{"id":2168,"date":"2024-01-31T09:58:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-31T08:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/missionsreport.webbplats.dev\/index.php\/2024\/01\/31\/international-christmas-party\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T18:02:05","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T16:02:05","slug":"international-christmas-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/missionsreport.se\/en\/international-christmas-party\/","title":{"rendered":"International Christmas Party"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Christmas parties have always been a good opportunity to reach out with the gospel. Pastor Jan Blom said that the first time he came to Word of Life, it was for a Christmas party organized by the youth in our church. At the Christmas party he was given a book written by Sandy Brown, which he then devoured at home. At the end of the book was a prayer of salvation which he then prayed &#8211; and we know the rest of the story!   <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The International Christmas Festival is a great opportunity to do mission at home. Now we don&#8217;t have to fly far away to do missionary work as people from other countries come to us in large numbers. <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The International Christmas Party has grown to become a major evangelistic effort in our parish, where many people from different nationalities get to hear the Gospel, eat good food and socialize. Various national dances are also a popular feature of the evening. <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is a low threshold to invite people to a Christmas party.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This year there were over 500 people who came and of them about 100 children, it is probably one of the largest Christmas parties we have had and perhaps Uppsala&#8217;s largest Christmas party? We estimate that 60-70% of these people don&#8217;t usually go to church and about 50-100 people have never been to a church, so this is a great way to reach out. When these people come to our Christmas party, they get to experience unconditional love, without any demands back, we invite everyone who comes to food.  <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We have our own fun activities for all the children and the adults can come into the church hall. We sing some Christmas songs and carols, then a short evangelistic message about Christmas and why Jesus came to this earth. <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Over the years, we have seen many come to faith on this night!<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\/ Robert Johansson<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pastor, Word of Life<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/missionsreport.se\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/0D6B9814-1080px.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-224713\" title=\"0D6B9814-1080px\"\/><\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/missionsreport.se\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/WS3A9543-kvadrat.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-224714\" title=\"WS3A9543-kvadrat\"\/><\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/missionsreport.se\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/IMG_0557-kvadrat.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-224718\" title=\"IMG_0557-kvadrat\"\/><\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/missionsreport.se\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/WS3A9593-kvadrat.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-224717\" title=\"WS3A9593-kvadrat\"\/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christmas parties have always been a good opportunity to reach out with the gospel. Pastor Jan Blom said that the first time he came to Word of Life, it was for a Christmas party organized by the youth in our church. At the Christmas party he was given a book written by Sandy Brown, which he then devoured at home. At the end of the book was a prayer of salvation which he then prayed &#8211; and we know the rest of the story!   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sweden","category-local"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionsreport.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionsreport.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionsreport.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionsreport.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionsreport.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionsreport.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2169,"href":"https:\/\/missionsreport.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168\/revisions\/2169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionsreport.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionsreport.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionsreport.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionsreport.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}