The Mad Muppet Ministry!

The Spanish word for puppet is "Títere" and we see the potential to use puppets in many areas of our ministry such as to introduce concepts or even to teach a lesson.

The national leaders for the after school ministry have been talking about “títeres” since January when we conducted their training and so the journey began.  I would call this a "great puppet adventure" but that just sounds to much like a muppet movie title.

 I (Matt) started researching puppets on the web earlier this year and bought an e-book called, "The Foam Book" and started making my first ever muppet style puppet.

 He's all foam and so came together pretty quickly.

I was pretty happy with the finished puppet but knew that I would need more to use in a puppet ministry and especially needed more resources in Spanish.   The week before leaving for the states I googled, "Christian puppet scripts in Spanish" and at the top of the result list was the Fellowship of Christian Puppeteers!  

To make things even sweeter, they were holding their annual conference in Maryland the second week we would be home.  So, I registered and made the hour and fifteen minute trek each day to go learn.  I don’t look at this as happenstance that the conference was just when we needed it but God’s amazing sovereignty!

We tried to attend every puppet construction workshop we could fit in.  The folks leading the workshops each have an amazing amount of experience in puppet ministry.  Linda in this photo has worked in puppet ministry for more than 20 years and that's while working full-time as a nurse!

Linda had pre-sewn the bodies so we just needed to put in the foam, the mouth, the nose, eyes, hair and dress them up!

Here they are just missing legs, hair and clothes.

What a transformation!!  We have a little boy that we named Tavo after a pastor in Honduras that he reminds of, and a little girl that we named Linda (pronounced "lean-da"). 

Here are Ron and Freda teaching us another construction method.  They have over 39 years of leading puppet ministries!!   

They do not use cloth over the foam and generally do not make legs.

Instead of cloth, we spray painted the heads and arms.  This is a faster construction method and final puppet is also much lighter.

These two came out looking like a grandparents.  They are the two in the right front of the photo below... still in need of some clothing.

The folks at the conference felt moved to send us back to Honduras well equipped, so they loaded us up with puppets and some funds to buy more puppetry materials!  Some of the puppets above we made during the conference and some were donated.  The big gorilla on the left was made in a workshop on converting stuffed animals to puppets.

Pictured above are the incredible Christian puppetry leaders.  They have worked hard to develop an amazing talent to share the good news of Jesus Christ through puppetry and the arts.  May the Lord continue to bless them and expand their work!

As of this writing we are back in Honduras and reading through several Spanish scripts in order to decide which to begin with.  We will be building a puppet stage from PVC and practicing with the folks here!

Please pray for this new undertaking to get off to a strong start and to glorify our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!!

And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ Matthew 25:20-21