Ballooning

My experience with ballooning went all the way back 12 years ago.  The Children Church was having a special event and the invited speaker did a simple balloon sculpture.  Even though it was simple, I was captivated by its creativity, its colours and its attractiveness.  Since then I was invited to this new world of ballooning.

Children loves balloon.  I dunno why.  I went through a simple, basic training with a children conference speaker 10 years back.  Although I love ballooning, I’ve decided not to embark on this part of service as I’m afraid of the twisting sound, not to mention the sudden burst of the balloon.  I would stick to what I’m familiar with and let the experts do it.

However, recently when I was preparing for the church camp, I needed to make a sword for the kids as the lesson was about Sword of the Spirit – Armor of God.  I thought a balloon sword would be fun!  So, time to dirty my hands as there is no one else whom I know that could sculpture a balloon sword.  I bought a packet of balloon and a pump at Hinode.  It only costs me RM5 and that’s the birth of an amazing ministry.

I remembered some basic instructions on ballooning.  Next, I googled and found hundreds of links to balloon sculpture.  I preferred websites that provide picture tutorial than youtube links.  It was no sweat as balloon sword is quite straight forward.  Then, I tried to sculpture a balloon puppy.  I did not venture into other balloon sculpture as these two were my main focus for my teaching aid at that moment. 

The fun came months later when it was the Year End Party for children ministry.  I happily accepted the challenge to sculpture a few balloons to add to the excitement.  This time, since there is no specific  balloon sculpture required, I let my imagination run wild.  Twisting and sculpturing became my nightly fun activities few days before the party.  Yup, I only picked up the expertise less than a week before the actual day.  While I tried to suppress my fear of the sudden burst of balloon, I take pleasure in sculpturing a new balloon sculpture every time.  It is such an achievement when a long ordinary balloon transformed into an amazing sculpture.  The balloon air gun is another accomplishment whereby I only looked at the picture and figured out the whole process by myself.  Well, not to deny that actually it is quite a simple sculpture yet pretty impressive to the kids.  My two kids were so excited when they saw the many shapes of balloons in the bag. 

I do experience failures every now and then.  I certainly have not mastered every single one of them.  And my fingers were red and in pain the night before the party.  (I have forgotten to count how many balloons in total I have sculptured for the past few nights.  aiks…)  I’m still afraid of the bursting sound.  But I’m proud to find myself in this incredible ministry.  Perhaps the next breakthrough is to dress myself up as a clown while sculpture the balloon.  Hmm… kind of looking forward to that!!!