Puppets!

I´ve have become rather lazy when it comes to updating this blog. I did promise to update every week. As I kinda expected, the longer I´ve been here the busier I´ve become. Somedays I´m lucky if I can spare 30 mins to sit in an internet cafe. And even then, thats not enough time to write my family and post a blog. So there is your reason. However, when I have had a crazy experience or there is important information to pass along, I always ¨make¨ the time to update.

Last Sunday I preformed my first real puppet show. It was a crazy time getting it all put together. I spent a lot of time shopping (sorry, no hobby lobby here folks), spent time writing a puppet script and finding a place I could print it out, and creating the puppet stage and props. And I am glad to report that all that time I invested made a for a very sucessful puppet show! One of my good bolivian friends helped me to perform the story of Noah and the Ark. I wrote the script in a way that it was a Grandmother telling her granddaughter the story. I also worked it so that my bolivian friend had the majority of the speaking parts as my pronuciation and speaking speed still need a lot of work. I also found a Noahs Ark childrens song in Spanish and we sang along with the CD as part of the show.


The children loved it! We had their complete attention the whole show (which, granted, wasn´t THAT long). A friend did a practical application afterwards and then I gave out coloring sheets related to the story.




This week coming up is pretty much the same for me. My team is planning a VBS for our orphanage kids and I have written a 3 part puppet performance. The theme is Obedience. I´ve almost completed the shopping portion and now I am working on creating the props and other helps.

I´ve been despartely looking for something I can make props out of instead of posterboard. Posterboard is rather ¨floppy¨ and can´t stand on its own. I decided that I needed styrofoam. And then I saw someone carrying a huge sheet of it in La Cancha. If the man hadn´t been a soldier I would have asked him where he bought it. I described in spanish the best I could to my house mom but she wasn´t understanding. Then I was talking to my teams interns and one guy said ¨You mean the stuff they sit on at futbol (soccer) games?¨ I was like, you´ve got to be kidding me, could it be that easy? That what I told my house mom and she´s like ¨of course! We call that ´plastoformo´¨ and she told me where I could find it. Well, that turned into an adventure all its own... and in the end, I did find my styrofoam! And its soooo cheap too. Now to make the props out of it, hahaha. So thank God for plastoformo!

I´ll update up the VBS as soon as its completed :)

Finally starting to feel like...

A Missionary! After 7 solid months of having restricted time available for ministry due to langauge tutoring, I have finally cut back to just one hour of class a day. There were multiple reasons for this one of them being that my team leaders are now on furlough and I wanted to have more time available to help my team. All my newfound ¨free time¨ is getting scarce because something good is happening. I´m busy preparing and doing ministry! I can´t tell you how good it feels to be helping my team and bringing my own gifts and abilities into play.

For example, last week I spent a good deal of time preparing for an upcoming puppet show in my church´s ministry in Sacaba. There was a lot of shopping for supplies, creating a puppet stage, and most important, writing a script in Spanish. It is looking very probable that early next month we will be hosting a VBS of sorts for our kids as they are on their winter break (remember everything is opposite here). I am excited like you wouldn´t believe to begin preparing a three part puppet show for our kids. I have also begun going to our 2nd orphanage once a week to help ¨watch¨ our kids for a few hours. I prepare some small things for the kids to do during this time as well. I´ve also picked up some misc chores that the team needs done.

I´ve been praying a lot about what my role on this team is suppose to be. And at some point, I couldn´t tell you when exactly, I discovered that I have a really strong desire to see these kids develop their individual personalities, gifts, and strengths. What exactly this will look like I don´t know yet. Mostly I think it will have a lot to do with giving them opportunites to express themselves, be it artistically, with writing, with music, ect. Please pray for me as God continues to reveal this vision to me. Its quite a stretch for me considering I´m not artisitic, or musical, and not entirely too crafty. But it is what God has laid on my heart and He will enable me to fulfill this vision. How would you know if a child was created to be a painter if no one ever put a paintbrush in his hand? Think about that.

random bits and pieces

First of all, I´ve made changes to my blogspot profile and you can now email me from my blog.

This past weekend I went to the main plaza to help out with babywashing. Earlier I had been walking around the down town area with a friend and noticed that the 7th Day Adventist church was having a parade (and totally screwing up traffic!). I didn´t think too much of it as different groups have marches, demonstrations, ect all the time. My friend and I grabbed some coffee near the plaza and noticed that the parade had entered the plaza. I swear it was like a never ending line of people in this parade. We couldn´t see much from the coffee house so after the marching stopped we went to the plaza. The parade had congregated exactly where babywashing would have been set up and there were hundreds of people in the plaza. My friend, being more observant then I, noticed that the whole thing was against SMOKING! There were large cigarettes on top of cars, huge blackened lungs, a coffin, a few different floats, ect. We didn´t get close enough to hear what was being preached to the crowd but I think we can guess what the message was! I couldn´t stop laughing! Only in Bolivia would that happen.

Walking down the street yesterday I saw a man walk strait into a post, hey, he even thought it was funny.

Last sunday while I was helping my group in Sacaba they left me alone with my kids. Not two or three mind you... but 30! I had brought photocopies of coloring sheets for them to do but no one remembered to bring the coloring pencils. So someone bought a pack of 14. 30 kids, 14 colored pencils... hmmmmm. I learned the word ¨to share¨ and they actually did a halfway decent job! They didn´t get a bible lesson from me but they had a great time coloring and were so happy they were allowed to bring what they had done to their homes. Next week I will be much more prepared. These kids become more and more precious to me every week.

Everything that happens to me ends up being so stinkin complicated. Last week I had an ATM malfunction and not give me any money yet it was debited from my account. This actually happens to a lot of people. Normally you just call the number on the back of your reciept, tell them what happened, and they credit your account. Well, I didn´t get a reciept! So I wrote down the number on the ATM and hoped that would work. I went to the bank that owned the ATM, explained what happened and they said a lot of things that I didn´t understand. But I did understand that I didn´t need to do or call anyone else and it would be taken care of. haha, no, didn´t happen. A week later I had a teammate help me make the call but they couldn´t do anything over the phone, we had to go to an office building downtown, which took a while to find. Once we did they said they needed a copy of my bank statement to prove the money had been debited. So we had to find an internet cafe with a working printer. Easier said then done. Then we got back to the office and he sent a message to the bank in the states and said that they money would be put back in 1 or 2 weeks. Pray that the money gets credited soon!

I visited an english church on sunday and enjoyed singing in english and hearing a friend preach. More odds and ends later!