August 29, 2006

Puppets and More Puppets

Last week marked the "resurrection" of our puppet ministry here in Brazil. On Friday I gave the first puppet lesson to a few seminary students who will be working with us in our annual outreach to the religious pilgrims here in Juazeiro do Norte in November.

After that puppet class, I boarded a bus to make the eight-hour trip to Fortaleza, where a church had invided me to do a puppetry seminar as part of their Sunday School teachers conference.

Usually when I do puppetry seminars, I like to take a team with me, to demonstrate the techniques that are being taught. As I did not have anybody available to do this, I showed video clips of various professional puppet performances. By far the favorite of the evening was the following:

Arriving home at six am on Monday, I had time for a quick shower before taking Mikey to school. While at school I saw the pastor who is in charge of the TV program we are setting up here in the valley. He rather casually mentioned that the first puppet filming would be Thursday.

Thursday! We have no puppet team, no scripts, no scenery. All we have is several puppets and an intense desire to have the kind of impact a TV audience would provide.

I swallowed hard, and told him we would make it happen. So now other things have been set aside and I am writing furiously and making desperate preparations in order to have something worthwhile to film this Thursday.

Posted by Andrew on August 29, 2006 9:19 AM.