throwing crowns

I thought it might be interesting to write a post from here in the midst of the pandemic of the corona virus, in the mayhem. And that maybe it would bring some hope. I have no idea what will happen in the next month, especially as the peak of the virus isn't meant to hit here until two weeks from now, but here we are.

The UK doesn't have as many sanctions as other nations in Europe, but starting next weekend, gatherings of more than 100 people will be discouraged (if not outright prohibited). We've decided that it would be prudent not to meet as a church or to do most of our church-wide activities throughout next week, so we are definitely giving it everything we've got this weekend, while we still can.

Let me tell you, the atmosphere over London is thick. As missionaries, it is always the crisis that make us think twice. While most people decide escape routes, we ask God for the wisdom in how to bring hope and light into situations. In the summer of the terror attacks, we had plans for if things went wrong, but we also decided not to evacuate London. We chose to stay, even had things escalated, to be where people needed Jesus most.

That leads us to corona virus. How can we be responsible, but not be afraid? Perfect love casts our fear, but God also asks us to be wise. So we scoured Camden for hand sanitiser and made signs to take out with us tonight that asked people if they wanted prayer for anxiety, health, mental health, worries, etc. And the turnout was more than we expected.

Before we even got outside, one of our longtime homeless friends stumbled into our shop, out of her mind with fear. We prayed and spoke with her for two hours as she said goodbye to things that had chained her and re-dedicated herself to Jesus. We even helped her get rid of some of a crystal that she was wearing to ward off evil spirits. Then we headed up to our yellow tent outside of Camden Town Station, where the rest of our Saturday night crew were spread out across the square, praying for people.

People are so open in London right now. Whether they want to lash out in anger or bravely admit their fear, they are open. So many people stopped who would normally have smiled and muttered something about the weather. We prayed, we invited them to church, and sometimes we even gave them a quick squeeze (and then doused ourselves in hand sanitiser). It's odd how people need so much reassurance when fear hangs so thickly in the air. And at the same time, it's a massive privilege to get to be the ones who reassure them. We have a hope (and an anchor...) that we can share with them, and here they are, ready to hear about him. Finally!

So yes, corona virus is a pandemic. It's frightening. But corona translates to crown, and I know exactly where I'm meant to put my crowns - at the feet of Jesus.

February 2020 Update

So I promised to tell you more about what we have going on right now, and a chilly, wet February evening seems like the perfect time. So here's a February 2020 update!

Right now at Radiant, we have two training programmes going on: the Leadership and Urban Ministry Development internship and a winter Arts Internship. I am a part of the leadership team of the internship, which has eight ladies from four nations: Germany, Canada, the States and France. It's only been two weeks so far, but we've already explored London, had two teachings and several days of arts ministry time as well as times of evangelism and serving at church.

We are also seeing Hope and Anchor continue to grow, with several new families joining to round out our children's ministry. Yesterday, we even had our first baby dedication! My Connect Group has also grown, and now we have over four nations represented, and nearly all of us own puffy black jackets, so we look like a girl gang when we leave Think after our Tuesday night time together. As the church grows, we are starting to have Friday night activities for the church in the Upper Room, the hall where we met until last year. Our evangelism times have also grown so that we feed and clothe the homeless on both Friday and Saturday nights, and people from the community have even begun joining us. I love it, because as we reach out to our community, we can share the love of Jesus with both those who need the food and clothes and with those who want to be a part of serving.

We are also planning an event called OneFest for 19 July 2020 in Trafalgar Square. That is the centre of London, and this is no small undertaking. It will be a free festival that is not overtly religious, but will champion young entrepreneurs and allow them a place to have a stall that reaches many different people whilst simultaneously allowing them mentors who are already (Christian) businesspeople. One of the main aims of the festival is to create a place for the church to meet with Londoners and for us to influence many different areas of society (religion, business, and arts/sports) in the centre of our city. We believe that 2020 is a year that will bring awakening in London, and while this is a massive undertaking requiring funding and planning that we have no experience in, we are so excited to see how God is moving. Everybody that we have spoken to are skeptical about the size, but we have been following where we feel God leading, and last week the Trafalgar Square management team put us down for 19 July! This is a massive prayer request (and something quite hard to explain), especially because we submitted the application last week and are waiting to see what more we need to include. So please pray for us, that God continues to bring us the right contacts and people to plan and host this event!

We also need a new house, because we have over 25 new students arriving in March, and we have begun the search in earnest. There is a housing crisis in London that makes it difficult to find houses, especially in the size and location in which we need one. And Think, our cafe, has been doing well recently (especially our hairdressers, who are booked full-up thanks to Groupon), but we still had a hard time in the autumn, from which we are still recovering. But we know that business is hard, and we see God move through Think. People meet God as they have their hair cut or as they enjoy a latte. When one woman inquired about holding a meet-up at our cafe, she said that she felt safe and at peace there. That's a high compliment for Camden!

Several new staff have joined the team recently, and it is amazing to watch ministries grow and reach into the different parts of society. Our fashion ministry dressed the models in one of the shows in London Fashion Week just last night, and Ina, the leader of fashion ministry, helped the designer finish up the collection in time to hit the catwalk! Tidal, the band Eric and Federico formed last year, is in the process of filming their first music video, and Chasm Magazine is almost finished with its fourth volume. On top of all of that, Micah spoke at a prayer meeting in Parliament last week!

At Hope and Anchor on Sunday, Chris talked about how we are meant to be all things to all people, from the homeless to the Members of Parliament, because God doesn't make distinction between them. I love watching as God moves us from Parliament to the streets of Camden in the rain, from classrooms to fashion catwalks. We live life at a crazy speed, it's true, because when God is doing so much, you have to run to keep up!

Cappuccino, please

We have a regular customer, called Nick -

No, wait. Customer isn't quite the right term.

We have a regular friend, called Nick, who has come to the door of Think and asked for a "Cappuccino, please," nearly every morning since we opened last May. I have no idea how he found us, but whatever the weather, whether we are busy or slow, he comes around, asks for a cappuccino, and downs it as he smokes a cigarette on our patio.

Nick isn't quite homeless. He has a place to stay. But he still begs, and his mental challenges mean that he has a social worker and can't keep a job. It was rough, at first, to explain to him that he can't come into the shop and beg. But slowly, our conversations with him changed from, "Sorry, Nick, you can't beg inside the shop," to something deeper. It's all of us together, whichever of us is on shift, morning after morning, who have grown with him, and now he stops for more than a cappuccino. When we bring it, he says, "Sit down. Will you pray for me?"

This past Monday morning, as I brought him his cappuccino, he asked me how I know that I can hear God. Then we talked about hearing God, about heaven and what that might look like, and several other deep musings that I only share with my close friends or, in a bizarre twist, with people that I meet on the streets of London. And it's amazing to get to share them with Nick, who some days can't remember my name, and sometimes says, "How do you know that you're hearing God?"

I thought that maybe you'd enjoy hearing about Nick, who is just one of the dozens of men and women we see every week. It's become so normal to me, but it's why I love Think so much. Every day, people encounter God at Think. They get to know the One who loves them so desperately that He gave His only Son. And they only expected a coffee!

In other news, we have an internship and a leadership school running at the minute, and Hope and Anchor is growing, and we are planning a massive event in Trafalgar Square for the summer. We need your prayers, not only for this, but also for the team (I am the latest in a string of us who have had the flu epidemic that is going round) and our health. We can feel the opposition against us, but we also know that when you follow God, opposition comes.

I will share more, post-flu, about the internship and Trafalgar Square and Hope and Anchor, but I wanted to take a few moments to share about Nick, and to say thank you, again, for all of your prayer and support. London is changing. Hearts are more open, and the church is working together across denominations and organisations. 2020 is going to be a massive year, and we are so happy to be here in the centre of it!

The best last night

As a charity, we receive food donations from grocery stores who have surplus food. On New Year’s Eve, we received food from Marks and Spencer’s, a posh grocery store. We decided to push back all of our plans in order to pull out our giant yellow tent and to spend the last night of the year giving back to our community by handing out the food donations that we received.

In the end, I know that the food helped those who were homeless or who don’t have enough, but I think that it impacted the people who were on their way to New Year’s parties even more. They stopped to see what we were doing (we had enough sweets and bananas to hand out to everyone, not just to the homeless), and we ended up having conversations with them about what they were doing, what we were doing, and why we want to give back. We spoke to everyone who wanted to talk, from the homeless that we see regularly to the police officers who were brought into Camden specially for New Year’s Eve. Some people we spoke to about Jesus, and some we just listened to as they shared. It’s amazing the things people will open up about if you’ll give them space. Some of them need that more than they need food.

And also, I think that it impacted us to give the food away. We were focussed on winding down the year together and on what is coming in 2020, but it gave us a few hours to think in the present about the people around us. I love the holiday season, and I think that it’s great to have a chance to reflect, but sometimes we get caught up so much in reflecting on what has happened or will happen that we forget what is happening right now. And on New Year’s Eve, before we counted down to a new year, we got the chance to give away what had been given to us. We closed the year by reaching out to the people who live (or party or work) shoulder to shoulder with us in Camden Town. 

We still had plenty of time to celebrate the New Year together, but I think the real celebration began the moment we put out that giant yellow tent. 

(Also, a special shout out to my mum, who is in the third picture and who came along to help!)

2019 Update

A few weeks ago, Green Creek Baptist Church asked me to do a video update to share with their church. Throughout the week, I filmed in the different places where we do ministry throughout the week and made this wee video. Please feel free to share it, and if you want to know more about these stories, check out the posts in this blog!

the whirlwind summer

I have gone radio silent, and I am sorry for that! The London summer is short, and on our team, it is our busiest season.

July turned out to be a manic month. After searching long and hard for a new house to accommodate some of our 31 students in the July DTS, Rebecca, Meli and I moved to Hackney, East London in the first week of July. As a team, we've been praying to move to and be more involved in East London for a while now, and God came through (as per usual) in His perfect time that felt quite tight for us, which meant that we moved in only a week before nine new students arrived. But the team pulled together and built beds, assembled the makings of a kitchen, and helped us break in our new barbecue grill that came with the house.

I am still completely overwhelmed by the goodness of God - I've been praying for East London for several years now, and I see how He especially prepared me for it throughout the spring. On my birthday, I asked God to use my year straight to the edges. And let me tell you, He has been faithful to do just that! With all of the different ministries that we are up to, the events that we get to host and take part in, the schools and other training programmes, and with Think (our coffee shop) and Hope and Anchor, time is being stretched in new ways. I feel like we shouldn't be able to do it all, but God has been building our muscles over time. We don't want to miss any blessings that He has for us or any ways that He wants to use us, so instead of putting our own limits, we keep trusting.

Our current Discipleship Training School started the second week of July and has 31 students - it is the largest DTS ever in YWAM in London! We have six houses strung like pearls on a necklace across London, from West London to our house in Hackney, East London. When I look back three years and remember how excited we were to get our second house, this feels absolutely mad. Several teachers and pastors that came to visit us in the early years of Radiant said that it was time for us to stretch the edges of our tent, and they were right!

A couple of weeks ago, we held a community barbecue in the alley next to Think, and we had somewhere around 100 new friends come through. They were everyone from homeless to gypsies to families to our regular Think customers. At one point, I put down my camera and looked across the crowd to see all of our different ministries in one place: the barber from Think was giving a free haircut to our homeless friend Nobby, and our regular cafe customer Saranya was chatting to a woman from Hope and Anchor. Our DTS students sat on the dirty pavement in order to have conversations with some homeless that we'd never met before while one of our Hope and Anchor ladies made jollof rice (a Nigerian speciality) for everyone. And the next Sunday, some of our homeless friends even came to Hope and Anchor for the first time since we moved into the cinema location!

In two days, we begin Arise London/Bones Camp, our outreach to the city of London leading up to Notting Hill Carnival. If you've been on this journey with me for any amount of time, you are probably familiar with Bones. I love it, because it is our push all together as a base. We put other activities on pause in order to reach out to our city in a massive way. Could you pray for us as we step into it, that God would prepare the hearts of our team, of the campers who come from outside to join us, and for the people that we will meet in the streets? Will you pray for health, safety and for God to move? We saw many people get saved last year, and we are trusting that many more will encounter Jesus this year as we hit the streets! So that update is certainly coming up!

And finally, my Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) is nearly fully funded - thank you so much for giving so extravagantly! I will be applying for it when I return from the International Arts + Sports Gathering in NYC in October. So I will be back in September with an update on Arise London/Bones and to share about the Gathering (which I get to help organise, and which is one of my favourite events that we hold as a team).

But once again, thank you all for your prayers, for your support and for your faithfulness. We are in such an exciting time as God is opening up new sectors of life (business primarily!) for our team to touch, and the places that we find ourselves are always surprises. I couldn't have dreamt all of this for myself, so I'm so glad that God dreams for all of us and enables us to move as a family through it together. So thank you for being a part of this family with me, for loving God and trusting Him along with me. You guys are incredible!

ice lollies on a hot day

This is just a tiny update, because it delighted my heart and I want to share it with you.

We got a donation for Lazarus Project this week, and we decided to use it towards the food and coffee/tea that we give out to the homeless and needy on Saturday nights at Camden Town Station. Today is the hottest day of the year so far (34 degrees Celsius, so about 92 degrees Fahrenheit - with no air conditioning in sight), and we knew that the homeless wouldn't be hungry so much as they would need something nice to cool them down. So we went to the shop and bought ice lollies to go with the soup and bread that we already had.

One of the gentlemen is regularly quite gruff with us and refuses help, but when Josiah took him an ice lolly, he broke into a smile that he couldn't wipe off of his face. I hope I never forget how he looked.

Here's a picture of Paul with his ice lolly. A few weeks ago, Paul collapsed under our tent after consuming too many substances (I'm unsure of whether it was a combination of drugs and alcohol or just one or the other), and we had to call the ambulance. He's gotten into numerous scrapes since, but tonight he seemed content to just eat his ice lolly and chill.

So anyway, have a lovely evening, and I hope that this brings some joy to your weekend!

as a man Thinks

“What does Think mean?”

Introducing Think, our new cafe! The name is inspired by Proverbs 23:7, which says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so he is.” We want it to be a spot that encourages people to stop for a moment and think about their heart. We want them to find God in their searching, to realise they were created intentionally for something great.

But let me rewind a bit. We began building Think (referred to on this blog as “the cafe”) in the middle of January, and on the first day of May, we held our grand opening. I have the absolute privilege of being a barista at Think, which means that I went from construction on 30th April and the morning of 1 May straight into on-the-job training. We didn’t stop for a moment, but we discovered that our three months of building developed muscles and authority in the space that we will need to steward this space well.

My roommate, Liz, at the till

 

Part of our beautiful machine

Think is located on Camden High Street, just a few blocks from the Horse Stables that attract thousands of tourists each weekend. It is right in the middle of the neighbourhood where we’ve been praying and investing for years, and it marks the third leg of our ministry there. The first is the base house, where Chris and Johanna, our base directors, live with their family. The second is Hope and Anchor Community Church. And the third is this cafe, a place where we not only welcome the community in, but where we hope to build community. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I haven’t worked in the hospitality industry in a while, but I haven’t forgotten those plastered-on smiles or how efficiency was the most praised practise. Think is entirely different. We are encouraged to have conversations with our customers, conversations that go deeper than the surface. And if one of us is in the conversation, the others cover and handle the practicalities of the cafe so that we can stay in the conversation. It is the opposite to every business model I’ve seen, but of course, this isn’t a business for us. This is a ministry. We talk openly about God. We offer to pray for people. We invite them to church. We hold our Connect Groups for church at the back tables. The coffee culture in London is booming, and we are welcoming people into our space. And our space is Kingdom space, so we don’t play by the normal rules. We get to play the King’s way.

Neil, the first customer I made a coffee for and my mate who runs the homeless drop-in I volunteer in on Tuesdays

But we aren’t just a normal cafe space. We want to give back to the community, as well, through using our hairstyling space to give the homeless free haircuts and eventually enable those coming out of prison or off the streets to learn a skill and hold down a job. Whenever one of us brings in somebody off the streets to talk more deeply, they get free coffee. Eventually we hope to use the outside wall of the shop to teach graffiti workshops so the youth have something to do other than sell drugs or play on smartphones. And more than anything, we want everyone who walks through the doors to encounter Jesus Christ.

The view from outside our shop, looking in.

Liz making coffee on opening night.

So would you please pray for us, family? We’re in a whole new game here in the business world. We need favour with the borough council, because they aren’t keen with what we’ve done to the outside of the place. Our hot water boiler has also just broken (turns out it was 15-20 years old), and it will take around £6000 to replace. We’re also keen to build up regular customers so that we can have deep relationships with them and disciple them as they meet Jesus. Basically, this is an all new endeavour, and we need a lot of wisdom from God on top of His grace.

And thank you, as well, for the prayer that you spend on us. Thank you for your faithfulness. We see the fruits of it here in London.

and finally, me!

Resurrection Weekend

I received an email last week from a friend who said, "As you celebrate our Savior's death and Resurrection, I pray you find joy in the gift of life we have through Jesus' gift to us, His life."

I thought about that line from the email for several days. Easter is a celebration, one that we often meet through somber reflection. But I wanted to celebrate this year. The same day that I received the email, I found at that, as Hope and Anchor Community Church, we were going to spend Good Friday reaching out for Camden. What actually ensued was much better.

On Friday, we set out our large church banners on each of the corners of the Camden High Street so that all of the people exiting Camden Town Underground Station couldn't miss us. We brought drums, a sound system, stilts and face painting, and people began stopping to talk to us. We stayed outside until nighttime, celebrating in the streets. It felt a bit weird to be celebrating on Good Friday, the day most people commemorate Jesus dying on the Cross. But He died for the people of Camden, and they need to know, so we danced and sang with the people who stopped. And many of them stopped and stayed with us for several hours, chatting to different people and joining in when we all danced to Mary Mary's "Shackles."

Camden Town Community Choir singing to draw the crowds and spread joy

The musicians singing covers

Chris meeting people where they are

Melo painting faces

Federico made a new friend whilst drumming

On Saturday, we visited Camden Stables Market with flyers to invite people to our Sunday celebration. We combed the stalls, inviting tourists and stall workers alike. Then we went handed out food to the homeless and needy by Camden Town Station again, and our group was so large that we managed to send out a team to the alleys where we know the homeless normally congregate.

This couple asked the girls, "Who is this Jesus we keep hearing about? Is he around here?"

Henrik kept cars from hitting this man as he sat drunkenly in the street

Finally, on Sunday, after our service (at which we met many of our friends from Friday and Saturday again), we hit the streets to invite people to the barbecue and film-viewing that we were having. A lot of the more rough-and-tumble Camden crowd came, and as I looked up and down Greenland Street during the barbecue, I was delighted by the diversity. There was everyone from an 89-year-old Irish woman with her shopping trolley to two men who got stuck in the punk scene of the 90s, from the homeless to the families passing by. I love moments like that, where I look around at our church and see a snapshot of our city.

Camden Town Community Choir performed in church

Resurrection Sunday worship

Inviting people to our barbecue

In case they didn't look up to see the barbecue

Part of our eclectic bunch

Some new friends with Federico

Our barbecue in the streets of Camden

This weekend was a weekend of joy. And when I observed the people that gathered with us, I realised that joy attracts lonely people. So many of them started appearing at the fringes of our group on the streets, and the person nearest them would turn around and pull them in. And isn't that part of what Jesus came to do? He saved us, yes. He gave us family. And still today, He is calling the lonely to Himself, from the streets of Camden to wherever you are living right now. It was such a joy to get to welcome the lonely home.

hurricane days

I thought that January would be quiet, that a lack of students would mean time to be creative and slow down a bit. All of us at Radiant did. But boy, were we wrong. Within a few days of each other, two massive things that we were praying for came to life, and we had to start hustling.

In the beginning of January, we got the keys to an empty shop in Camden. For years, we have been praying and seeking God's heart for a coffee/tattoo/hairstyling shop in Camden. And over the past year, we've seen several different properties. Peri and Chris have been scouring the internet and the streets for locations that could work. We've even gotten close to having a few of them, but they kept falling through. But this former hairdresser on Camden High Street? It didn't fall through. So Chris and Johanna signed the papers and got the keys, and we got to work.

The building that we started with is not the one that we are working in now. We tore down walls and two false ceilings to reveal over an extra metre of height. We also found a leak, shoddy electrical wiring, a false front, and more. We've been spending our days in the shop together, clearing the old out and beginning to build the new. The layout has changed multiple times, and some days are slower than others, but I love that it is team-building in the most literal sense. We don't need games or ice-breakers. We just tear down ceilings and build new walls. It is also a time when I am thanking God for the men that He sent to the team - I remember building projects where the girls had to wield the drills and carry the heavy objects, but this time, we have several guys who are really good at construction at the helm. What an absolute blessing.

Many of us will be baristas in the shop (me included!), so we've also begun coffee training. And hygiene and food training (which I also needed for Lazarus Project and our homeless feeding programmes, so it's a win/win situation for me). I really love all of the training, because they are tangible tools for reaching the people of Camden. Chris always says that more blessings bring more responsibility, and he is definitely right. We have a lot of responsibilities now that we've not had to think of before, but God is training our muscles to carry these dreams.

If you'd like to know more about our cafe, Think, check out the Instagram or the Facebook. They share our heart for making a space for community in the centre of Camden and the different dreams and plans that we have for the space that God has given us. Please also pray for us, because this is our first time navigating the treacherous terrain of council permits and the like. We trust what God is asking from us, and we can't wait to see the cafe opened to the public soon!

Tearing down ceilings in Think.

All of the Radiant staff in the shop!

In January, we also signed the contract for Hope and Anchor Community Church to move into the Odeon Cinema. We use a 175 person screen for our Sunday meetings every week now. I know. It's massive. But we outgrew the Upper Room (which we still use for other activities), and after looking around Camden for a venue that was big enough for us, we were thrilled when the Odeon was keen to host us. When God said that it was time to expand the edges of our tent, we had no idea how much!

This past Sunday was our first in the Odeon, and while we had many empty seats, we are excited to be intentional in our community as they are filled. Because they won't fill by magic - they will fill as we share God's heart with the people of Camden. And we love doing that. We are already reaching out through the Camden Town Community Choir, which is searching for a rehearsal venue in the centre of Camden Town in order to be near the local residents. Our Connect Groups are also moving to the Camden area so that we can share together mid-week as well. So between the two church venues, the Radiant base flat, and the shop, we have four locations in Camden within a year and a half. It took seven years of praying in Camden and seeing no results, but God is moving in a massive way!

This week is also the first week of our February Arts Internship and our School of Leadership and Urban Ministry Development. I am staffing the leadership school and also getting to walk alongside and mentor two of our arts interns, so I've had the excitement of a lot of new things this week. But those aren't the only new things in the works - Chasm Magazine is releasing issue two in the next few days, and it is available for pre-order already. They ship to different countries, so please check it out! And the guys (plus Sara) have been working on recording the first EP for Tidal in our recording studio. I had no idea how much work goes into making on EP, but holy cow. I can't wait for them to release it so we can play it constantly.

So this has been a long post, but a brief overview of a crazy month. I will be back soon to share what's going on with Lazarus, more updates about Think and Hope and Anchor, and more. But thank you, thank you for being on this journey with me. Your prayers have hands and feet here in London.

Christmas for Camden

There was a moment on Friday night, as four of my Radiant mates and I knocked on doors of the council estate nearest Hope and Anchor Community Church, that I forgot about the cold and dark and genuinely just enjoyed getting to be God's hands and feet in Camden. When we knocked on the doors, we never knew the reception that we would get. Some women refused to answer, even when they pushed back the curtain and saw Victoria and me smiling back at them with gifts in our hands. One man opened the door in nothing but his underpants. In London in December. His heating must work very well. And there was one man who opened the door ready to knock our living daylights out. But then we gave him the gifts for his family, and he nearly cried.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me explain why it was that we were on an estate after dark handing out mysterious gifts.

Back in early November, after a weekend of paperwork and interviews and inspections, we were drained and decided to think of a way that we could bring Christmas to London on a big scale. One thing led to another, and before our week officially even began, we had ordered 10,000 anchor pins to distribute to the people of London. But just giving them a pin wasn't good enough. We wanted to give them gifts. So we ordered straw and boxes and stickers, and last week, our Radiant offices became an assembly line as we constructed boxes and packed pins to take to the people of London.

This Christmas season has seemed especially dismal in London. Maybe it has something to do with the Brexit chaos that our Parliament is sorting, or the fact that we nearly lost our Prime Minister last week. Or maybe it's that 2018 was a rough year. And the holidays are always rough. It's a time of hope, but the emphasis on hope seems to also highlight what we don't have. We originally wanted to have a street party for the people of Camden, so that we could come together as a community in a time of loneliness. It would be full of free food and live music, a camel, gifts for everyone. It would celebrate the true Christmas spirit, that God fulfilled His greatest promise to the people that He loves. But the permits didn't come through, and we planned instead a Christmas dinner for anyone who will come.

Back to knocking on doors. It's the first time we've gone door-to-door in Camden. People in London aren't necessarily warm and friendly (as I'm sure you've gathered). They don't take kindly to having their dinner or telly time interrupted by strangers. But Friday night found us laden with boxes of gifts and numb fingers that made it a comedy sketch every time we fumbled for boxes and Christmas dinner invitations. In the midst of it all, as I watched Federico cajole passersby into taking a gift from a stranger, or as Victoria, Sara, and Elin chased down strangers at bus stops, or as Sergio pulled the gifts out three at a time, I was struck by the privilege of it. This is something that God dreamt of. I truly believe that it thrills Him to see His children chase down others with a little box of hope.

And we have at least 9,000 gifts left to give out this week. The best is yet to come!

The process of creating the gifts:

The final product:

A happy recipient!

layers, angles, sides

Every fortnight, we have a free barbecue at Hope and Anchor Community Church. As the weeks go on and we get into the swing of things (read: as we still try to figure out how to get the fire to catch in the grills), we are also getting to build relationships with the people that we invite into our family. I still get a lump in my throat when I look around the room and see gruff old men and teenage girls worshipping next to each other, especially because they don't know the songs, but they go for it anyway.

One of my favourite things to do during these barbecue services (because we do them simultaneously) is to stand downstairs with the people who don't feel that they can go upstairs. Sometimes they feel too dirty, or they don't have anywhere to leave their dog (the homeless often take better care of their dogs than other people do their own children), or they are a different religion, so they don't want to disrespect the church. We welcome them upstairs anyway, but sometimes, they prefer to stay with us outside.

I've gotten to know several of our neighbours this way. I appreciate the open hearts that they have to share how life is going for them. They love the idea of spending time together as a community (and they love free barbecue, because who doesn't?). They aren't afraid to share themselves with others. And that is as rare as the sunshine in London. Although, we've had several weeks in a row of sunshine and hot weather, and if that's not a sign of an Almighty God, I don't know what is.

During the last barbecue, we all got to know Sarah. I don't know the details of her situation, but Sarah has a way of turning up at different times throughout the week. She brought food to share to the barbecue, because she didn't want to just come and take. She wanted to contribute to our time of community. While Sarah was certainly inebriated, she was also kind, and she made sure to include and talk to everyone. When she found out that I was a photographer, she was keen for me to take her photo.

What I love about these photos is the range that Sarah shows. She has different layers and different sides, which I am getting to know through the texts she has begun sending me. Yesterday morning, I woke up to eight messages from her, most of them pictures of the sky. She shared what she was seeing and how she felt about it. I love getting to see Camden through her eyes.