Hanging Out with the Puppet Crew

The time has come to bid (at least temporarily) my farewell to the Scripture Union Puppeteers, a group of around ten College age young people who are passionate about puppetry and fellowship. We try to meet once every week or two and in the process share Bible study, testimonies, puppet practice and life as it happens.  Of course breakfast or supper is an important part of our meetings (smiling face).  
 

Recently, with “ordinary” puppets "under their belts,” most of the group have shown great interest in ventriloquism.  Last Saturday after our breakfast, Bible study and prayer, I shared some vent techniques and gave time for some practice.  They again proved keen and we took time to hear from two who had actually used vent during the Scripture Union Mission last month. 

An older picture of the Puppet Team; Jonathan is back row,
3rd from right; Hilda is front row, 3rd from right.

Yesterday puppeteer Jonathan, our tech guy good on sound systems and cameras, celebrated his birthday.  The greetings on What’s UP App went on and on.  What caught my attention was puppeteer, Hilda, who decided to use her newly acquired vent skills and made a video greeting with her puppet Celyn!  I was pleasantly surprised with her lip control and presence, complete with singing "Happy Birthday."  A great short performance! (Now if only Jonathan was here, he might know how to put that greeting into this blog...but that's way beyond our abilities!)

I leave these young people in the capable hands of a Missionary Aviation Fellowship couple who will continue coaching and feeding the puppet crew.  Praise God for the fellowship and even family that this group has become.  Go puppeteers go!

Surprise Sunday

We had known for a few weeks that once her daughter returned from Boarding School, our colleague Beth was having her “farewell” at our church. Beth moved from Kampala into a house in Jinja the end of May; now it was time for the church to officially recognize and pray for her. The day was set for July 9, Scripture Union (SU) staff were invited to the church for the occasion, and Beth was arranging a barbecue following the morning service at Kampala Baptist Church at Scripture Union for the SU people. She told Ruth repeatedly to bring her camera but said nothing more. Sunday morning following Bible study, we sat back in the Worship Service and enjoyed Beth being introduced by the Pastor. Rather than sharing personally, she began by promoting the VOICE program and then CrossTalk…but that didn’t surprise us too much—she’s an opportunist! But I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.  Beth began to read a letter from EvanTell, Dallas, Texas, explaining that their Board had decided to give the annual Matthew 4:19 Annual Award to none other than yours truly.  I was stunned as I stepped forward to receive the world map plaque and a beautiful Evangelism Study Bible that went with it.  Yes, over the past number of years both in the Philippines and now in Uganda, I had done the leg-work for EvanTell to print several hundred thousand CrossTalk and other literature in English, Luganda, Swahili, Burundi, and Zande languages, but this award?!  So the church “Farewell” turned out to be much more than we knew! At the Barbecue, both Ruth and I were thanked multiple times for our contribution of VOICE, CrossTalk, banana bread and more. 

Little by little, the story came out how this had been in the planning for several months between EvanTell, Beth, and the Scripture Union National Director but the glitch was to get the plaque and Bible to Uganda. Finally they were able to connect with a short-term missions team who arrived earlier in the week. We praise God for this unexpected honor and surrender the applause to the Saviour who is worthy of so much more than all that we could ever give Him.

Values In Demand

Last week after the volunteer values teachers from a nearby church finished teaching lesson #3 of the Honesty module to all three of their Kiswa Primary School P4 (grade 4) classes, they decided to find the P7 (grade 7) student who had pleaded with them the previous week if they could also help him and his friends. Upon identifying the correct P7 class, they were surprised that it wasn’t the student who came out to meet them…it was the Classroom teacher! She left her classroom and “demanded” that the volunteer teachers also teach Honesty to all of the P7 classes; she wasn’t going to take “no” as an answer! She told them they must come teach the P7 classes each week right after they finish teaching P4. In fact the volunteer values teachers ended up doing an impromptu introduction to Values right then and there to all three P7 classes.  So, they had no choice but to commit themselves to start teaching the P7s next week, starting with Lesson 1. Pray that the church can recruit more volunteers to help with the wide open door. 

Don’t you love it…teachers demanding that Biblical values be taught in their classes—all praise to God.