Christmastime Outreach

We are so blessed by God to have children who love to share in what we are doing! They enjoy serving alongside us, especially when it is to help others or help them to hear about Jesus. Our oldest in particular is full of ideas. Earlier this year she suggested, "Can we go Christmas carolling at the mall?" (As in, the huge West Edmonton Mall, aka WEM). It seemed like a feasible idea, so it was approved tentatively. Then we added an idea that came to us late last year (as in, too late to use it then) of passing out candy canes and a small message at the mall as an outreach to the shop-workers.

As usual, God took our slim small idea and multiplied it to something better and greater. It all ended up coming together like this:

We went to a book launch for one of my recent students at the end of November. A week or so later, we were at home reading a couple of Christmas books and *ta da!* inspiration came on our oldest to write a book for her own "book launch". And as she dreams the big dreams of childhood, she wanted this event to take place at the mall. So........ we got all the text out of her in about 15 minutes and over the next couple of days she worked on the illustrations. After scanning and arranging the pages, we printed out 20 copies, bought a box of candy canes and got ready to hit the WEM.

Getting ready to hit the stores

A couple years ago, I purchased an angel costume set at the dollar store for "future use". The Author chose this as her attire and her sidekick, (we'll call her Curly), chose reindeer antlers. Baby V wore the Christmas tree hat. With over 800 stores and very few parking spaces to choose from, we prayed and sought out stores where there were no other shoppers or where there was a worker obviously not helping someone.

Mostly we ended up in formal dress shops, but almost without exception the scenario was as follows:

Walk into store. Sensor beeps. Worker greets.
Author and Curly approach worker. "Merry Christmas!"
Greeting returned.
Author: "I have a Christmas gift for you."
Worker: "For me?"
Author: "It's a candy cane and a book I wrote all by myself."
Worker: "Really? Thank you! But I don't have anything for you!"
Author: "That's okay. This is for you. It's your Christmas gift."
Author and Curly (singing): We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year!"
Hugs exchanged.
Worker: "Thank you again so much!" Smiles.
Author and Curly exiting: "Merry Christmas!"
Leave store.

At one of the last shops

Believe it or not, it took us a couple hours to get everything handed out, but little legs stayed strong through the whole upper floor of the WEM and it's hundreds of shops with nary a complaint of any kind and the little Christmas tree took a nap.

Just before leaving the mall, and on the way out of the parking lot, we talked about what we just did (knowing that any spiritual activity generates opposition) and prayed that God would use our little gifts in big ways in the hearts of their recipients. If you'd like, you can pray too, that these seeds would be fruitful.

"Santa praying to the baby Jesus"

oc•cu•pied

Many people are busy. It is a buzzword of our day. Sometimes it seems like it is a standard answer to the question "How are you?".  But what's the big deal about that?

Jesus told His disciples in a parable, "Occupy till I come" (Luke 19:13). But Jesus wasn't talking about just filling up our time and busying ourselves as a distraction to pass the time, nor simply making efficient use of our time, which is a much voiced topic as well.

It seems from the context that His emphasis lay on what the occupation was. He was teaching His disciples about stewardship, taking care of the business of the master who is away. Jesus is that very master, and as His full-time occupation was ministering God's love and God's Word to all around Him so should ours be.

The last several months we have particularly felt pressed for time. There is just so much that can be fit into a 24-hour period and a 7-day week, and as two people we are doing our best to walk circumspectly, with the 2-3 established ministry times per week, family, school (homestyle), and "tent-making" (Dejan plods away at translation when he can and Julie teaches music and prenatal classes once each per week).

At the start of His ministry, after coming out of the wilderness, Jesus preached alone. He went about this preaching, the Bible tells us, before He called Simon Peter, John, James, Andrew and the others to come follow Him. Once the others joined Him, we read much more of what happened through His ministry (the part of His solitary preaching is actually just one line of one gospel account!). This is not to say that before He had disciples His ministry was unimportant or insignificant, it was just different.

We feel that we are in these same types of days here in the work the Lord has set before us. We are fully doing, but we do it in a solitary way. And the work is slow, perhaps seemingly insignificant. This is particularly the case with Dejan and interfacing with the outside world. He is in the marketplace weekly, but it is just him. Julie's ministry comes as she and the kiddos are out and about.

We are blessed to be able to be here. Amazingly blessed! It is such a thrill to be involved in a new work, and we know that Jesus has promised to build His church. Sometimes it just seems like all that we are able to do is like a drop in the bucket of the one million souls that surround us in this great city. Will you pray with us?

Our prayer is for God to show us how to do this work in this season, the second year; to bring us opportunities that are ordained by Him, and to see both those inside the church and those outside of the church to come to know Jesus more and more. And if we had others join us, great! Jesus in effect multiplied Himself through the calling, equipping and sending of the disciples, and we'd love to see co-laborers here. Until then, though, we must remain occupied and faithful to do what we can with the resources of time, energy, availability and opportunity that we have been given.

In Him,

Dejan and Julie <><