Where in the heck is RedDeer, Canada? And is it even big enough for a porn show to come to town?
Shows in Canada are a bit different than in the States. Without too many unnecessary details, they are a lot more like a large, traveling sex fair with tons of different products for sale (think adult carnival complete with carnies) than they are like the ‘porn shows’ in the US with are replete with industry reps, actresses, videos and super-fans. It’s cultural nuances. Additionally, the shows in Canada are more often frequented by couples in search for something together.
As for RedDeer, it came about much like all of are other shows do these days… we responded to the passion and drive of a local church wanting to connect with people in an arena that they hadn’t entered into before. To put it into their words, “we don’t just want to reach more people by stealing them from other local churches”.
We’ve faced different challenges over the years. We’ve had opposition, we’ve not had our booth show up, but this time our shipment of Bibles got stuck… in a truck… somewhere in the frozen tundra of the farm land north of Calgary. Not literally stuck, but moving way too slow to arrive at the show on time. They were set aside somewhere in a warehouse for “next week delivery” because the location was deemed “remote”. The boxes, we discovered, had changed shipping companies no few than 5 times to get this far. And we became VERY determined to find them, cram them into our rental car, and get them to the show. By God’s blessing, we found a couple of heroic warehouse guys (Dave & JIm) who decided to care way more than the companies that they work for. After driving 2 hours to Dave’s warehouse, he scoured his paperwork and then worked the phones utilizing his personal contacts of other people in the local shipping industry finally succeeding in finding our Bibles on a truck that Jim had at his warehouse 2 1/2 hours away. Jim waited, unloaded the truck and packed our car with us on own time.
Remarkably we had some great conversations on Friday night with only the aid of “Jesus Loves Porn Star” stickers and also thanks to the radio and newspaper coverage. Bibles rescued, the team pressed forward with the show on Saturday & Sunday. Sharing Christ, His message of grace, and the true words that God loves each of us right where we are at. Big thanks to Crossroads Church in RedDeer for having the vision to connect with new people and to Rob, the young adults pastor, for putting together an excellent team.
Check back here in a couple of days for their recaps of the outreach.