Yesterday people dressed as Mary, Joseph and shepherds wandered around Portland, Oregon, singing a revised version of “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” handing out flyers and Bethlehem cards, and announcing an upcoming event on “Bethlehem Today” to be held Dec. 16th at the Portland Central Library.
The flyer contained the story of the person dressed as Joseph, Saed Bannoura. Saed grew up in Beit Sahour (Shepherds Field). I made the flyer at the last minute, and when Saed saw it the next morning and discovered the picture I had used of an ancient church from the town, he was delighted and said, “that’s my neighborhood; I saw that church from my window.”
We handed out at least 200 of these flyers. My view is that it’s important to take this information out to as many people as possible…
Many people were too cold (it was freezing!) and rushed to take the flyers, but many did… since we were moving along we didn’t see many reactions beyond two that I noticed — one man told us to go to hell and one woman came up and thanked us for what we were doing.
