virtue. So it There are nine saints, nine virtues. So every month becomes the month of that saint and of that virtue that they study the whole month and they work on whole month, which I just think is brilliant.
So something to think about a lot of different ways to use the kit. For sure. Now, whatever works for you, you have to make it work for you.
Which saints are in Our Heavenly Friends and which are in More Heavenly Friends? Okay, I meant to bring a cheat sheet for this question. But I can tell you who is in More Heavenly Friends because I have the book right here, right?
So I'm just kind of obsessed about saying them in order, you know, because that when I put them in the little, when I put them in the little sticker patches, I have to I like count them and so every saint has a number in my head.
More Heavenly Friends has St. Mark, St. Sophia and her three daughters, St. Philopateer Mercurius, St. Mary of Egypt, Pope Kyrillos the Sixth St. Justina of Antioch (Youstina), St. Sarah of the desert and St John the Short.
Those last two I learned about from Creative Orthodox. So make sure that you are a fan of the Creative Orthodox page.
And then for Our Heavenly Friends, it would be St. Mary, St. George, St. Demiana, St. Mina, St. Marina, St. Moses, St. Helena, St. Pishoy, and St. Verena.
What if I want to do this for my Sunday school class? Okay, if you want to do this for your Sunday school class for Our Heavenly Friends, I'm going to open up the ordering so that you can order a servant kit.
A servant kit for Our Heavenly Friends is a little bit different from the family kit and that features a bigger poster 12 by 18 in this gorgeous cardstock like it comes to you not rolled or folded or anything--it's beautiful. And you get you got a poster for every kid plus extra, you get stickers for every kid plus extra but they're arranged by saints so that you can hand them out each week. And then a workbook either one or two workbooks for you as the servant to have.
And then this is a bonus. This is extra, but you do get downloadable poster or excuse me downloadable coloring pages so you can print as many as you need instead of having to photocopy the book. And there are videos for the Our Heavenly Friends saints. These are kind of like secret surprises that I send, but I guess the secret's out.
For More Heavenly Friends, I'll be working on the servant edition. And that will come out in November. So keep your eyes open for that.
Okay, and last question is why are you using these illustrations? These illustrations specifically I'm using, because I really love Stephanie's style. And I felt like it was close enough to an icon.
What I mean is I think that you learn a lot about the saint from the different symbolism that's used. So we made sure the symbolism is there. We made sure that the saint is looking straight out and made sure that that they're consistent because that was the thing I was saying before.
So if you… if you see icons, official icons, written icons of these saints, you should be able to recognize them from Stephanie's work, from Stephanie's illustrations. So see this beautiful that tahouna (millhouse) and St Mina Monastery for Pope Kyrillos. (He's so cute.)
So I just really love how gentle the style is. I feel like it's very appealing to kids. And at the same time very respectful. The saints are standing, they're calm, they're looking out at us just as they would in an icon and all of the symbols that that we use to remember their story are included.
Alright, so that's it. I've run out of questions if you have more questions you want to ask you can ask down below. Otherwise, again, go to ourheavenlyfriends. com if you want to pick up a copy of More Heavenly Friends.
And if you have any other questions, definitely make sure that you put them in the comments below.
Thanks so much. Have a blessed day!