Mission trips

I went on 5 mission trips sponsored by First Baptist Church in Columbia. I wrote and performed puppet shows for kids aged 5-12. We did 3 shows a day, and used the same scripts each time. I had to write them so they wouldn't be over the heads of the young ones, and not be too juvenile for the older ones. It was quite a challenge. The first two summers, we went to Philadelphia and did VBS and the puppet shows for inner-city kids. We were in rough neighborhoods, and we did it outside. Before we started every morning, we had to sweep the glass off of the playgrounds. One afternoon, we were shot at by a drive-by shooter. We ducked into a nearby bank, and they said that happened a lot and not to worry about it. We took a trip to NYC one afternoon and went to the top of the World Trade Center. The next two years we spent in Smyrna TN outside Nashville. Thankfully, we did the VBS and shows inside a church. We also spent the time working on building some of the church. I had had good luck with my puppet crews until my last Smyrna trip. I got a woman to do a puppet who had told me that she had experience doing puppets. She really hadn't. She also objected to my scripts as being not Biblical enough. Shades of seminary? Well, I hit the roof. I had given the scripts to her long before we left, so that she could become familiar with them. She didn't even look at them until we got to Smyrna. By then, it was too late to get someone else, so she complained and wanted to change her lines. I went to our leader, and he told her that she had to do them as they were written. Since we did it live each morning, she would change her lines anyway, which made for a rather difficult time. After that trip, I didn't do puppets anymore. My last mission trip was to Puerto Rico. It was very hot. We were in a rather depressed area called Fajardo. Right out of a Hemingway novel. Our hotel was across from the chicken slaughterhouse. We were also there to sing in a park in San Juan for the 4th of July. We had practiced our songs to sing in Spanish, and we were supposed to have advertisements on the radio of our program. No ads, so we ended up singing to ourselves in a park in Old San Juan. I took a crash course in Spanish before we went to Puerto Rico. I practiced one afternoon to order a hamburger, fries and Coke in Spanish to go to Burger King. I did it, but the girl asked me something, and I didn't know the answer. Her question was if I wanted Ketchup. I looked like an idiot, and they had a big laugh at my expense. We also went to the rain forest in the mountains. That was very pretty, but the brakes failed on our van coming down the mountain. That was scary. A lot of impressions of Puerto Rico, but the main thing is that it is a nice place to visit, but...