Kingdom Karactors Newsletter 2002

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December 2002 We hope that this past year has been a good one for you. Here is our annual newsletter in an attempt to keep you up on what we have been doing and what's coming. Our alter egos Happy & Merry Heart started off the year by doing the New Year's Eve service at our church. Actually it is more of a variety show until the midnight hour approaches, then the more serious context takes over. Church members perform skits and songs, and our clown troupe filled in between with their antics. We are really excited about this years service, you know, the clown wedding. It is not an actual wedding, nor are we renewing our vows. Its just fun. In January, Jim got a call from our old real estate company that they were about to open a new office and they wanted him to come up north and do some work. So Jim drove up I-95 by himself to work. A couple weeks later Bonnie flew up to meet him so they could teach and market puppets at the Christian Education conference that is every January in Washington DC. Anyhow, guess who got to have all their luggage searched on the random check at the Savannah airport? Yep, you guessed it, Bonnie herself. What the kick was, the luggage (4 trunks) contained puppets for the conference. Boy were those security people surprised when they opened the lids and there were all these little people staring back!
Jim picked Bonnie up at the airport in Baltimore and then proceeded to the conference where we meet up with Shirley and Bruce who came down to give us a hand with the booth. This is an annual outing for the four of us and we are so grateful to them for helping at this very fast paced conference. Shirley and Bruce, we couldn't do it without you, thanks. Don't exactly know where Bruce was at the moment.
February was the first involvement with the Great Clown Adventure - and it was! The event was held at Circus, Circus in Las Vegas. There were lots of clowns at Circus, Circus and we all had a wonderful time. One afternoon we paraded through the Adventuredome park. Then all the clowns who had participated in the parade were permitted to stay & mingle and ride the rides - FREE! Now Jim wants to add a performance at Circus, Circus to his clown resume right under the Disneyworld parade. In March Jim started to build a huge portico on our church. It took April, May and part of June to complete. It really is a huge portico. April Jim celebrated another birthday. May Bonnie denied another birthday.
Bonnie and Jim both participated in the Dance of the Mahanaium in Savannah in May, what an experience that was. Jim drove one of the trucks with the sound in the march/parade. Bonnie was one of the 50 some Daystar dancers who danced, sang and prayed their way through the streets of Savannah. We call it a garage, but we all know that it will never see a car.
The garage was started in June,		Jim's workshop!
July found us back on the road up to New York to Touch the World Ministries teen missions camp. We spent the week training teens puppetry. This was our second year there and we are scheduled to go back again this coming July. We left NY and headed straight to Western North Carolina to the Fellowship of Christian Puppeteers aka FCP. We had not been to FCP for a number of years because of scheduling conflicts so we were happy to see lots of faces that we had not seen in a long time. We traveled to Williamsburg VA in August for the Virginia Festival of Puppetry. It was, we believe our 6th trip to Williamsburg. Sigh, we still have not seen Colonial Williamsburg after all these times. Over the summer we did a series of puppet workshops for the local YMCA. And we made them some puppets. We were supposed to do a show with the puppeteers from the YMCA, but the summer program there ended before the administrator could schedule the show. We were disappointed about that. Jim did some carpentry work for some friends of ours from church. Actually he remodeled their kitchen. That is the third one since we have been here in Georgia. SOMEDAY, we will remodel our kitchen. SOMEDAY……..
September as always was sooooo hectic. On the way to New Jersey we stopped off in Delaware to pick up our friend Georgia who went with us to Clownfest for the week. Our highlight of Clownfest is participating in the Sunday morning Gospel service on the boardwalk with our puppets. For more on Clownfest, click here.
We took Georgia back home and headed to Florida to the South East Clown Association convention. At this convention we had the privilege of doing the Sunday Morning Worship service in clown and with puppets. Shown here are Merry Heart, Happy Heart, Turkleberry and the SECA Chaplain Little Smidgen.
We taught classes and sold our puppets at both conferences. Bonnie was thrilled that Jackie LeClair, a world famous Ringling Brothers clown attended her class. And then sought her out to tell her what a wonderful job she did. For a novelty, we stopped at our house to sleep one night. We are so thankful for our house/cat sitter Nancy. She takes such a load off our minds about leaving home so frequently. She truly is a gift from God. We appreciate you so much, Nancy. After the hectic September we looked forward to a quiet October. Ha! We did two conferences in October, One in North Carolina and one in New Jersey. In between the two conferences, Jim had surgery. Praise the Lord that he came through that with just one little complication which entailed a 4:30 am ride to the ER. He has recuperated nicely and he is glad that he had the surgery, I think.
Can you believe that in November we went back up north to Delaware to do the Mid-Atlantic Clown Association's annual convention? We are getting so that we recognize the construction workers on I-95!
Thanksgiving we went down to Orlando for a fast overnight trip to have Thanksgiving Dinner with Aunt Lu, Jimmie and Pat Brown, Bonnie's cousins.. When Bonnie was a kid, she always had Thanksgiving with her Aunt Lu and it had been a few years and it was time. Aunt Lu is a terrific cook!
And speaking of Thanksgiving, we give thanks again and again for John and Renie Poole and all the work they put into our website. We now have ONLINE SHOPPING and our selection of items continues to grow!. We are truly excited and Thankful for our website.
Now it is December and can you believe that we just got back from a vacation in Pigeon Forge? Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg were decorated with lights everywhere. Really beautiful. We kicked back and relaxed and relaxed and relaxed some more. One night we went to the Comedy Barn because they advertised a good CLEAN show. When they asked for a volunteer from the audience, Jim grabbed Bonnie's arm and began waving it in the air. So now I can put on my resume that I performed at the Comedy Barn in Pigeon Forge. Hmmmmmm.
To the right, we are pictured here at Applewood Farmhouse Restraurant. This place so nice we went there twice! Yes, we were on porch swings at our table. What a novel idea, except did you ever try to get food from the table to your mouth while swinging back and forth? Pretty challenging to say the least. FUN! Pastor Phil and Judy Byler were able to get away for a few days to join us.
The annual Hinesville Christmas parade was a real kick this year. Our float entry was a 12 foot tall Tree that Jim constructed on his old boat trailer. We covered it with green felt and garland and lights. Did we tell you this is a nighttime parade? Of course this photo was taken in the day and you just cannot appreciate the tree being lit up with many stands for tree lights. Wow it is so much fun. Anyway then we cut holes in the felt and put people in the tree so that their faces showed through. Each person wore a tinsel wig on their head and they had a puppet with a tinsel wig with its head showing through too. It was a real crowd pleaser. All along the parade route people were saying look it's a Christmas tree, Look it has people on it, Look it has Puppets!
Several of us walked the parade route and handed out little fliers inviting people to come to our Christmas puppet show the following week. This photo was taken after our performance of A Reason for Christmas, I believe that this year is the 13th season for this puppet show. Our Clown Wedding was New Year's Eve. Click here to see more photos of the wedding. In January we will begin our newest venture: Saturday Morning Alive! A Saturday children's church for the children in the community of Hinesville. This is the first outreach of its kind by our church and can you believe when we announced it, we got more than 30 volunteers to help us. We ask that you pray for us and all those who are involved with Saturday Morning Alive! We truly want to make an impact on the children in our area. It is our calling. Psalm 78:4 Go Tell the Generation to come of the KING and the wondrous things that he has done. This time we aren't going up I-95 but we are going to this generation. Hallelujah, Praise the Lord for this open door. As always, If the Lord brings us to your mind, please pray for us and we shall do the same for you. Much Love to you and yours, Jim and Bonnie

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