23 December 2013

‘Jesus Saves’: A Christmas Trilogy



This holiday at GBH saw the latest resurrection of ‘Jesus’, a young Mexican boy turned entrepreneur who has been writing to our friends and clients at Christmas for the past three years in thanks for GBH’s transformational donation of their annual Christmas card budget to charity.

‘Jesus’, Aged 9: 2013
Unfortunately, things didn’t remain on the up for long… This year we heard that ‘Jesus’ found himself in a spot of bother, landing up in Mexican jail (He insists it’s all a big mistake). But as we well know, there is very little that can dissuade ‘Jesus’ from putting his mind to new entrepreneurial endeavours. He tells us about how he has found (another) ‘Jesus’ inside prison, and attaches his new ‘brother’s picture and how together they have begun ‘the Jesus Foundation’ at www.jesussaves.mx, to find and help other ‘Jesus’ 
around the world.

In a surprising twist, its here that the reader can learn about and help various charities that work towards finding missing children, just as GBH have done with this year’s christmas card budget.



For those that aren’t so familiar with this year’s card, here’s a little background as to how he got there...

‘Jesus’, Aged 7: 2011
‘Jesus’ has come a long way since his first mail-out. Back in 2011 the impoverished 7 year old from Tijuana told us of all the things that he hoped to achieved with GBH’s princely $45 Christmas Card budget donation… most importantly buying the www.jesussaves.mx domain name to pursue his online low interest banking idea.




‘Jesus’, Aged 8: 2012
A year later he updated us all again telling us of the great successes he was having with that online business, donning a dapper pinstripe suit. At just age 8 he could afford to buy his mother a Suzuki Liana Cabrolet with only 52,000 miles. All thanks to GBH.




We went to great lengths to obtain Mexican postage stamps and carefully copied Mexican franking (probably breaking one or two Mexican laws along the way) to ensure that all the cards appeared to genuinely come from a Mexican child via his custodian charity. As well as this, the first set of cards were hand delivered to over 150 addresses in London to avoid putting the card through the Royal Mail system and ruining the guise. More recently, they are ‘re-packaged at customs’ and sent in clear plastic bags to their end recipients...

Sadly, his rags to riches journey has hit a new challenge in 2013, with a stint in Jail. In true ‘Jesus’ fashion, adversity becomes opportunity and from here he has launched the ‘Foundacion de Jesus’ in order to find and help more ‘Jesus’ like him.



Our Aim
Of course the story of ‘Jesus’ according to GBH is entirely fictional, but behind the humour is a very real message about children and charity, young people who live in poverty or are separated from their families at Christmas, not just in Mexico but all over the world.

Our hope with this trilogy of Christmas messages is not only to flip the pre-conception of what a Christmas card can be, but also to re-think how a charitable cause can be bought to people’s attention in an unexpected way. Our aim is to provoke the recipient toward thinking about issues of religion and charity in an entirely new light.

As a result, GBH have sent more than 800 cards from ‘Jesus’ since 2011 and have donated around a £1000 to charities including www.actionaid.org.uk, www.missingpeople.org.uk, www.findmadeleine.com, www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk, www.newlifemexico.com and www.lovelifehope.com.

Help us to raise even more to help young lives at Christmas by donating via the ‘El Fundaciòn de Jesus’ here at www.jesussaves.mx.

A very Merry Christmas from everyone at GBH, including our good friend ‘Jesus’ x


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