At Lleyn, Christmas Evans tasted the first prelibations of a successful ministry; a wondrous power attended his preaching, numbers were gathered into the Church. “I could scarcely believe,” he says, “the testimony of the people who came before the Church as candidates for membership, that they were converted through my ministry; yet I was obliged to believe, though it was marvellous in my eyes. This made me thankful to God, and increased my confidence in prayer; a delightful gale descended upon me as from the hill of the New Jerusalem, and I felt the three great things of the kingdom of heaven, righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” Indeed, very unusual powers seemed to attend him. He says, “I frequently preached out of doors at nightfall,” and the singing, and the praising seem to have touched him very tenderly; he frequently found his congregations bathed in tears and weeping profusely. Preaching was now to him, as he testifies, a very great pleasure,—and no wonder; quite a remarkable revival of religious feeling woke up wherever he went. When he first entered Lleyn, the religious life was very cold and feeble; quite wonderful was the change.
After a time, exhausted with his work in these villages, he accepted an invitation to visit the more remote parts of South Wales. When ministers, like Christmas Evans, are enfeebled in health, they recreate themselves by preaching; the young man was enfeebled, but he started off on his preaching tour; he could not obtain a horse, so he walked the whole way, preaching in every village or town through which he passed. Very frequently large numbers of the same congregation would follow after him the next day, and attend the services fifteen or twenty times, although many miles apart. So he went through the counties of Cardigan, Pembroke, Caernarvon, Glamorgan, Monmouth, and Brecknock, stopping and holding services at the innumerable villages lying on his way. The fame that a wonderful man of God had appeared spread through South Wales on the wings of the wind, and an appointment for Christmas Evans to preach was sufficient to attract thousands to the place. While he yet continued at Lleyn as itinerant missionary, in that short time he had acquired perhaps a greater popularity than any other preacher of that day in Wales.