Barnabas Bear
Create Your Badge
While as part of the group I asked the question one day what they gave to kids who were sick or in hospital. The answer was prayer shawls. I thought surely there was something more kid friendly we could do so I went searching for patterns and gave my hand a try at making a stuffed bear. Let's say he had a lot of character-a lot of character! But one look and one of the ladies named Lynda took off with it and started making some. She put some of her first ones in our silent auction for kids related ministries. I bought a handsome brown bear with just a bit of sparkle to him. He had the hat and backpack with a little Bible that featured a verse from every book of the Bible.
That Christmas, she gave me one that looked exactly like the one I bought except the sparkle in the yarn. Some time next year I took a morning off work and went back to crochet group with a wild idea. I wanted to make the bear a missionary bear to go with me and others on our mission trips and use him to tell the story to children. Now he needed a name. We all felt Barnabas Bear was the best because of the way it rolled off the tongue but also because Barnabas means "son of encouragement" (Acts 4:36).
But we did not stop there, or should I say Lynda did not. We had two mission teams going overseas that year. One to Peru where we went every year and one I was leading to Tanzania which was the first time for our church. So a fundraising idea came to mind. Lynda made over 100 of the bears for us to take on the overseas mission trips to give out to children we were working with. So we sold "plane tickets" for the bears which allowed the person who bought their ticket to name the bear and fill out a card for the recipient. It was a major success with every bear being sponsored for his plane ticket.
One of the great things about even teenagers in the countries we go to. They are not shy about getting a stuffed animal, they love it. High school kids could be seen playing with their bears.
From there we created his facebook page, more little bears were made, the bear I had bought that looks just like Barnabas was no longer a "backup" but joined the mission bear team as Timothy. Not long after that we had Phoebe their first sister. Bears were given to Fire Departments for using with traumatized kids, local groups, homeless kids and continued to travel overseas. To date I know over 500 bears have been given away.
Many people enjoyed working with Barnabas and his friends over the years. One of the really fun things was to create VBS sheets where we took pictures of the bears acting out a Bible story and used verses under each picture. This way wherever we go we just get a Bible in their language and trade out the verses. We did a story of Barnabas preaching from the wall (a small concrete wall at my brothers house) like Jesus' sermon on the mount where Barnabas convinced the bears to go with him on mission trips. My personal favorite was when I tore said wall down for my brother I got kazoos and stood the bears up with the kazoos in their mouths like they were blowing trumpets around the walls of Jericho. Even did a Good Samaritan version.
The great thing about Barnabas is that he breaks down walls for me. I am a natural introvert and would probably not meet half the people I do without him. Visiting Machu Picchu in Peru a Japanese couple came up and wanted to take a picture of Barnabas with their stuffed animal that went everywhere with them.
