On Saturday, December 5th, Bezeugen Ministries organized an outreach at the Dallas Christmas Parade. We had twenty evanelists join us on the streets of Dallas including a number of folks from The Lost Cause Ministries and Jeremiah Cry Ministries. We had five Ambassadors’ Academy alumn (three from #10 and two from #11). Adam join us from Oklahoma City. Jerad joined us from Eldorado. And two folks joined us from Texarkana! Many thanks to everyone for coming out! With 20 people hitting the streets, this was by far our largest outreach yet! Unfortunately, we did not get a picture of all 20 of us together, however here is one picture with 14 of us.
The weather was extremely cold. But, the joy of the Lord kept us warm. (The hand warms helped some. Thanks to Paul!) I believe it was about 30 degrees when we arrived. It was reported on TV that the wind chill factor was 18 degrees. We did not let the cold weather persuade us.
Our main location was at Main and Akard. We congregated at 7:30AM. After opening with a prayer, we shared some basic instructions and then split up to cover as many corners as we could. Many people enter the parade area from Main and Akard. But, it is possible to get to the parade route from any number of intersections, so we wanted to cover as much ground as we could. We were able to give out many tracts as people entered into the parade area. We had a number of one on one conversations with people as well.
We stationed people on three of the four corners of Main and Akard. One one of the corners we had Adam, Jerad, myself and a few others open air preaching. As people came across the street, they got tracts from the people at the other sides of the street.
I brought my cross and carried it around as well. Many people would come and take tracts from me even while carrying the cross.
Roy was able to share the Gospel with Santa and even gave him a Gospel tract!
After the parade, the crowd disperses quickly. I loaded all of the pockets of my jacket with stacks of tracts and headed out onto Commerce Street. I followed the parade around to the end handing out tracts to everyeone that I could. It is hard to get a tract to everyone because there are so many people. All of the rest of those in our group were doing the same thing. Just to give an idea of how many people there were, I did not even see any of our group until I finally found Jeff in front of City Hall.
Afterwards, we meet at Subway for lunch and fellowhip. Adam told me about one one-on-one conversation that Jerad had with a man on the street. He told me that when Jerad asked, “when are you going to repent” the man said, “I will do it today!” Praise God!
We saw very few tracts on the ground. But at least this one tract fell on rocky soil. (So I picked it up and threw it away).
Additional photos from the event are available on my Facebook album.
The Dallas Morning News estimates that the parade was attended by 350,000 people. We handed out at least 11,000 Gospel tracts. Coupled with Open Air preaching, even more heard the Gospel! Perhaps you can join us next year and we can hand out even more tracts and reach more people with the good news of the Gospel.
There is another parade in Dallas on January 1st. Let me know if you are interested in coming to join us. We can hand out our new New Year Resolutions tract!
Jon and Tim reported that they went onto Commerce Street and then open air preached right to the crowds awaiting the beginning of the parade. Parade organizers had no problem with them doing this! I am sure that Jon Speed will provide more detail in The Lost Cause BLOG within a few days. Be sure to check that out for additional reports on the event.
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