Hello, all!
Our tenth year of evangelism at New England fairs has come to an end. It was a very wet summer but, on the whole, we talked to an average number of people, with some fairs quieter than usual and some busier.
Here is our end of year summary:
Andover 4th of July Town Day (NH) – 29 people
Ossipee Valley Fair (ME) – 116 people
North Haverhill Fair (NH) – 85 people
Ulster County Fair (NY) – 434 people (The booth at this fair is run by Grace Bible Church of Wappingers Falls, NY)
Addison County Fair and Field Days (VT) – 304 people
Vermont State Fair (VT) – 139 people
Acton Fair (ME) – 205 people
Hopkinton State Fair (NH) – 368 people
Oxford Fair (ME) – 130 people
Farmington Fair (ME) – 183 people
Deerfield Fair (NH) – 398 people
Sandwich (NH) – 384 people
So, in total, we talked to 2,775 people at 12 fairs.
We would like to thank Vince Van Dintel, Bob and Nancy Poppo, and Darlene for helping at the Deerfield Fair and Luke Marston for helping at that fair and many others. With Victoria leaving for college, Deborah, the youngest at 13, really stepped up, helping at over half the fairs this year. At the bigger fairs, Rebecca Leak and Luke Marston helped a lot as well. We would also like to thank Grace Bible Church of Wappingers Falls, NY, who gave us a small freezer. This allowed us to offer free water to those who took the test. At some fairs, especially the hotter ones, this drew a lot of people. We had many good conversations and were asked many interesting questions. Surprisingly, we were not asked about controversial topics, like abortion, homosexuality, or transgenderism, as often as
in years previous. The most common objections we received this year seemed to be “God is love,” “God is all forgiving,” and “Jesus died for my sins, so I do not need to change.” This last objection was very common, unfortunately. Many individuals seem to have heard that Jesus died for our sins but had not heard that it is only by repentance and faith that we can be forgiven by God.
We also spoke to more Catholics than usual this year. At the Deerfield Fair, we had several conversations that lasted over an hour with Catholics, going over many different issues and questions, including the differences between Roman Catholicism and Christianity.
This year was our 10th year doing evangelism at fairs in New England. We started in 2013 at the Hopkinton Fair and added fairs over the next 4 years until we did 18 fairs in 2017 and 17 fairs in 2018. After that, we decided that was too many fairs, and so scaled back to about 12 fairs a year. While we did not keep track of how many people we spoke with during the first two years, from 2015 to 2023 we talked to over 22,000 people over a total of more than 100 fairs.
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