a little celebration

 I have just a very brief update because I wanted to share that tonight, I met with a friend (who I mentioned in the last post - the one that I took a walk with) that I made last winter. She was not Christian, but ended up being very open to hearing about things of God. We have met up consistently since then, and she has come to different barbecues and social events at my house. It's been so nice to integrate her into my other friendships. 

Tonight, I gave her a Gospel of Mark and we talked about how Christianity is different to other religions because it isn't completely individualistic - it's about loving and caring for other people, as well. We read the bit in Mark when Jesus encounters the rich young man who he tells to sell his possessions - it says, "And Jesus loved him." We marvelled at this Jesus who loves us so much that he'll tell us the hard truths that are best for us. We saw that it is love to be spoken to in such a way and to be offered a different path to what the world offers us.

And in the course of the conversation, my friend said that she follows Jesus. We spoke about how I can hear God speak today and what it means to have the Holy Spirit among us. I love walking this journey with her and hearing the way she grows to love Jesus more and more. It hasn't been a one-time decision - she is walking closer and closer to him, and now, by her own admission and the evidence in her life, she is following him.

And we are rejoicing. Hallelujah. 

Investing in the Future

The past few weeks have been all about investing in the next generations. I am not old by a long shot, but God has been speaking to me about how I pour into the generation coming after me - Generation Z and the unnamed generation below them - as I grow and step into new roles. This summer I attended four Christian festivals, three of which were aimed at youth and young people. I heard what God has been speaking over these generations: they care deeply about justice. They are prone to suffering from poor mental health. They value authenticity and have open minds, but at the same time, they struggle massively with forgiveness when those who they look up to fail them. 

Yvonne, Renee and I - YWAM York!

This summer and autumn, I have also stepped back into youth work. It started last year, when I began praying for good leaders to take over youth work for my church, York Community Church. I believe that you have to be willing to be the answer to your own prayers, so when I was asked to consider co-leading the older girls’ group, I already knew that the answer was yes. So now my friends Eliza and Lucy and I meet together weekly with the 14-17 year old girls that are attached to YCC’s youth work. We eat tea together (dinner for you Americans!), worship, pray for each other and study 1 John. Some of the conclusions the girls have drawn from 1 John have surprised me! They are good at pulling out over-arching themes and applying it to other stories that they know from the Bible.

Baking with uni students

As a team, we have also been opening our house to university students on Wednesday nights. After speaking with several of them at Sixty One, the young adult festival run by Fusion and New Wine, I realised that they need a safe place to come where they know that they can ask questions and find support. So we open our house, and sometimes they come just to drink tea, or to bake, or to listen to records, or to just be. It’s been a slow start, but it is a privilege to be a safe place for them!

Yvonne and Renee in character at half term club!

We also just finished our first half term club of the school year! England has a week-long break off of school for every six weeks of term, which means that there are three half term breaks a year. We have held a club for every half term that we’ve been here (barring the ones during strict lockdowns), and while it was a slow start, we now have waiting lists and families who sign up for every club. Many of these children also come to our weekly kids’ club, so we’ve built strong relationships with them. This half term club, we had a safari theme, and Yvonne and Renee decorated The Barnabas Centre vacation Bible school-style and created characters who walked us through the week. The kids loved it, and we got to teach them about David and Goliath, the Good Samaritan, Moses, Aaron and Hur and manna from Heaven. The more that the kids come, the stronger a culture we can create, and this club, we saw them choosing to be generous and to prefer each other. It was beautiful!

Teaching at Holmsted Manor

If you know me, you know that children’s work is not my passion. I prefer working with young adults, which is why last week was one of my favourite weeks of the autumn. I was asked to speak on the DTS at Holmsted Manor, the YWAM base in the south of England. I went down for four days and taught on worship and intercession. We also had a worship night whilst I was there, and it was amazing to hear afterwards about the different things that God was doing across the room. Worship is an area God has worked on a lot in my life since coming to York, and it was a privilege to get to pass on everything that I have been learning. A phrase that I have been holding for a while is that of being a glorious footstool - allowing God to use me as a stepping stone for those who come after me. Passing on what He has given me is a good way to do that! 

Next month, we will take part in Big Green Heart training. Big Green Heart is a tool that takes forgiveness and healing teaching into schools. It has been developed by a friend of ours, and we are excited to be able to put it in our toolbox. I was also trained as a parenting course facilitator with Family Matters (a local Christian charity) this summer, and in early 2023, we hope to be able to put on a course that helps parents manage anger in their teens. Please pray for us as we equip ourselves to serve local youth and our community as best as we can!

This coming Friday, 4th of November, is Hope for the City, a city-wide prayer event with One Voice York, the church unity movement with which I am involved. We are meeting together as the greater York church to pray for the social action projects that the churches of York have come together to create. We will also be praying into city-wide Gospel sharing - an area that Renee and I have been meeting with other pastors and church workers to pray about for several months now! We will be introducing city-wide Alpha, which I get to head up with one of my friends who pastors a local church!

The Barnabas Centre, our community centre!

God is doing a lot here in York. We are very thankful to see Him open doors and direct us where to go. We had a difficult time with housing this autumn, and that means that we are staying in the same house we’ve been in. We are working on sorting out our governance and some other loose ends with the charity as well, and I would appreciate prayers in that area. I am seeking advice and help, but these are still areas that I am no expert in. I do feel the weight of them. And please also pray for God’s protection over all of me: mind, body, emotions, spirit, as we walk through these difficult things! I love that God has called me to this life of missions, but it does have a cost! There have been some rough aspects to this transition to York (which I am happy to discuss over email), but I am very thankful for the family of believers that God has put around me here to support me through it. And I am very thankful for all of your prayers that come so faithfully.

To end on a happy note: thank you to everybody who contributed to my new computer. My old one died abruptly earlier this week (and would have cost several hundred pounds to repair), but thanks to all of your generosity, I was able to buy a new one. Now I can carry on with preparing for the Hope for the City event and all of the other admin/communications work that I didn’t realise came with running a charity!

Thank you for your prayers and your constant support. It is a privilege to be able to see God’s kingdom come in York!

national hunger and thirst

 I know that it has been a long time since I have updated, and while I would love to fill you in on everything, there isn’t enough space on this page! Luckily, we’ve done a team update all together about our summer, which you can check out here: https://spark.adobe.com/page/vIc7qgBNpiajP/?fbclid=IwAR1PwdBnWnrZ6f2c0FrQcJ7R5qUl8ug4HrD40c0nKPNxG_cnBGJ3Ki-Lhpc

On to other news: I am a British citizen! I had my ceremony on Tuesday, which means that now I am a dual British and American citizen, so I can live and vote and have a job and raise British children here. This has been over nine years in the making, with a few bumps in the road along the way (you can read back through this blog to see those!), but it is amazing to see God’s faithfulness through all of it.

And now for what I really wanted to share with you:

On Wednesday evening, Raya and I went to a talk at a local church, the Belfrey, by Eleanor Mumford (she and her husband founded Vineyard Churches in the UK), and she said, “The church is not declining in the UK. God is calling people to Himself, and they are meeting Him.” 

At first I was skeptical, because I live in the reality of church here. But then, I realised that she is right. Something that I deeply admire about the church here is the way that Christians have to fight and be dedicated to God. There are so few Christians in workplaces, in schools, that they have to be willing to stand up and look different. It isn’t normal or expected to be Christian. The youth that we worked with at camp this summer talked about being the only Christians in their year groups at school, or having only one other Christian friend in the whole of their class. Everybody knows that they’re different!

I’ve also seen hunger for God and to be a part of the church that it so beautiful (and convicting)! Last week, I met with a young woman who is a Christian in a sleepy village outside of York. She has to get two buses into town every Sunday morning, and because of the bus timetable, she can’t attend her church’s youth and young people’s service; she goes to the family service with the young children. But she still makes it a point to go to every activity that she can, even though it means travelling longer distance and a lot of planning and effort. But she so hungers to be a part of a church family that she’s willing to do it! She can’t wait for the day that she lives in York, just so that she can be even more intentionally involved in the church than she already is.

We also have a young lad in our neighbourhood who is hungry for God. He’s a part of the “bad boys” group; he rides his bike round with them and gets up to all sorts of mischief. But he also hangs around whenever we have a worship night outside, sitting on the edge and listening to all of the worship and preaching. The other week, we were outside of the local church, meeting with our local councillor, and he and his friends came rolling out of the church in a flurry. It turns out that he had been trying to pray in the church, and he’d taken the other boys with him, but they’d started to be disruptive. He was so upset that they’d distracted him. So I took him aside, and together, we talked about how he could pray to God and what he wanted to say. In earshot of his friends, we prayed together. He wasn’t ashamed in any way; in fact, he wanted to take his friends on his spiritual journey with him.

This kind of hunger and boldness for God is the reality of the church in England. Yes, numbers don’t look great. But God is doing an amazing work in people’s hearts post-pandemic. When we speak to people in evangelism every week, we are amazed by their openness. And we are trying to remember that as we speak to people so that we are more bold in how we invite them to be a part of God’s family. But I think Eleanor Mumford is right: God - and the church - are on the move. 

Receiving my citizenship from the head registrar of North Yorkshire

Like Riding a Bicycle

I want to share a story with you that isn’t big, maybe, but I think it captures what we are living right now.

Back in October, somebody sent a donation for me to purchase a bicycle. Cycling is probably the fastest way around London (although it is far from free. It has been eight years since I sold my car on the way to my DTS, and let me tell you, I had forgotten how much upkeep on vehicles costs! But at the same time, they are wonderfully grounding.), and I began cycling to work when weather permitted.

Now, in the times of corona, cycling or walking are the only two ways that I can get around. I cycle the four miles to Think (our cafe) twice a week, but more importantly, Meli and I cycle three miles to the City of London two nights a week to pick up donations from M&S, a posh supermarket chain that donates out-of-date or damaged food to charities. 

Every time we arrive at M&S, the staff smile and welcome us. The manager brings us out crates of food and helps us pack bags, and more often than not, some of the staff help us load it onto our bikes. We are slowly building relationships with the workers, all of whom act as if they enjoy having us in their shop, even as they are trying to do the intense sanitation regime required when they shut now.

On the way home, Meli and I keep a lookout for homeless people to whom we can pass out some of the food. It’s always fun to hear their genuine delight when they’re given such nice treats (seriously, the food we receive is amazing). Once, I stopped and gave fresh pastries to some girls who were hanging out on their front steps. They didn’t really know what to do (I guess receiving pastries from a stranger is a bit odd), but we still stopped and talked for a bit.

I know this is only a little anecdote, but to me, it shows how community-oriented we’ve become in London. We are still on lockdown. We can’t go into shops yet, because they’re not open. We can only get food delivered or take it away from the shops that are open. But people have learnt how to enjoy each other again. We can meet our friends for walks, and I have seen so many people do just that. We can meet in parks, and now, when we sit two metres apart on blankets with our friends, we aren’t constantly checking our phones or wishing we were at home watching Netflix. We are genuinely delighted to be together.

Who knows what is really coming out of this whole situation, but I am seeing community built again in a city that is often called the loneliest city in the world. When I stand in the window of Think to receive the takeaway orders, customers want to have deep talks. A quarter of people in the UK attended a religious service online in the first six weeks of lockdown (up from 6% normally). My neighbours stop and talk when they see me in my front garden. We are building relationships. We are becoming part of one another’s lives, and we are letting people go deep with us. And the real miracle of all is that it’s been sunny and warm now for several weeks, but when you ask people how they are, nobody seems to want to talk about the weather. They’re finally ready to start talking about what matters.

Life in the Time of Corona

So, what a season, isn’t it? We’ve been in lockdown for seven weeks now in London, with no end-date in sight, and people keep saying that this is our new normal. 

Covid-19 is an interesting challenge for a missionary. Our very life description, our life work, is to go out and reach people. But the government has banned that first bit, “going out.” Still, we quickly realised (perhaps from the jump in our own screen time) that reaching people via the internet was easier than ever. We went from moaning over constant phone use to championing it - it’s the first time in my life that I regularly go to bed with a flat battery. And let me tell you, that’s not from Netflix watching. 

Our team has wondered for a while what it would be like to make some of our activities more virtual. We’ve been looking into how to use media to send not only our preachings into people’s living rooms and smart phones, but also how to move training teachings that way, or how to incorporate technology into the way that we respond in various teachings and meetings. It’s the language of the generation that is coming up, so we knew that we needed to learn it. And now, it seems, is God’s time for us to do so!

If you follow any of our social media, you know that we’ve been far from quiet in this time. Our base is already structured in such a way that each ministry has its own online presence, and we’ve been reaching out to the people who follow us very intentionally. We have fitness videos available on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, led by our very own fitness instructor, Larissa (Check them out here: https://www.facebook.com/radiantsportsandfitness/  )

We also have church on Sundays and kids’ programmes that premiere twice a week, as well as occasional cooking tutorials with our team chef, all available on our church Youtube and Facebook: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTbZFdg5m43zbUbnmvQfCag

And each ministry is reaching out in their own way. I’ve been working with theatre ministry, and we’ve made a series of tutorials on monologues so that actors can brush up on their skills in this time. It also opens us up to coaching acting via Zoom. If you want to see me in action, go ahead and look here: https://www.facebook.com/tabootheatrelondon/

What is truly amazing to me is the way that people in London are keen to help out however they can. Our food banks and other charities are literally turning away volunteers at the minute. As a team, we are helping our local Camden food bank to deliver excess food to people on estates around Camden. We have to be very careful as we do this, because our city is still on tight lockdown, and because we still have Covid-19 in our midst. But at the same time, it is a relief to finally be at the point where we can be physically present in the lives of our community again. 

We’ve been handing out flyers that share our Hope & Anchor information on our daily government-allowed walks, and a few days ago, I got to meet the across-the-street neighbours that I’ve been seeing from afar ever since moving here. It turns out that they go to the local Anglican Church and help to run the youth ministry, and once lockdown is lifted, we’re going to discuss partnering together. Our next-door neighbour is the pastor of a church that’s a bit further away, and they blast worship music throughout the day that keeps us grooving as we work. They even played a sermon at top volume last week, so I can confirm that our whole block knows who Jesus is!

It’s been so encouraging to realise that there are more Christians than we thought around. Hackney, our neighbourhood, has been written about in magazines as a place where witchcraft is growing, and whilst that is definitely true (hey, missionaries should be living in dark places, right?), there are also people fighting for our neighbourhood alongside us. 

And also, people have become so open to Christianity. I’ve downloaded an app that allows me to interact with people who live locally, and through it, I’ve been able to message back and forth with a local woman who doesn’t believe in God, but who is isolating alone and allows me to pray for her. There are others who protest that they aren’t Christian, but they still react to our posts offering prayer with their prayer requests. It’s amazing to watch the Holy Spirit move during corona, the very moment our movement is limited. It’s obvious, but it just reinforces to me that God is not limited by our limitations. He uses our limitations to show His presence so much more clearly. 

So anyway, what a weird season, but one that God’s prepared us for, and one in which He is still moving. Please do check out these different videos - they aren’t just for Londoners, and if they brighten your days of lockdown, or if they help you breathe deeply and trust a bit harder, then praise Jesus! This lockdown certainly isn’t going to waste!

Also, as a post-script, the DTS that was meant to begin in March has been postponed until May, which means we’re in a bit of a tricky financial situation as a base, since our rents on houses are still due in this time. Please pray for us as we deal with this unprecedented situation. God is a God of miracles, hey! And also please pray that we’ll keep following God into this strange new world or learning to reach out to people using the technology that we took for granted and often still don’t know how to use. But mates, won’t He do it!

Missions in Self-Isolation

You may have heard that London is essentially on lock down, and you may be wondering how we are doing missions in self-isolation. Or perhaps you're just wondering how we are!

YWAM London Radiant is doing well at the moment. We don't have the virus, but we are staying inside our houses to avoid infection as the count has sky-rocketed in London in the past two days. But that hasn't stopped us from keeping on! We are carrying on with our internship as usual. We have teachings via a group video call, so everybody still interacts and responds to questions. We also still have ministry times every day, and on top of that, we've been deep cleaning and fixing things in our houses.

I think that it's really amazing to be going through this in a time where we are all still connected to each other, even though we are separated physically. Through social media, I've been able to spend this time talking to friends that I've lost touch with in recent years. We're all stuck at home, so we're actually taking the time to go deeper in relationships that have gotten shoved aside by what is happening in the here-and-now.

But nothing's happening in the here-and-now, so we have the time to actually be here. Now. My housemates and I are working, eating, cleaning, and having fun together. We've planned a disco party for Meli's birthday on Monday, and we're going to dress up and wear make up and barbecue hotdogs. I've started an Instagram photo challenge that allows me to meet people who I wouldn't ordinarily interact with, even on the internet. And we're praying together and diving deeply into God's Word, which was a goal we had as a team this year.

In our retreat in December, we talked about focussing in 2020. We spoke about making our houses ecosystems that sought God together. We talked about what it looks like to form families in our houses across London. And now we are really having time to dive into it. No, we can't go out into the streets right now, but that's okay, because the people aren't in the streets. They're on their phones, or their laptops, just like you probably are if you're reading this. They're alone and scared by the statistics and lack of surety. And we're on our laptops and phones, messaging, creating content that brings hope back into the mix, and shouting loudly about Who our hope is. Because He's right here in the middle of this virus. It hasn't taken Him by surprise. We don't know when we will be able to leave our houses, but until then, we are going to reach out in any way that we can!

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 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!

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.

the other side

At Hope and Anchor on Sunday, Chris said that we often ask God for the promise, but when we get to the other side of the promise, we don't know what to do.

I've been thinking about that, and about the weight that comes with blessings, over the past few weeks as we've been working on the cafe. We were all focussed at first on finding a place, but once the papers were signed, we quickly realised we'd forgotten to envision the time that it would take for us to create a proper cafe. Now that we are two months into the building process, we are dreaming of the day that the cafe opens. But never in those dreams am I exhausted from early morning shifts or frustrated at customers or worried about supplies orders or a machine gone wonky. We've not gotten the promise yet, but we've also not gotten the responsibility that goes with it.

Chris finished his thought on Sunday by saying that we need to know Who brings us through the promise. Looking back on these past months, it is quite clear that God is preparing us for something big. We are trusting Him in the area of financial provision in a way we've not had to before. We need Him to provide for the countertops and other supplies so we can finish the cafe, not to mention all of the ways that we will need to see Him when the doors open to the public. But we believe Him and that He can make His dreams come to life. And honestly, it's exciting to live a life of faith together as a team in this area.

Anyway, I actually began this post to share with you the newsletter that we made for Lazarus. We've realised that Lazarus isn't always clear to people. Is it a person? A homeless feeding programme? An activity we do once a week? The answer is all and none to those, so here's our Lazarus Project newsletter (spoiler: Lazarus Project is the mercy ministry of YWAM London Radiant. To see what that means, click the link!).

So in short, we are still building, still trusting, still praying and seeking God. We are meeting with borough councils and members of the House of Lords and the homeless and pastors and many people in between and seeing God's dreams for London take shape in so many different ways. It feels like a fight on many different fronts this month as Brexit still looms and the people of London grow more worried and frightened - after all, we are a nation of immigrants with few native foods. It looks like we'll be eating cabbage and mutton for a while until this all gets sorted. But we are praying for our government as well and trusting that God's will will be done. And if His will is for us to have a hard Brexit and to learn what that means, then at least we are here, in the middle of London, ready to listen to Him and to share with our fellow Londoners what God is saying.

Christmas for Camden (Part II)

"Was this Your dream all along?"

Sometimes I think that we're so scared to take a step because we think that, if we make the wrong decision, or if we don't hear God say, "Thou shalt do this," we will be out of His will and screw everything up. So we don't move at all, and we stay in the same place, which is rarely (I think) what He intends.

So we moved. We dreamed big for how to touch all of London for Jesus' birthday, and we assembled 10,000 gifts of small anchor badges to give out to Londoners, and we passed them out in the council estates and supermarkets around Camden and invited people to Christmas dinner. The Christmas dinner wasn't our original plan, but in the end, through closed doors and rethinking and more closed doors, I think that we made it to what God dreamed for Camden. And the heart was the same - a safe place for the people of Camden to come spend Christmas together. A place where the material pressures of the season were set aside, where class and social divides were torn down, where we could all be together.

In the middle of the busyness (I would say chaos, but it wasn't. Everybody did their different roles diligently and with love), I stood in the back corner by the kitchen and looked across the room. Our neighbours were engaged in conversation with each other and with our church family. Some of them listened to the worship music with uncharacteristic stillness. Hymn, a chalk graffiti artist whose poems decorate the pavements and buildings of Camden, tried to leave to finish his shopping, but came back and sat completely silently through the worship and carols. I've never seen him so quiet before. There was a woman spilling her heart to Carrie, a mum and daughter sat talking to Ina, several homeless men that have become our mates talking with the guys, and more, and more.

"Was this Your dream all along?" I asked God.

And I knew that it was. To have us all together, worshipping Him, loving each other in a practical way. While God is complex, I don't think that He is complicated. To me, it sounds like the type of birthday party He wanted all along. 

And that's all we wanted, isn't it? To give Him glory and praise and honour, on His birthday, but also today. He's worth it. Christmas for Camden was for Camden, yes. But it was also for more of Him.

The boys barbecuing the meat outside

The tables set and ready for friends!

The choir practising carols

Some of our mates (Hymn is on the left) enjoying the worship

Autumn Catch-Up

It has grown cold in London.

I feel like I always begin with a weather update, which is true to our culture, so here it is: it is officially autumn.

I left a week and a half ago for a ministry trip to New York City to have meetings for the International Arts + Sports Gathering that we will be holding there from 7-11 October (check out here for more details and to sign up!), and when I left, it was still the end of summer. But I arrived back to 13 degrees and rain, so here we go!

Since it has grown cooler, we've transitioned from having our Hope and Anchor Community Church barbecues to giving out donuts, tea, and coffee outside during church. It creates a different atmosphere when you have a cuppa and hear worship music from the service flooding the street. I also found that we have a greater variety of people come for free teas and coffees than came for barbecue, and people are used to hot beverages being consumed in social situations. Sami, Lucas and I manned the table yesterday, and we each had deep conversations about God with the people that we met.

One man stopped dead in his tracks when he saw us, and he cried before he even made it upstairs into the service. He said he'd had a terrible day and turned down the alley that our church is on knowing that the only way forward was death. But when he saw us, he thought we were angels (which is flattering, but I think he actually encountered Jesus). He went to the service, then came down again to talk with Lucas and me, and we got to tell him about how God is pursuing him and loves him. We quoted Psalm 139, which he promised to read. I don't know if we will see him again, but it was still so beautiful to see God touch him.

As I mentioned briefly, Christian, Johanna, their kids, and I went to New York City for a week to meet with pastors and ministries about the International Arts + Sports Gathering that will be held next October. We went to NYC in March to hold the initial meetings, and this time, we saw God move in an incredible way. By the time we left NYC, we had both several locations to hold the various sessions in as well as housing and other details sorted. It is difficult to plan an event of this magnitude from so far away, but God has been very present in the details and in opening doors for us. But it hasn't just been us pursuing it; our friends and family have been connecting us to people and churches, as well. We've seen so much generosity. We always say that the Church is one body, but I've actually seen that put into motion through this, and it is really beautiful. We may lament what is happening to the church today, but the church is also alive in New York City. They are reaching the millions of inhabitants in different creative ways, and there are many of the churches that work together. It is quite something to see.

As for the rest of YWAM London Radiant, we have been as busy as usual lately! There is currently one DTS running that began in July, and they leave on outreach to Scotland, Spain, and Italy next week. I will be joining them for the Scottish portion. We'll be serving and staying in a church on an estate (think council housing) in southeast Edinburgh. It is our first time working with this church, so we are looking forward to our activities with the community there. For both Scotland and Italy, churches that we haven't met opened their doors for us. Could you pray for our DTS and staff as we make our way around Europe this autumn?

Chasm Magazine also came out with its first issue! Courtney and Carrissa have been working faithfully for over a year on this project, and there have been several crazy roadblocks in the way. They have definitely been learning perseverance, but it has paid off, and Issue One is here. Several of us contributed (I did a photography essay), and now we get to hold it in our hands! You can order a copy and have it delivered to wherever in the world you live - this is their website.

There's also a band working on their first EP (more on that to come) in our music studio, Lazarus Project planning a spa night for the homeless ladies of Kings Cross (our Instagram is here), our fashion ministry which went to fashion week, and our sports ministry running the Royal Parks Half Marathon. I am running the Half Marathon again this year, and I need to raise £150 for our charity (YWAM London Radiant). I am dreadfully behind in fundraising, so if you could take a moment to support me, even for just £10, I'd be so grateful. Here is my fundraising page. All of the money that I raise will go straight to our charity.

There are a dozen more things happening in our base and in Hope and Anchor Community Church, from a community choir on Thursday nights to our university ministry being started as one of the girls studies Human Rights at UCL to our creative writing ministry putting out a poetry book to our barista ministry and construction ministry creating a coffee cart and looking for spaces in markets around London. I hope that this post has given you a small glimpse into some of the things that we are doing this autumn - if you'd like to see more, you can follow our base instagram or my personal instagram. And you can always email me at deborahestevenson@gmail.com if you have any questions or would like to chat. I can give you my WhatsApp via email, and we can keep in contact.

Finally, it was so nice to meet and spend time with several of you this past weekend at Calvary Temple, and to receive a card from the ladies of Second Baptist. Thank you so much for all of your care and prayers.

A Brief Summer-y

Does it feel like autumn to you?

Tuesday night ended both our Bones Camp/Notting Hill Carnival outreach and the Discipleship Training School that I was co-leading with Melo and Andres, and the leaves have begun to litter the kerbs, which leads me to believe that autumn is here. But perhaps you are in warmer climes, and you are still enjoying the heat of summer (shoutout to my parents and grandparents). 

Anyway, now that the British summer is over, I finally have the chance to sit down and share what we did (aka a summer-y). 

This summer, I helped to lead a two-month outreach around England for our March DTS and June Internship. We went to Notting Hill, where we did prayer walks and evangelism in preparation for our Notting Hill Carnival festivities. Afterwards, we traveled to Islington in North London, where we stayed whilst our base hosted the International Arts + Sports Gathering for artists from around the world. The week after that, we helped New River Baptist Church to run a holiday club (aka a VBS) for children on the estate where we were staying (an estate is social housing). Some of us got to create and pioneer the teen portion of the holiday club, and we taught the teenagers parkour, football (aka soccer), fashion design, and writing as well as having film night and American culture night. It was amazingly comedic to watch them learn to play American football. From there, we travelled to Cornwall (the western-most part of England) to volunteer at Creation Fest, a week-long Christian festival. Afterwards, it was back home to London and Bones Camp, which, as I said, finished three days ago.

And there you have it, a two-month outreach in one paragraph.

But what I really want to share with all of you is a conversation that I had with God several times this summer. After all of the evangelism that we did in Notting Hill in early July, I began to get a bit frustrated. Conversations weren’t going anywhere, and I realised that it had been a long time since I had gotten to be with somebody as they made a faith decision. Sure, I’ve had a hand in the process. I’ve gotten to disciple and watch many people’s lives as they chose to change for Christ. But I haven’t seen the moment when a person chooses to give Jesus everything. And it was really starting to frustrate me. 

At Creation Fest, we were each assigned to teams that we worked in for the week. My team was the Connect Team, or the team that prayed with people at the end of the “Big Shed” sessions (the main talks that most of the 4,000 people on site at the festival attended in the morning and night every day). I thought that surely I’d get to help somebody receive Christ, since that was what the whole festival was geared towards. Families literally brought their unsaved neighbours to camp with them for a week just so that their neighbours would meet Jesus. It was incredible. But as the days went on and I had the opportunity to minister to many, still nobody made a decision to follow Christ.

Enter Connie. Connie is well-known across YWAM England as an evangelist. When she enters a place, people receive Jesus. I remember being with her on a street in Glasgow and watching her talk to people. Large groups or one-on-one, they all decided to meet Jesus. Connie had breakfast with me one morning at Creation Fest, and she asked how many people had met Jesus. I had to tell her that nobody had. Then she gave me one of the salvation bracelets that she uses to tell people about Jesus and told me that I’d need it.

Later that day, I got to be a part of three women’s faith decisions. That night, as I was standing in the back of the Big Shed, a teenager came to me, desperate for Jesus. It turns out that he’d gotten in trouble with the police at the festival skate park and realised how much he needed to meet Jesus. There wasn’t a Bible around, so I used the bracelet Connie had given me to explain salvation. He wore it around his wrist as he went to re-join the teens for Milkshake Night.

It didn’t end there. I was excited, but I wasn’t satisfied. And do you know why? Because I realised that I’d never seen somebody receive Christ at Notting Hill Carnival. When Chris met with us before Bones Camp began, he told us to raise our expectations. He said that God wanted to do something incredible. So for several days, I wrestled with that. I wanted to see salvation, but I didn’t have a lot of hope for it. 

On the Saturday night before Carnival, we were outside until 3:30 am, preparing the angel costumes. I watched Chris lead a man to Christ in front of us. The man came up with marijuana and somehow ended up leaving with Jesus. It gave me hope, and when I came out of the church again a few hours later to take photos, I stopped to talk to the first man that I saw. He was an older Belgian man. At the point in the conversation where I normally would have said goodbye, I decided to stay and ask him why he didn’t believe in Jesus. Fast forward a few (very  awkward) minutes, and he received Jesus.

On the Monday afternoon of Carnival, whilst I was on stilts in an angel costume, Peri and I talked to another man. We asked him if he believed in Jesus, and he said no. But as we talked to him about how much Jesus loves him, he started to cry. He really wanted to receive Jesus, and he prayed to receive him before we could even work up to leading him in the prayer. It was incredible to stand in that swirling chaos of high and drunk people and to watch a man give his life to Jesus.

This summer is a crazy blur. When I look back at everything that God did, I am amazed. We had artists come from all over to share their hearts for God and the arts. We got to help several different churches and organisations in their summer activities. And we got to be God’s hands and feet across this city. I am well tired now, but it was worth every night of little sleep. It is always worth it to see God move in mighty ways. 

Floris, one of my DTS students, praying for a man at Hope and Anchor Community Church

Talking to some of our new friends at a Hope and Anchor barbecue

a session of The International Arts + Sports Gathering

Everybody in this picture is called Deborah (from our teen camp in Islington)

Camping expectations vs reality (from Creation Fest in Cornwall, where we camped for nearly two weeks)

Raising our 5 metre Cross in Shoreditch during evangelism/barbecue time in a park

Courtney in the angel costume for Carnival

Sharing during Notting Hill evangelism at Bones Camp

(thank you to Joseph, Alexa, and Nestor for the photographs of me!)