Douglasville, GA
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This report comes to us from team leader Jeremy with our team in Douglasville, GA:
Our city hosts an annual 4th of July parade, followed by a festival. July 4th is a fitting occasion to proclaim the true freedom Christ brings from sin and the fear of death! This was the first year the festival was held in the new Town Green. Our team set up a table across the street from the Town Green, at the end of the parade route, to greet people as they made their way to the festival. Two parishioners joined for the first time – Kevin and John, a newly confirmed Protestant convert – along with our parish priest, Fr. Leandro.
Prior to attending the street evangelization event, I was a little apprehensive. But Jeremy provided a short training video with a method to speak with people. It was lovely. I mentioned to Jeremy during the event, that mingling with other people is such a needed thing for all of us to do. In a short time, I saw people I know that I wouldn’t have seen or been able to speak to if I had not attended. For me, the most beautiful thing was to ask families who were walking by if anyone would like a rosary to help them pray. Some walked by politely declining. But others stopped and said yes. When I gave a child a rosary and told them they could wrap it in their hand or hold it in their pocket to remind them to pray. And said, they could pray to ask God to keep them safe, to help them be good and to stay away from bad things and bad people, and God would do it, I heard more than one parent exclaim from the back of their throats, yes! Serving our parish in this way was a blessing for me. – John A.
Though we did not initiate conversations until after the parade, we had the table setup and a couple of people came up on their own initiative. One younger man came with his son and teenage brother to tell us that he had recently been baptized in a local non-denominational church. I was sincerely glad to hear this and explained to him why the Catholic understanding of the graces conferred by baptism makes me all the more glad to hear of people’s baptisms.
Soon after the parade, a different evangelism group set up a speaker across the street from us and started preaching and handing out tracts. While I was engaged in an in-depth conversation with a young man named Ernie, who was asking me all kinds of challenging theological questions (I discovered later that he was part of the group, and was pretending to be interested), someone from this group approached our table and got into a hostile conversation with my team members, including our parish priest. I heard him scoff, “You are teaching the traditions of men,” as he walked away.
Praised be Jesus Christ!