I have been a puppeteer for abour 12 years.
I began on a mission trip to London, continued on a couple of subsequent mission trips, and then enlarged the ministry when I joined Bridge Community Church as a new church plant. Starting out, Bridge didn't have the personnel or the facility to hold children's Sunday school, so we had a kids' son and a puppet show during the service. Many of the biggest fans of the puppet ministry in those years were the adults.
In Swaziland, we bring puppets and use them to tell Bible stories. We've told the salvation story based on the children's book "Adam Raccoon at Forever Falls." We've done the story of Zachaeus with African animals. This year we did the story of the prodigal son. I purchased two sets of "people" puppets so we could split into two teams and visit classrooms.
When the team went home, one set of puppets went back with them, the other I am taking with me to Mozambique.
Well, most of the other set, anyway.
You see, this morning, I pulled out the puppets to show them to the people here at the One Heart Africa farm, including a little Swazi girl named Piti. She was fascinated with the puppets (children usually are), particularly with the little girl puppet and the grandma. Watching her play with them, I considered making one of them a gift to her.
Then I heard one of the missionaries comment on how Piti didn't have any black dolls, only white dolls. Apparently, even in Africa, it's hard to get a black baby doll.
That settled it for me. I made a gift of the little girl puppet to Piti. She smiled ear to ear. She played with that puppet on the floor of the living room, she gave it a nap on the sofa, then she wrapped a length of cloth around her and carried the puppet on her back, just like she had seen the grown women do.
Usually, puppet ministry involves actually keeping the puppets to use for, well, puppet shows. But this morning the ministry was just an unexcpected gift to a sweet little girl from a visiting puppet minister.
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