Follow Up

 Hello!

Sorry for the long gap between updates!

The last few months have been full of challenges and growth for both me and for YWAM York. We have established local ministry more solidly in our community through weekly kids club and youth nights, as well as through Easter activities and a holiday club. Our relationships in our neighbourhood are going deeper, and we love getting to know our community better. We especially love our deepening relationships with our youth, who have started to let us into their lives more. In our most recent holiday club, we talked about heroes in the Bible, and several of the children initiated conversations about Jesus and God. It is amazing to get to be a part of those moments of discovery with them! 

We also saw somebody come to Christ on a recent evangelism that we did with a Brazilian DTS team that was visiting York, and a time of Easter evangelism, a Chinese man met Christ! In our unchurched nation, these are victories that we celebrate! 

However, there are also internal challenges that we are facing. Our team has gone down to three members now - Raya left at the end of June after praying and feeling that it was time for her to return to the States. Her departure was not due to anything in YWAM York or in our relationship with her, and we miss her! We are learning to do life as a three and not a four. We are also now splitting our rent and other costs between three instead of four, so we are trusting even more for God to show up every month!

The first weekend of July, we hosted a retreat for all of the bases of YWAM North England. Before you get too impressed, I should say that there are only four bases, and that each team has around 3 members on it (give or take a few for children!). We came together to pray, share vision and to get to know each other. We are already planning activities that we can do together, which are much easier to run with 12 people than with three! It's also nice to have nearby support from our YWAM family. During the retreat, somebody prayed that we would receive money from an anonymous businessman to help with the upkeep of our community centre. I decided that I would really trust God to come through in this way, instead of just agreeing with the prayer and keeping going. This prayer was prayed on 2 July. Three days later, we received a thin envelope through the post at the base. I opened it, and there was a cheque to YWAM York for £1,000 from an anonymous person, dated 2 July! To be honest, I was not surprised; when I saw the envelope, I knew there was a cheque. But it was tangible confirmation from God that He will provide for us in these next months! He is already providing for our building in the face of increased energy costs and maintenance issues!

We are also taking part in several festivals this summer. English people love a festival - the not terrible weather really encourages them to get out their tents and brave the rain in order to be all together. I will be at a total of four festivals this summer - three of them camping! This past weekend, Renee and I were at Cedarwood, a festival for northeastern churches. We represented YWAM England, and we even got to pray with some of the children and the youth who came to visit our YWAM England stand! 

In a few weeks' time, I head to SixtyOne, which is a festival for Christian young people. I have the privilege of creating the artwork for the venue (a massive shed that fits 1,000 people). This intersection of two of my passions - art and students - has me very excited! Some of the students that I know will also be at the event. I can't wait to see students from across the UK awakened for Jesus! 

A few days after arriving home from SixtyOne, I will head back to the same location for Satellites, a youth festival. I will both be representing YWAM England at the YWAM England stand and helping out with the youth from my church! I am so excited to be able to be there as they encounter God in a festival setting - something that hasn't been possible since 2019. 

Festivals are the time youth and young people generally make big decisions for God, decisions which we then get to walk out with them throughout the year. Could you pray for our youth and young people to feel encouraged to take those steps at the festivals this summer, and for us to be able to support them, not just in the coming weeks, but throughout the year? It takes enormous courage to be a Christian young person in England - there aren't so many of them, so just being Christian is a bold move. But they are also the ones who will reach their generation - it is a privilege to be able to walk with them as they influence their generation!

Could you also pray for YWAM York? Renee, Yvonne and I are doing well, and we want to grow in our communication and to create a healthy, good culture for anybody else who decides to come with us. We are spending time over the next few weeks to ask God how He wants us to move ahead in different areas of both our ministry and our community, and we are re-structuring accordingly. We want to be a YWAM base that moves in God's best way for us, that loves God and loves people well!

If you'd like to receive our team newsletter, which will be going out soon, send me an email at deborahestevenson@gmail.com, and I will sign you up for it!

Missions (that isn't) Locked Down

 So, you may have heard that England is in another lockdown: our third lockdown. At first, we were all a bit despondent, especially when it came to light that we may be in a lockdown until the end of March. But now, we are involved in so many different activities that our days are filled end-to-end, and in some ways I am thankful that we have time to do everything!

Obviously, reaching out to people in the traditional sense isn’t possible in a lockdown which has the aim of keeping people from meeting together. However, as a charity, we have leave to continue our charitable work outside of our homes (the nation is under a stay-at-home order, which means you should only leave home for exercise or essential shopping). We have been helping our local food bank to collect food donations and to distribute food to our neighbours who are self-isolating. This has resulted in some amazing conversations with our neighbours. One neighbour overheard us worshiping in our garden, which opened the way for conversations, sharing a Gospel of John, and prayer. Please pray for him as we walk through this lockdown alongside him - there has been a lot of tragedy in his life recently, but his heart is opening to Jesus!

Radiant is also using this lockdown as an opportunity to do a staff leadership school, which we are all taking part in via Zoom. Not only do we get to see our London family twice a week, but we also get to take part in teachings with YWAM leaders from around the globe. As much as we complain about Zoom, there are so many conferences and meetings that have a global aspect now that wasn’t possible in person. 

We are also using this time to improve the Barnabas Centre, the community centre that belongs to the base. It is an old building that needs repairs, and while we are a small team, we are doing what we can! We hope that different outreach teams from YWAM England will come to York, both to take part in what God is doing in our city, and also to give us a hand in the building. Luckily, somebody (it was me…and Lucas from Radiant. Okay, it was mostly Lucas. Thank you, Lucas.) built a shower, so the building is perfectly suited to hosting teams. 

The challenge of the Barnabas Centre is that, during this year of COVID, it hasn’t been able to be rented out to dance classes, churches, and other activities, so we don’t have the income we need to pay the bills and to pay back the debt on the building. While there isn’t a rush to finish paying off the debt, it is something that we are consciously trying to be faithful in and to pay off. There are also different improvements needed - if we are going to continue cafe work, the espresso machine needs to be updated or replaced, the dance floor needs to be sanded, etc. If you could pray for us and send us any ideas you have for how we can raise funds for this, we would appreciate it. We have definitely thought of bake sales, but it would take a lot of bake sales, and COVID has made them quite impossible! But we so want this building to be a blessing to our community, to be a place in which people are welcomed and safe and can meet each other and, most importantly, Jesus. It is the only building of its kind in our neighbourhood. We are so blessed to have it! And we are looking forward to seeing how our God is going to move in this area - since we can't comprehend it in our logical minds, I think we're well poised to see Him come through in one of His amazing ways!

Another thing that we are starting in this lockdown is online workshops. We are all artists, so we are beginning workshops in our different art areas - Yvonne and Renee are doing dance workshops for children, Raya is doing story and character development, and I’ll be teaching photography workshops. The idea is to start them online and to create a little virtual community, and then to move them to real life when restrictions are lifted. People are desperate for community, so we want to reach them however we can. In order to do this, we do need a professional Zoom account, which is £120 a year. We have also begun hosting weekly Zoom prayer times with people in our community and across Yorkshire, and so far we’ve been using a basic plan, which is fine, but it does limit us to just 40 minutes. Having a professional Zoom account would definitely give us more freedom in our various online community activities!

A way that you can be praying for us is that we are currently in the process of becoming our own charity. Right now, YWAM York is a daughter charity of YWAM Radiant in London, which is amazing for getting us started. But in order for us to have a bank account, property, or anything of that nature, we need to be our own charity. I have begun the paperwork, and it is complicated to say the least. Luckily, Carrie from Radiant has been guiding us (thank you, Carrie!). Raya has also been tackling some budgeting stuff for the base property, which means sorting through vast quantities of paperwork from the past decade, and it is not easy! We are trying to put on our professional brains for all of this, but let’s face it. We thrive when we are with people, telling them about Jesus and walking through life with them. Paperwork is not our strength. So please pray for us as we do this, that our brains would be alert and that small details wouldn’t trip us up. 

A final way that you can be praying and fighting on our side is for finances. God is a God of provision - we have seen this in every way. Just this past week, a piano was given to us. I have been praying for a piano since before we moved, since it is my main instrument and having worship times with a guitar has not been going well. We looked at different options online, but nothing was really working. We were finally about to settle for a partial keyboard for beginners, since it was in our budget, when we were told that a lady from church was clearing out her mum’s house and had an electric keyboard that we could use. It has 88 weighted keys and a built-in stand, and it fits perfectly in our office. God has provided for us again and again, and this is only the most recent way! 

That being said, some of our team are still waiting to see full support each month. I’m just going to drop everyone’s Paypal info here, and if God puts it on your hearts to support them, they will definitely be blessed by it! I will also put mine there so that you can donate towards the Zoom account if you’d like. And if you can’t give financially (COVID has touched us all), prayer is not a second option. It is a first option, and one that we have seen change circumstances in our lives incredibly. We are blessed by the way that you fight for us in prayer!

Paypal Emails:
Yvonne: Yvonsip@gmail.com
Raya: Madsenray@protonmail.com
Renee: Reneeosborne410@gmail.com
Deborah: deborahestevenson@gmail.com

I would just like to finish this off by sharing that it is snowing in York today. That isn’t abnormal (we are in the North now), but it does remind me that God is doing a new thing in this time. He won’t let this season be wasted. There are some things that won’t come out of this pandemic. There are old ways, old mindsets, dead traditions that we will leave behind. And there are new things that He is teaching us that we will take out of it. It is so exciting to be able to follow God through this: our first year as a base here in York and in a global pandemic. I am constantly reminded of Isaiah 43:19: “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” He is the God who guides us, who provides for us, and who will bring us through this season more covered in His glory, if we will continue to listen and follow Him. What a privilege it is to see His new way and to work with Him to make it our reality!

 

A room in the base that we re-painted!

What team meetings look like via Zoom + toddlers

We baked cookies for the local bus drivers

We also wrote cards to NHS (National Health Service) workers

Our Thursday Zoom prayer meetings with people from across the country

Cookies for the neighbours 

Delivering food to a homeless hostel in town

Delivering food to our wonderful neighbour

Doorstep chats with our neighbours

Prayer time with our neighbours on 31 December

We all four went to Scarborough, a seaside town, right before we went into lockdown

On Christmas Day, we got to celebrate (gasp: inside houses) with our whole team together

Naomi, my running buddy

Walks with friends (okay, this was back when we were allowed to be more than one-on-one)

Our Christmas bubble - YWAM York all together in one house!

Savannah is our childcare bubble, so we get to hang out with her, even in lockdown!

The video of our Christmas outreach to the city centre.

on the road again

I’m going to cut to the chase, then go back to the details, if that’s all right with you.

In September, I am moving to York (north England) with three other women in order to re-pioneer the YWAM base there. We will be joined by a family that has been a part of YWAM York since their own DTSs.

As many of you will know, I moved to London eight years ago to join an arts team that eventually became YWAM London Radiant. I never put a time limit on how long I would be here. Instead, I said, “I’m here until God tells me to go elsewhere.”

Well, guess what. God’s called me to go elsewhere!

Late last year, my leaders here at Radiant asked me to pray about leading a team to re-pioneer the base in York. God gave me a strong “yes,” and my leaders and I prayed together and travelled to York a few times (my mother even visited it with me whilst she was here!), and we asked a few other people to consider coming along. They heard God’s “yes,” and also agreed to be a part of this new adventure!

So long story short, the three other ladies are in the States renewing visas and raising finances right now, and I am in London preparing to lead an outreach team up for a week at the end of July.  The York base has a building, a community centre that holds a small cafe and a dance studio/meeting room space, and we are going to spend a week cleaning and organising it to prepare for September. 

Over the next two months, I am also going to be going through a process (which has already begun) of learning the different things I need to know in order to lead a base - finances, data protection, communication, health and safety, etc, etc, etc. I’ve never done this before, and there are certainly a lot of things to learn! Luckily, my leaders at Radiant, Chris and Johanna, are walking with me through the process. They will continue to be my spiritual leaders when I move to York, and the York base is being re-pioneered by Radiant, so we will not be abandoned in any way. 

There are a lot of aspects of moving to York and re-pioneering the base that are large and could be a bit intimidating: we need to do some work in the base to prepare it for the activities that we will run for the community and for future training schools. We (by we, I mean the four of us ladies who are moving) also need to raise money for a deposit on a house for us to live in, which will probably be around £2,000. And of course, we need to come together as a team, to discern God’s vision and heart for both the city and for the base. 

This is a big transition for me, and you lot have been with me faithfully for the past eight years, so I am glad to finally be able to share it with you. A lot of the details are still up in the air (global pandemic, etc), but here are a few prayer points:

1. The visa offices are currently shut, and all three other ladies need to renew their visas to be in the UK. Please pray for the offices to open up and the girls to get their visas by September.
2. For the outreach that will go to York next week to prepare the base/get to know the area.
3. That I will meet the people, have the appointments, and receive the paperwork that I need as I prepare to move to York and the base.
4. For us to raise the finances that we need to put a deposit on a house to live in.
5. For the physical move from London to York.

If you have any questions about the move, you can email me at deborahestevenson@gmail.com. I am happy to share more with you about what is happening, or just to hear how you are doing or clarify anything I can.

Thank you all for your support, your prayers, your emails, and the way that you constantly surprise me. And thank you for being here as we transition from London to York!

a map of England including York and London (so you have an idea of the journey)

L-R - Renee, Nicole (who already lives in York with her husband and daughters), me, Raya. Yvonne, our fourth American lady, is not pictured.

York Minster at the end of a typical shopping street. It makes you want to come and visit, right?

A photo of York Minster grabbed from atop the medieval city walls (which you can walk round any time)

The tea shop where my mother and I had tea and scones

Inside the tea shop where we had tea and scones

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!

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!)

nets stretched in the best ways

There is a story in the Gospels where the disciples are out fishing all night, yet they don’t catch anything. Then Jesus comes along, and they have such a large catch that their nets begin to break. Yesterday, in our staff meeting, Peri mentioned this story and how we are ending that sort of season right now. God has been so faithful with His blessings: today we finish a DTS with over 20 students from all of the habitable continents. We’ve had outreaches to different cities in the UK, Paris, Spain, and Italy. We had Bones/Arise camp, where we reached out to all of London in the run-up to Notting Hill Carnival. We have several houses across London and a church in Camden as well as ministries that began this year and are reaching into many different sectors of society. When we look back on 2017, we are amazed by what God has done.

Something that Chris has kept saying recently, though, is that blessings come with a weight of responsibility. Each of us has carried increased weight in this season, from more responsibilities to learning how to maintain family in a steadily-growing team. It takes a lot of faithfulness with time and intentionality in relationships. It means being less selfish with space and possessions. And it means carving out time each day to sit quietly with God and to listen to how He wants to do it, because there isn’t a precedent for us to follow. 

In this whole process, our nets have worn in some places. Those of us who are a part of Lazarus, the mercy ministry, have grown used to seeing heart-ache and brokenness in the homeless that we work with several times a week. It has taken a toll on us, even if we haven’t noticed in the day-to-day. We need to be refreshed. Likewise, those of us who have spent the past five months walking alongside our Discipleship Training School students will release them tonight at their graduation, and for a few weeks, at least, we will let go of that responsibility and hand them back to their families and friends. 

And we’re tired. This is our season of more time and freedom, when we go home for holidays and take time together as a team to listen to God and to be re-filled. We have a staff retreat in Brussels in January (where two of our team are moving to lead the YWAM base there), and before that, we are shifting who lives where and how we organise the structure of our days. But also, there will be more time to seek God’s heart. And that is what keeps us going. 

We need your prayers in this season, that doors will open for our team to have a space to meet all together. We have 25 staff and just as many students, and the places that we have been using are no longer available to us. But in February we begin an arts internship and a leadership school, and as of right now, we don’t know where the classes and track times for those schools will be held. We also need prayers that we will find the right house when we need it again, as this is the off-season for the London housing market. It is also getting closer to the time for us to begin our commercial venture of having a cafe/shop/hair salon, etc, and we are starting to learn about the rental agreements for commercial spaces. As you can imagine, the rent will be staggering. But we want to be faithful to God’s dreams for London, so we are pursuing it. 

As for me, I am training to run the London Marathon in April. It is our charity’s first year having a space, which means a lot of paperwork and registering the charity with various services from the Queen. I thought that training would be the most difficult part of the marathon, but I was wrong! If you could pray that God makes a clear way for us to get all registered, I would be very thankful!

I will be in the States from 17-27 December. On 17 December, I will be at Calvary Baptist Temple in Savannah, Georgia. On 19 December, I will be at Martha Franks in Laurens, South Carolina. On 20 December, I will be at Green Creek First Baptist Church in Columbus, North Carolina. If you’d like to see me at any of those places, please email deborahestevenson@gmail.com. I cannot wait to see all of you whilst I am in the States!

Micah and Ina talking to a guest at our November exhibition

Our students inviting people into our November exhibition

One of the girls I mentor performing in front of a castle in Milan, Italy

A picture one of my photography students, Joseph, took of me in Lake Como, Italy

Another photo of me by Joseph in Lake Como

With one of my arts gathering friends, Theresa, in Paris

a teaching at the International Arts Gathering in Paris

Serving the homeless of Camden

The Tuesday morning drop-in for the homeless

across the waters

Early tomorrow morning, we leave for Puerto Rico. It has been a week of packing, preparing our arts, and tying up the loose ends that come from putting our London lives on hold for six weeks so that we can go and give everything that we have in Puerto Rico.

This outreach will be six weeks of using arts to reach people for Jesus, whether those arts are in the streets, in churches, or in schools. I do not have a full picture yet of what it looks like, but I am excited to see God use us in the lives of non-Christians and Christians alike. I've also heard of the incredible warmth and generosity of Puerto Ricans, and after living for over three years with a team leader who is Puerto Rican, I am looking forward to seeing his homeland.

A week ago, we had an exhibition in Notting Hill that gave us a chance to show our community what we have been creating over the past three and a half months. There were live music and dancing as well as fashion, visual arts, and photography on display. We had a lot of people come who have encountered us in these past months, whether through the homeless dinner club that we run out of the church, or through various evangelism events (or just through us living our lives in our neighbourhood) around the city.

It is always odd to pause everything to go on outreach, but at the same time, it still amazes me that God gives us the opportunity to travel around the world for Him. We get to live in so many different cultures that I never dreamt of experiencing for myself. And while I am excited to be in dollars again and to go to shops that I grew up with, I also know that Puerto Rico, my first Caribbean experience, will be different from anywhere I've gone before. I believe that God has special things in store for this outreach - encounters with people who will bless me, and people whose lives I will hopefully get to speak into, seeing His hand across the island, and seeing our discipleship training students reach out to invest what they've learned in this time.

And as usual, I expect to have lots of photographs and videos to show you when I return!

Carrie, our photography students, and me

Our photographs on display

Erin explaining some of the artwork to some of our friends

A discussion over a tree that one of the students sculpted.

The dancers performing

The guys performing a cover from Mumford and Sons