Living Faith Puppeteers

Puppeteer Games

2011-01-31T20:31:00.001-08:00

Update...

2011-01-20T22:48:00.000-08:00

We've been practicing hard, with a little fun here and there!
Our first program is Monday at the Gospel Rescue Mission.

Practice, practice, practice...

2010-12-16T12:40:00.000-08:00

The puppeteers have been working hard
and having some fun too. We have at least
4 programs in January and February.

We are working on old songs and a few new ones,
Here is His Love Goes on Forever.

A very tired puppeteer!

It's all worth it when you get this afterward!

Attention Puppeteers!

2010-10-14T22:07:00.000-07:00

It's that time of the year to get going again. We had an enjoyable summer break and now we have to get back at it. Get those arms, wrists, and knees in shape! Don't be slack picking out songs and skits. Look at the calendar and set some dates for ministry. There's much to be done, but with the Lord all things are possible! Don't forget to have fun - that's an order!!

Portland Puppet Festival

2010-02-23T19:32:00.001-08:00

The winner of the Lip Synch Challenge!

The Living Faith Puppeteers

Soon we'll have new puppet shirts!
One of our puppeteers won the puppet in the picture!
We needed more girl puppets!

We competed in the song
competition with the song: Saved - by Go Fish,
and in the Creative Ministries competition with a puppet skit
about John the Baptist, found in Instant Puppet Skits by Group

Christmas Ministry

2009-12-23T15:28:00.001-08:00

"Come, Christian, Join to Sing: Alleluia, Amen!"

We went to the local Gospel Rescue Mission, for families, on Thursday evening, a nursing home on Saturday and another one Sunday afternoon. By Sunday we were all pretty tired, but glad to bring God's message through our puppets. Everyone was appreciative and seemed to enjoy the skits and songs. Praise God and Merry Christmas!

KIDS FEST in the Park

2009-10-17T23:19:00.000-07:00

Here's behind the scenes at the Kids Fest at Riverside park. We couldn't have asked for better weather!! There was special music, a visit from Moses, games, crafts, and of course-- puppets! We had several families attend who are not a part of our church, which is great! The puppet team did our Pilgrim's Progress Revisited program. Half was done at the beginning of the Kids Fest and the second half was done at the end. A few days later we were able to watch the second half on video tape. We had a couple good laughs from mistakes, but overall it went well. We thank the Lord for his presence with us!

Ministry Coming Up...

2009-09-30T10:51:00.000-07:00

Sunday afternoon, October 11th, Faith Presbyterian Church is planning an outreach in Riverside Park. It's our annual Kids Fest! Our puppet team will be doing songs and skits from our recent program, Pilgrim's Progress Revisited.

Many folks from the church volunteer to help with special music, games, crafts and refreshments. It's a way to get out into the community and meet new friends for Christ. Our prayer is that many families would stop by and watch the puppets or participate in the games, and especially hear the message of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Since recently it has turned colder, we pray that the weather will be nice for that day. We have 3 practices to get ready, so we pray for the Lord's grace to allow us to do a good job. We'll attempt to capture some memorable moments for our blog also.

Time To Start Practicing!

2009-08-13T20:30:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's that time of year again! We've had a break and now it's time to get back at it. Where are my puppeteers? Well, There are a few here in my house, one is in Idaho (on vacation), a few are in Rogue River and one is in Merlin.

It will be great to gather once again and dust off the puppet bins and bring out our favorites puppets. Jesse & Austin like the little blue (or is it green?) guy. What's his name anyway? There's the Pirate, Pilgrim, Hank, Joe, Karen, Melanie, and the rest. They are waiting to be lifted up for the Lord. It's going to be a wonderful year of service! There's a song that I need to listen to again, but it might be puppet material. I'll post it on here if it is.

I tried taking a video of one of our blacklight songs during our VBS, but it didn't come out very well, so I'll have to try again soon. I'll post some more pictures soon too. Enjoy the end of your summer and don't forget to look forward to PUPPETS!!!

Update and Pictures

2009-07-07T21:00:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of the team while in Portland a couple weeks ago. We had an enjoyable time doing this and also participating in our Church's VBS. All went well and we are now off for the summer (well, most of it any way). Enjoy!

MINISTRY LAST WEEK & VBS COMING UP

2009-06-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

After two very long nights of practice beforehand, the puppet team went up to Portland for the John Calvin conference. The Lord brought it all together, as He always does! We did a skit based on John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, with songs interspersed throughout. The puppeteers did a fantastic job, which made the director very happy! The audience heard the message that the Lord is the one who draws us to Himself, we can do nothing because of our sinfulness. Isn't that the good news?!! We might have a few pictures to post soon.

Starting this Monday is our Vacation Bible School. We will be doing a song each day. The children are always enthusiastic about seeing the puppets. We have several "old" songs and a few new ones to throw in there. With the Lord being in charge, it should be a blessed week for all! We hope to post pictures on this too.

New Website!

2009-05-23T08:48:00.000-07:00

Just to let anyone who is reading this blog, the new website is up! On there you will find pictures, news, upcoming venues, and much more! Enjoy:
http://www.livingfaithpuppeteers.com/

Upcoming Ministry

2009-05-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

We are scheduled to minister up in Portland for the conference, In Celebration of John Calvin's 500th, June 12th & 13th. If you will be in the area I invite you to come to this conference. The Living Faith Puppeteers are glad to take part and especially hear the lectures.

Professor James T. Dennison will be presenting three lectures:
Reformation Geneva: The French
Connection (John Calvin)and the
Italian Connection (Francis Turretin)

Working from his latest book, Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation, Volume 1: 1523-1552, James T. Dennison will examine the life, catechisms, and confessions of John Calvin in an illustrated power-point presentation. Beginning with this Calvin quincentenary tribute, we will then ‘cross the bridge’ via the Italian Refugee Church in Geneva to the great Reformed scholastic, Francis Turretin. Dennison’s edition of Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology will provide the context for our final presentation.

Friday June 12 (7:00 - 8:30) & Saturday, June 13 (9:30 - 4:00)
Friday: 7:00pm - 8:15pm John Calvin and the Geneva Confessions with Q&A.
Saturday: 9:30am - 10:15am Puppeteers
Saturday: 10:30am - 11:45pm The Italian Church in Geneva with Q&A.
Saturday: 12:00pm - 1:30pm Potluck Lunch
Saturday: 1:30pm - 2:00pm Puppeteers
Saturday: 2:15pm - 3:30pm Francis Turretin at the Dawn of the Enlightenment with Q&A
Tucker Maxon School 2860 SE HOLGATE BLVD, PORTLAND 97202
$10 PER ADULT - CHILDREN FREE
DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE FOR STUDENTS AND SPECIAL NEEDS
PLEASE PRE-REGISTER AT GRACEWL.COM OR CALL (503) 619-7387

Pics From the Kids' Carnival

2009-04-21T22:49:00.000-07:00

There was a good crowd!

We added a new feature: shadow puppetry.

We also did a live puppet skit, which went pretty

well the second time through, after fixing the

microphone to improve the sound.

Saturday of Puppets

2009-04-18T17:17:00.001-07:00

Today we were apart of an outreach of Joni and Friends. They provided a lunch for Moms of kids with disabilities and had a carnival for the kids. We went to this last year and I have to say that it is a blessing to see people reaching out to these kids and their families. Some of our group was tired (a late night, what can I say?) :) but all went well and the kids seemed to enjoy it. Hope you all are having a great weekend! I know that I am!

Carnival For Special Needs Kids

2009-04-16T15:18:00.000-07:00

This Saturday Joni & Friends, of Southern Oregon, will host a luncheon for mothers of children with special needs. Mothers will be treated to an elegantly served lunch, an inspirational program, and a gift basket overflowing with goodies and gifts, while the children will be treated to a fun carnival packed full of games, activities, food, and puppets. The Living Faith Puppeteers will once again be ministering the gospel with their puppets. Please pray for the puppeteers and those who see and hear the message. May the Lord cause many children and adults to put their trust in Him, for He knows their many challenges and He brings lasting hope!

Practice

2009-03-31T17:41:00.001-07:00

Here are pictures from the practices of the last two weeks.

We have too much fun! :)

2009 puppet festival

2009-03-12T09:23:00.000-07:00

Today we have a guest post about the 2009 puppet festival from puppeteer Kevin McLain, thanks Kevin!

Being a member of the Living Faith Puppeteers is hard work. This past weekend we put all our combined practices over the previous year into a performance at Rolling Hills Community Church in Portland. The Puppet Festival is sponsored by One Way Street, an organization that puts on these shows all across the country. Basically, teams come together from other churches to compete in two categories of performances: the Song Competition and the Creative Ministries Performance. This year, as we did the previous year, we performed a song.

I was very much impressed by many of the other teams. There was a Canadian group called The Armed Forces that got my vote for both of thier performances (song and creative ministry) and they were awarded The People's Choice. There was a good deal of talent in all the teams and I was glad to be there to see it.

This year we performed a song called The B.I.B.L.E. by a group called Go Fish. It is actually the first puppet song I performed when I joined the team almost two years ago. We decided to change the performance a good deal just for the festival. We added more props and changed the puppets' choreography. We practiced with these new changes for a month or more before being ready for our performance in Portland.

I remember that last year we had more time to be ready and we were able to see many of the other teams perform before us since we were the sixth performance. This time, we were the third performance. I remember the struggle right away to get prepared. I had a lot of props to be mindful of as well as a puppet. The stage was a little lower and less deep than in our practices and we may have been docked for the time it took us to set up. When the song begin, immediately I knew that we would struggle a bit more with the movement and timing. I personally contorted my body to move out of the way of our lead singers more than I did during practice.

By God's grace, I was still focused and was able to cue my props accurately despite the fact that everything seemed to be going by so fast. As I made way to the back curtain with the black bible puppet, I realized that I couldn't get my glove off, so I operated my puppet with it on, which made opening his mouth as wide as I needed very difficult. I remember Molly yelling something at me, but I couldn't let myself get distraced so I continued the performance until the end. I found out later, that she was telling me to open the puppet's mouth wider for its singing.

When it was time for the Award ceremony, I was chosen by our Team Director (Mrs. Sumpter) to recieve it for us. I was astonished that we were awarded the Gold Award and a special award for excellent use of props! The team from British Columbia (The Armed Forces) also won a Gold Award. I'm pleased to say that one of our members, Jed Joling, also recieved 2nd Place prize for the Lip Sync Competition. In my opinion, this is an improvement over last year's festival in which we won the Silver Award, People's Choice for Best Song and Molly recieved 1st Place in Lyp Sync.

Yes, being a member of the Living Faith Puppeteers is hard work, but it is so very much rewarding. If we had come away from the Puppet Festival without winning any awards at all, I would still be glad that we went. Having fellowship with the Lord and other members of the body of Christ and being a team is far better than winning awards.

Coming soon!

2009-03-05T11:36:00.001-08:00

A guest post from puppeteer Jed Joling on his experience in the Lip Sync challenge at the Portland puppet festival.

Meanwhile, we began practicing last night for some upcoming venues this spring. Some new songs and skits are in the works! Stay tuned.

For those of you hoping to find more information on our website: it needs to be updated. Yes, the webmaster has been pretty lazy lately, but shall soon resurrect an improved site. Stay tuned.

That's all for now!
-Molly, for the puppet team

Updates and Changes

2009-02-24T10:37:00.000-08:00

We have not been updating this blog very regularly and I apologize for that. Hopefully we will do better from now on! To update all of our readers a little bit here are some new things happening:

-We have added three new puppeteers to our group!
-We have been to two new events the past year!
-We just got back from a puppet festival to kick off another year of puppets!

So, to start off updating well I will now share some thoughts I had before the festival and what I had right after.

Pre Festival thoughts: Portable Puppets
Tomorrow our puppet team is traveling up to Portland for another puppet festival. It has been a busy week getting things ready for that, and now the fun begins for us! Tomorrow night we will be doing a song for a competition held during all of the festivals and I am looking forward to it. I know that we will do really well, and even if we don't, it will still be fun! So, please keep our team in your prayers! We have been practicing a lot this week and we are all a bit fried. Today was a nice day to "have off". :) Thanks so much and hopefully we will have a report when we return Saturday night!

Post Festival thoughts:
So, yes, we have been back from the puppet festival for a couple days and I haven't written up the results! Shame on me. :) Our team did very well! We received a gold award for our song that we did and one of our puppeteers, Jed placed second in the lip sync competition! Congrats to all!

I want to explain the lip sync competition so you will know how hard it is. You are competing (all in fun of course) against 16 other people behind a puppet stage. You don't know what song you will be singing when your turn comes to go into the stage, and you don't know how many others will do better than you because you can't watch the others doing their songs. The judges call three puppeteers into the stage at a time and after seeing all of the puppeteers lip a song they make the first round of cuts. If you make it to the next round you are called in again three at a time to do another song. This goes on until the top three competitors lip one last song together. This is always the most fun song to watch because by then the puppeteers have done at least five songs. They are tired and just want to have fun, and they do! What makes it even more fun is how hard the last song usually is to lip. Having done this lip sync competition last year, I know h0w tired Jed must have been. He came out looking good though and we were all happy for him!

Another blessing from this festival was the theme for his year. The organization who puts these festivals on is a christian organization and so they pick christian based themes. This year the theme was reflecting Christ. It was such a blessing to be encouraged in this area and here other christian puppeteers talk about ways we can better reflect Christ with our puppets and with our lives. So, it was a great time for all of us and something that I hope we will carry with us through this next year of puppets.

I realize that this is a long update, but I hope you enjoyed reading about how God has blessed us this past year and how He is already blessing us for the year to come. More fun updates to follow!

-Molly for the puppet team

Puppet Ministry in the Park- September 2008

2008-09-27T15:11:00.000-07:00

Next Outreach

2007-10-12T17:24:00.000-07:00

We are going to the Rogue Valley Children's Ministries workers conference. Our puppet team will be featured with a small program and then we will be giving a workshop on how other churches can start their own puppet ministry and can become good puppeteers. We would appreciate your prayers! We are practicing this Thursday and Saturday and next Thursday also. Next Saturday is when the conference takes place in Medford, Or. Keep us in your prayers!

A new season

2007-09-24T16:09:00.000-07:00

We are now starting a new season of puppet ministry. Several people have joined us for this new season and several have left us. All in all, it is looking like it will be another good season. Our first practice of this new season was on September 20. We are starting to prepare for an exciting upcoming presentation in Medford, Or. It will be for a Children worker's conference and there are up to 200 people expected to be there. Kids love puppets, and it will be exciting to share that with these workers. We will also be giving a workshop on the basics of puppet ministry. Please pray for us, that we would be able to get a program and workshop together and that we would have fun doing it! Thank you!

Kid's Fest

2007-08-28T12:12:00.000-07:00

Sunday Afternoon we helped with an outreach in Riverside Park (Grants Pass, Or). Our Church, Faith Presbyterian Church, was the sponsor of the "Kids Fest" and we had games, crafts, and snacks available for the kids. In between the puppet skit and songs we also had some story tellers who told the kids stories from the Bible.

The gazebo at Riverside park was the main area for things.

Mr. Richard Emmons was the MC.

The "B-I-B-L-E".

Ready for the next song.

Lots of puppets used in the "Jesus Saves" song.

We had around 15 kids (along with adults and those who happenened to be in the park) from outside our Church watching the puppets and listening to the Emmons Sisters sing. It was a nice afternoon that we praise God for.

Now we get a break for a week. We haven't had a break all summer, so I think we are all looking forword to a week off. We come back the following week and will start practice for a couple of fall venues. Please pray that everything will come together for that!

Josephine County Fair

2007-08-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

The team did outreach ministry at our local Josephine county fair, this past week.

Waiting for our turn on the midway stage.

Setting the stage up.

Almost time to start

The "Frog" song.

The skit "Walking the Talk"

We performed twice on Thursday and it went well. The Lord brought a pretty good crowd for the first time and an even better one the second time. It's amazing how puppets can attract people! Pastor Sumpter used the opportunity to give the good news of salvation before and after the puppets. Also many invitations to the "Christianity Explored" class were handed out and also flyers for the "New Friends Kids' Fest". That will be this next Sunday afternoon. Faith Church is hosting this outreach event in the park. Please pray for us as we prepare to tell children and their parents about Christ and invite folks again to "Christianity Explored", which will begin in September.

Schedule

2007-08-20T09:00:00.001-07:00

Coming Soon!

Who we are

2007-08-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

Living Faith Puppeteers is a ministry based in Grants Pass, Or. We are a team of people who use our puppets to share the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. We mainly focus on Kids with our ministry, but don't limit it to that age range; everyone loves the puppets!