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"