Whitney White
Freelance writer and blogger for AFA The Stand
November 2018 – I’ll never forget the day. My soft-spoken eight-year-old fearlessly handed “Keep Christ in Christmas” wristbands to two boys twice his size in line behind us at the grocery store. He had noticed they walked there alone and were paying for their scarce supper with change.
They looked angry and defensive as he began to talk to them. I wanted to protect him but was moved to let him face that battle on his own. Unbothered by their hardened faces, he continued talking to them.
“Jesus loves you,” I finally heard him say. Both faces softened, and the boys thanked him for the gift.
As we began our new adventure using AFA’s Christmas wristbands last year, I must admit I was a little nervous. Witnessing to strangers on mission trips far from home had never been a struggle, but the thought of sharing Jesus in our tiny town in front of our children was a bit intimidating.
Word from the pulpit
My husband Matthew pastors a small church, and though he preaches the Word every Sunday, we both realized how complacent we had become in actively sharing that Word with those we brush shoulders with every day. We also felt heavy conviction for neglecting to teach our children the importance of witnessing to others and why this should be one of our greatest priorities.
We had both been raised in church and come from long lines of faithful believers who served others and taught us to love Jesus. However, seeing them witness to others one-on-one was not the norm. To be honest, witnessing in the neighborhood, the convenience store, or drug store left us both a bit uncomfortable, which further proved how important it is for us to pursue that very thing.
We didn’t want our children to be like us. We wanted them to learn early to be doers of the Word, not hearers only. We wanted them to be soul winners!
After several years of feeling bombarded by the busyness of Christmas obligations and the lure of commercialism, Matthew and I knew our family had to make drastic changes. The stress of buying gifts for everyone and the entitlement attitudes our children were acquiring were absolutely ruining the season.
We searched for ways to make changes and even planned to “escape” and go on a Christmas mission trip to Honduras last year with our three boys. But that wasn’t God’s plan for us at that time. He revealed to us that we could not escape, and we weren’t meant to escape. We were meant to make a difference wherever we go!
Word on the street
That’s when we learned of the Keep Christ in Christmas wristband campaign, and we made the Great Commission our family mission right where we live. We scaled back on gifts, slowed down our schedules, and began focusing on how we could share the gift of Jesus.
We each took 25 wristbands, and our mission was to give a wristband a day to someone we came in contact with and tell them about Jesus. After Matthew and I modeled this a few times, the boys were ready to get their boots on the ground!
They became soldiers in the Lord’s army, and we can’t imagine Christmas any other way now. We completed our mission of giving 125 wristbands in 25 days. We kept a record of every name on a canvas and prayed over each one of them daily.
Matthew and I learned it’s not enough to take them to church. We must train them to be the church. The boys learned that true Christmas joy is found in giving Jesus. Now, we’re all eager to get started on season two. 
To request your wristband and order more, click here.
