How this community member used Adventures in Odyssey to raise her local church’s visibility

When Judy thought about her small church getting ready to celebrate its 90th birthday in Crossfield, Alberta, she felt a call from God to do something special. The church had moved from the centre of town to a less visible area outside of town. She remembers waking up at four in the morning with a heavy heart about the church’s lack of visibility and relationship with the rest of the town. “We needed to re-establish a relationship, so I’m thinking, Lord, how can we do that?” Judy recalls.

On the church’s 75th birthday, they had donated a collection of Veggie Tales DVDs to the local public library. “That was really well received,” Judy remembers, and it got her thinking about making another donation, but this time with Adventures in Odyssey albums. “It’s totally what we believe in and it would give God lots to work with, so I ran it by our librarian to see what she thought.”

Initially, there was some hesitancy from the library. Judy was told that everyone on the library’s board is “a little bit anti-Christian,” but the church decided to move ahead and try to donate something in keeping with their morals and values. In the end, they managed to do this with a full collection of Adventures in Odyssey CDs – the entire series to date!

The church had to raise funds for this effort as the cost was outside their regular annual budget. But Judy had no problem raising support or enthusiasm. “One woman came to me on Sunday and said, ‘I am so for this project. My daughter listens to the Odyssey CDs as she goes to bed. She went to bed mad at me last week, then she came downstairs and apologized to me that night. She said, “I am sorry mom.” And that was from listening to the Adventures in Odyssey CD that night.’”

After that, Judy heard from another church member who reflected on the challenges in raising her son: “Dr. Dobson has got insight into how to handle it, and I don’t know how [my son] would have turned out if I didn’t have those materials from Focus on the Family,” the woman said. She added that she believed in this initiative of donating Adventures in Odyssey to the library, and said that God had put it on her heart to donate the outstanding amount after other donations had come in.

Judy sees why families are drawn to the faith-building stories of Adventures in Odyssey. “There is something in there that touches the hearts of kids,” she says, looking back on her own desire as a parent for her kids to show kindness to others and to be a light to the world. “I prayed with them at the door before they ran off to catch the school bus that they would be kind and thoughtful to those around them,” she recalls. “God answered those prayers.”

Judy is a public-school teacher, as are her grown son and daughter. As with her call to donate faith-affirming resources to the public library, Judy sees the public school as an opportunity for Christians to shine the love of Christ. “Public school is where we felt our family needed to be. If you take the light from the public school, it’s not good. It’s needed there.”

Looking ahead, Judy is excited to see how God might use the Adventures in Odyssey CDs to help raise her church’s visibility in the community. “In God’s economy, the CDs are a huge part of what God does,” she says. “It allows a splash effect, like throwing a rock in water. You don’t know where God is taking all those droplets. He’s got a plan and he knows, and we need to be faithful, and this is part of being faithful. Donating CDs to the library and forging ahead in the real work that God wants you to do, that’s what we should be about.”