First of all, Thank you very much for the input. Chensational, (I know you said Chen was your last name, but I cannot remember your first, sorry), I will look online at the web site and fix the errors. I'm working to fast and not taking enough time to check things I think. Puppet Hawg, you made some very good points that I will have to take into consideration, especially the color and ethnic thing. I wanted to make the puppets more real, that's why I gave them names and backgrounds. The idea was to keep the same 5 puppets for one year with the same scripts (we don't visit the same place twice in a year). The ethnics chosen were all from places we visit, China and so on. The differences of short and stuff was to relate to God made us all different.
I don't have a creative team yet, so you all are my team. I NEED this info. I have till Spring Break to have this down pat for the first missions trip. Keep the comments coming.

After a discussion with the children's ministry here and with some of you fellow puppet creators, I have decided to go away with the Ethnic puppets as a safety to keep from offending anyone with stereotypes. I will be using Purples, Blues, and other colors for skin and no longer giving countries or states as their place of origin. Thanks for the caution on this Puppet Hawg.

Glad I was able to help you.  Since you don't visit the same place twice, I wouldn't worry about having to rotate scripts.  You can keep creating new ones and present them with multiple scripts to use.  You should also try to perform a song with the puppets so they can see that they can do more than just speak.  When you are dealing with other cultures, you don't know how they generally learn or gain ideas.  Some may feel that what you are showing is the ONLY way to do it.  When I was on a missions trip to France, I was surprised and amazed at how they are taught.  Generally, their coloring book has one page with just lines, and then one that is finished (colored in).  For some of the French teens that we were teaching puppets to and having build puppets, they are excellent watchers (imitators).  When they were building their puppet, I had a finished puppet, and told them they could add foam here or there for features.  They usually just kept looking at me still confused.  But when I showed them pictures and more finished puppets, and added foam and showed them, THEN their creativity exploded.  They were very creative, but it took affirming them and telling them that there is no wrong way.  However they wanted to make it was up to them.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is be cautious that they don't feel like what you show them is the only way.  They may need to rewrite your scripts to fit their culture. 

What you are doing is great. Do NOT be discouraged. Keep listening to Gods voice guiding you.

Ray

Oh, one more thing.
Keep up with the short stuff. It would be good to tell them God made us all different.  Just like the people on this forum, we are all different. No matter how knowledgeable one person is, or someone that is just catching puppet fever, we are ALL important to God. No one more,  and no one less.

Our Churches puppet team uses puppets they have purchased and when we go out of country we almost exclusively use non-ethnic puppets.  they are blue, yellow, orange, pink etc.  We have found that no matter what the culture the audience identifys with the puppet easily.

Definitely plan to integrate music into your programs

We also use two dimensional puppets made from foam core poster board.  These add variety to the programs and demonstrate a style of puppetry that they may be able to easily create from themselves.

Awesome advice everyone. I am going out to purchase new materail today to do new puppets with. I do plan on using songs, mainly public domain, in our shows. I am currently looking at whether or not I'm going to interact puppets with actors on stage. There are some pros and Cons. We use "portable sound systems" for our missions, so I don't know if I am going to record the voices with sound effects or just hope everyone remembers their lines. So much to do, and no local creative team to work with. God will provide.

Got a new concern, I use a glue gun to hold the ears and nose on for all the puppets. Is it possible that the glue could come undone during shipment because of heat? I'm hopping it never would get that hot, but it is a concern. Does anyone have any insight on this?

Yep you could lose your ears and noses... sorry.  It is one reason I don't like glue guns for this.   It also makes it difficult to repair something latter often. I just finished cleaning up a bad glue gun job on one of the bear costumes for the Rockeets and was cursing the original makers all the time. I try to stitch on such things anytime I can. It can take more time and patients but in the long run I feel it is more secure, cleaner and last longer. I took video of the process today and might try to show it tonight on BlogTV since Daryl can't be on.

I'm with Shawn.  I prefer to stitch as many of the details on the puppet as I can simply because you don't have to worry about the heat making it release. 

OK, good to know, but how do I stitch on the eyes. I use clear plastic spoons with printed pupils, then paint the back. I make the eye lids from scrap material stretched over. I can only think of gluing it. I want these to last since they will be staying in area's like Nicaragua, China, South Dakota, and so on.