In the days leading up to Christmas, we prepared over 250 door hanger bags containing a New Testament Bible, New Testament reading plan, Gospel tract, homemade cookie, and a personal invitation to join our family for a home Bible study.

Initially, we just wanted to invite the 10 or so households in our cul-de-sac. But we had hundreds of bagged Bibles and tracts from an outreach we planned for our former church, which never materialized for one reason or another.

So, we invited our whole neighborhood.

It was a cold winter, and we felt the pressure to abandon our task. We weren’t going to speak to anyone directly, but even the act of leaving something as controversial as the Gospel on the doors of our neighbors filled us with apprehension.

To ease the burden, my parents decided to join us and make it a family outreach. But Satan had other plans.

My parents, wife, daughter and I piled into my parents’ minivan, and as soon as we pulled out of our driveway, we got a flat tire. We drove it about one block before realizing what happened — and ended up on the side of the busiest road in the neighborhood.

My mom decided to stay with the van, as she waited for AAA to show up. My dad, frustrated, decided to take our daughter back to the house to wait for us to finish. So, it was up to Megan and I.

One of the reasons I wanted to marry Megan was because of her boldness in passing out religious literature to complete strangers. She has an outgoing delightfulness about her that is appealing to everyone. As I wrestled with discouragement and anxiety, I relied heavily on Megan to keep us moving forward.

For the next few hours, we went up and down every street and cul-de-sac in our neighborhood, hanging the good news packets on our neighbors’ doors. We finally stopped, when the sky became dark.

We were completely exhausted — physically and spiritually. But went out again the next day.

For the second outing, it was Megan, Lexi, Nikki (our dog) and I. We had a red wagon that carried Lexi and the packages. This seemed a lot easier, because we weren’t dealing with as much adversity. It was actually kinda fun — especially when Lexi rang her jingle bell as we walked along.

We finished handing out all of the bags and completed the outreach. Now, all we had to do is wait to hear if anyone was interested in doing a Bible study at our house.

Unfortunately, we only had one response to our online survey — so we decided it wasn’t the right time to host a neighborhood Bible study.

However, we are very pleased to have participated in Jesus’ mission to the world, starting with our own neighborhood. We pray that God would use our efforts and the materials we shared to open the eyes of the spiritually blind and bring lost souls to Christ.