Last year, in 2022 I was listening to a homily from our parish priest about evangelization. While my husband and I are always trying to spread the faith, I got some inspiration to extend our efforts of evangelization to our neighborhood. I decided since October is the month of the Holy Rosary, that I would evangelize with the rosary during the whole month of October. In the past I have given away rosaries to family, friends, and strangers directly. But this time it would be a little different.
Outside of my house, on my porch I put a little table and put a basket with Rosaries and pamphlets on how to pray the rosary. I made a sign that said “Free” and put it under my mailbox so that you could see it from the road. I also crafted a rosary wreath and put it on my front door to tie everything together. Later, I was able to get a necklace display (that I got for free) to hold the rosaries on them so that you could see it more visually from the road. I had a lot of rosaries on hand already. I got my pamphlets from St. Paul Street Evangelization, a Catholic non-profit organization, that seeks to evangelize others in Warren, Michigan. I am local to the Metro Detroit area so I picked them up so that I didn’t have to pay shipping. They will ship anywhere and they have a lot of materials. If you are interested in buy from them, click here.
To make sure people knew about it, I posted it on social media letting people know that they could stop by our house to pick up a free rosary for themselves or for their friends. I am part of a local Buy Nothing and I posted it there too. I was thinking that people that walked or drove by might stop. I left the rosaries there all month long. After about a week, it didn’t seem that many people took a rosary, maybe only one. I wasn’t too discouraged because I knew the Lord would do His Work in His Time. During the rest of the month, my husband and I prayed everyday that the Lord would send people to our house to pick up a rosary. Even if people did not pick up a rosary, they would still see the rosaries and a seed could be planted.
During the rest of the month, not many people took Rosaries until October 31st, on Halloween. Now I am not a big fan of Halloween. I do support children dressing up as saints or angels in preparation for All Saints Day, but to be charitable to our neighborhood children, we passed out candy. When Halloween came and the children rang the doorbell and as I was about to give them candy, the children reached for the rosaries instead. While I did mention I had candy, and the children took that too, but they were more interested in the rosaries. Some didn’t know what it was, but were still intrigued. I had parents with some children come up and I encouraged them to take rosaries too.
Overall, the experience of giving out the rosaries from our front porch was a huge success. Since I did this last October, I plan to do it in every October. You can do it too whether you are in a house or an apartment building. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, just use whatever you have on hand. Just put it out and let God do the rest.
