Throughout this past year, we have been sowing seeds into a variety of outreach and humanitarian projects, with great impact and much fruit to show for the Lord’s grace and blessing on the work of our hands, but no other project had so much seed and faith invested in it as our Christmas Day Parade in Nazareth. It started with a dream and it ended with a harvest!
Sowing the seeds towards our Christmas Day Parade outreach in Nazareth has been the most crucial focus for us in 2022, as we knew by faith that the Lord would bring the people and the harvest and that we simply had to obey his instruction every step of the way, and remain in faith. Our vision for this year’s Christmas Day Parade was to identify and reflect Mary’s journey to Bethlehem, where she would be used by God to give the greatest and most important gift ever to the world.
It was a challenging time leading up to the Christmas Day Parade, as there were many logistical hurdles and budget constraints to manage. Not only would we hand out 3000 Christmas gifts to the parents and children of Nazareth on Christmas Day, but we were also preparing more than 350 special Christmas food packages for Arabs and Jews in need, to make this Christmas special for them, and to share the news with them that Jesus is the Reason for the Season.
The most powerful project of the year was undoubtedly the Christmas Day Parade itself. We know that many of our friends and partners were praying with us for this parade. We had a holy expectation that God would do wonders during this annual parade, as we served and blessed the people of Nazareth. Before the onset of the parade we took time to decorate the truck with banners covering the entire surface, proclaiming in Hebrew and Arabic that “Jesus is the Reason for the Season,” along with the scripture verse from Luke 2:13-14 that reads
Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.
We also had figures of Angelic messengers on the four corners of the vehicle to represent the Gospel message going out to the four corners of the earth, as the parade would be a wonderful time of sharing the Gospel and blessing the people of Nazareth with the Christmas message!
