Santa Says “It’s All About Jesus”
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On December 5th of this recent Christmas season, a Winter2Go outreach took place, an unusual and creative, not to mention fun way to share the Gospel. In 15 different European countries 1800 people went out in the cities dressed up as Santas to talk to people about what Christmas is all about – Jesus!
The report from Dresden, Germany is that 32 Santas went out in teams to 4 different parts of the city. The day started with a time of worship and preparation before the group split up into teams. AGWM Personnel in Dresden, Steve and Christina Walent say, “We have been on the streets a lot doing witnessing, but never dressed up as Santas. Normally Germans would never just walk up to a perfect stranger on the street and start a conversation, but since we were Santas, the openness was totally different. It is not every day 7 Santas get into a street car at one time. Right away we had people asking us what we were doing. This opened up the way for us to ask them why they think we celebrate Christmas. Answers were like ‘Santa’s Birthday is on December 24th’. So we told everybody who wanted to hear about the best Christmas gift ever, that God sent his Son Jesus to take the punishment for our sins so we can live in fellowship with God. We had little bags of cookies and candy to give out and also a small booklet describing God’s gift to us and how we can receive it.
If people said they were sick, we asked if we could pray for them. Christina and her Santa-partner got to pray for one lady who had serious kidney problems and also for another lady, whose Mom was sick. In the area of Gorbitz, the team of Santas was asked to come into a restaurant and tell a company of people there about what they were doing, so they sang some Christmas carols and gave a short sermon about how Jesus came.
In Prohlis, the Santas were frying donuts outside a shopping center and giving them out as they talked to people about Jesus and invited them to church. They got some good contacts that way and were able to make people aware of the new church plant in that area.
Dressed as Santas, we were able to give many people reminders of God’s love for them.”
From Newsletter of Steve and Christina Walent
AGWM Personnel in Germany