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 leg up

Summer is always a time of outreach for our team. We have an internship that begins in June, and we spend July and August traveling around Europe with them. This year, we spent July building a cafe at the YWAM base in Brussels and traveling to the north of Spain to visit a base that was pioneered a year ago - at the same time as ours - and is getting ready to have their first DTS. We didn't do a lot of art this summer, but rather, we supported other YWAM teams in what they needed.

I don't know how many of you are artists, but if you are, you probably recognise the predisposition of artists to focus on their own work and progress. This summer has been a season full of looking to others and seeing how we could help them. When we went to Brussels, I was painfully aware of my own inadequacy to build a cafe. But I had to face my own pride at not being good at construction and do it anyway. And in the end, our team's mix of skills and willingness to do it blessed YWAM Brussels with a new cafe space for their cafe AKA Zoe, which means "Also known as life." We spent the time sowing into conversations that will happen there, lives that will be transformed, encounters with God that will occur.

The time in Spain didn't feel like a missions outreach, because we were visiting our friends at the base that they started a year ago. The base is only a short walk from the beach, and we did Zumba evangelism most days on the beach. There are so many ways to do evangelism, and Zumba evangelism was definitely a way that I enjoyed. There was also a team of American teenagers visiting the base, and we got to show them a taste of missions life. It reminded me of being 16, when I had the whole world in front of me (I sound 56, not 26!). To be honest, I think that being 26 is easier, because I have already passed through the season of choosing a university and course of study. I have learned to listen to God's guiding in my life and that making decisions that don't make sense to others doesn't make them wrong decisions.

In late July, we came back to London and traveled south to the River Thames to stay at the Salvation Army in Chelsea. While Chelsea is perhaps the most posh area of London, the World's End estate, which is where we stayed, is not. It is a predominantly Muslim estate, and the Salvation Army just recently re-opened. It is the first time that our team has stayed in Chelsea, so we spent the weeks there preparing the ground by doing evangelism and praying in the streets and meeting children at the community centre on the estate.

Now we are back in Notting Hill, and the internship and staff have moved into the church alongside the DTS that began last week. There are over 40 of us here now, preparing for Bones Camp, our biggest outreach of the year. It will be my fifth Bones Camp and Notting Hill Carnival. I cannot believe I have been in London so long!

The cafe in Brussels before we began.

The cafe when we had finished.

Our team with YWAM Brussels

Working on the cafe

Zumba evangelism in Spain

Evangelism at a carnival in Spain

Our interns in Chelsea

Working with the Salvation Army in Chelsea

The photography DTS students

building out of the ruins

Last week was Notting Hill Carnival 2015, and for ten days before that, we had the seventh annual Bones Camp. It was my fourth Bones and Carnival this year, and I must say, I enjoyed this year more than any of the previous years. Not only did I begin to pray and intercede for the Carnival and camp beforehand, but God also helped me take my hands of control off more, so I was able to enjoy instead of constantly trying to make sure that everything was completed at the assigned time.

Bones Camp is the biggest outreach that our team hosts every year, and it is a twelve day camp for Christians around the world to come and prepare Notting Hill for Carnival. We do daily evangelism and worship times, and we all (over one hundred of us this year!) live in the church together. We also prepare the float and costumes, music, circus skills, theatre, and media for the two days of Notting Hill Carnival, which is the second largest Carnival in the world. The church that the team always works out of is right in the middle of Notting Hill, which means that we are right in the centre of the Carnival. We don't even have to leave our block to see over a million people at Carnival.

Bones is always the hardest part of the year for me, because we work nightly on constructing the float and costumes until 1 or 2 am (or later), we live all together in a church without regular showers, and because we have to fight spiritually against the enemy who knows that we are in Notting Hill to take ground back for God's Kingdom. However, I have always found that I go out of Bones differently than I entered. God uses it to squeeze bits out of me that need to be gotten rid of in order for me to show more of His glory.

One of my favourite parts of Bones this year was getting to have deep conversations with so many people, campers and members of the Notting Hill public alike. I'm not fond of superficial conversations, and this year, I had the opportunity to talk quite deeply to others about what God is doing in their lives and about the joy of having an intimate relationship with Jesus. I love how open people are to talking at Carnival. It is the easiest weekend of the year to talk to Londoners, because they come to Carnival seeking connections with others.

This year was different than previous Carnivals, because instead of doing a parade, we stayed on our block and hosted block parties for the people who came by. We built a massive eagle whose wings took at least four people to hold each one. We had two amazing DJs (one of whom was a Christian rapper), incredible drummers, and stilt walkers to grab the attention of the crowd. As they came to our block party, we handed them slips of paper with God's promises for their lives written upon them. Those started many conversations with people, because they rarely hear that they are loved, that there are bright plans for their futures, that God is near them.

Carnival felt different this year, as well, because it felt as if we owned the land more. We have been investing in Notting Hill since long before I came to London, and this year, we stayed on the land God had given us, and we declared His truth there. Even the constables present on the blocks around us knew who we were. Every year of Bones, I see more of God's presence. This year, I saw it in the compassion on the faces of the Bones participants. They went out to reach the crowds at Carnival with conviction and love that were palpable. I saw it in the favour that we had with the various civic authorities who came to see what we were doing and ended up unable to interfere. I saw it in the faces of the people attending Carnival, who through drums, stilt walkers, DJs, and tiny slips of paper containing glimpses of God's desire for them, encountered life-changing love.

The eagle over the crowds outside the church.

The stilt walkers and eagle in the roundabout

A little girl picking up promises from the ground.

The drummers, full of joy

Four guys from Boston that I met

Maddie giving out promises to the crowd.

A man taking laughing gas from a balloon in the middle of the crowd.

Me in my natural habitat, photo by Felix Elias

Me with a guy with whom I spoke, photo by Maddie Howes

bridge building

One month. Four countries.

And now, a week and a half after returning to London, I am still finding the faithfulness of God through all of it. I am beginning to understand a bit of how He worked to prepare our team for each city and worked in each of our hearts as we traveled across central Europe together.

We end every internship with an outreach, and to end the Winter 2015 internship, we traveled to Berlin, Prague, Vienna, and Milan. I had the pleasure of going to three countries I'd never thought I'd get to travel to, and to return to Italy and feel sun on my skin for the first time in seven months. But more than that, I was amazed at the openness of the people to speak to us. I have grown used to people in London, to being ever-so-politely told that I am wrong, that God does not exist, and that the church is an out-dated institution. But in the four cities that we travelled to, I found myself shoving aside language barriers, tripping over Spanish words, learning to listen to Italian, and hearing the pains of people's hearts.

People don't want to talk about their happiest moments with strangers. I don't know why that is, but I have found that often, if you take the time to see them with eyes of Love, they will share with you the things that are most hurting them. I wasn't prepared for it the first time a woman spilled her heart to me in Spanish, and I didn't have the words to translate to my intern, but she saw the tears in Gloria's eyes, and she knew. So we prayed in incorrect verb tenses and tried not to let our mascara run, and in the middle of a square in Prague, I watched Gloria hear from God.

In Berlin, I talked with several people who had never before met a Christian. The city is so new, the same age as me, and in its rebuilding, they are glorifying the past pain. There are memorials to the Berlin Wall everywhere, and markers still divide East Berlin from West Berlin. When I found myself singing "Hometown Glory" where the Berlin Wall used to stand, I saw God's hand. Because I am a girl from the USA, but He placed me there, singing a song about a united city to a city that is still struggling to come together, and I know that it was the result of following Him. I could not have planned that moment. On our team, we come from countries that have fought against each other numerous times across history, yet we live in one house together. We are God's unification in action.

Vienna was a time of refreshing for me, because we stayed at an International House of Prayer with a worship and prayer room that we could use whenever we wanted. After being on outreach for three weeks, it was wonderful to spend time just sitting with God, writing new songs, and remembering to listen. One evening, we went out to Stephansplatz to perform and do evangelism, and within two minutes of beginning, we were surrounded by a crowd. They sang along and made videos, and in the midst of it, we told them all about the God who created them and the Saviour who loves them desperately. They were so excited to find out more about Him. We also saw several people come to Christ in Vienna.

In Italy, we got to work with both the YWAM team and with a church, and they took amazing care of us. The church made us dinner every night (In Italy, pasta is just the first course), and afterwards, we went out to do evangelism at Milan Design Week. Italian culture makes it perfectly normal to stand around and chat to strangers, so we met a lot of people as we performed and did evangelism. It was also really impressive to see the church members out there with us, talking to people and praying with them. And we finally got to visit the YWAM team in Milan, who came to Bones with us in 2013. They planned so many events for us before we even got there and made sure that things ran smoothly.

When we came back from outreach, we had five days to prepare our end of internship exhibition. It took a lot of work, but on Thursday night, we saw a lot of people that we'd never met come into the church to see our art. One of the nursery teachers from next door to the church asked me if we were doing it to show everyone how amazing we were. I got to tell her that we were doing it to show the amazing change that God had worked in our lives over the last three months.

For me, that's the most gratifying part of looking back over the outreach. Not only did God change me and hand me back hope and joy, but He used me to speak to people from dozens of nations. He used me in languages that I don't speak well and in places I never thought that I'd get to go. It's so exciting to get to be a part of God's Kingdom here on Earth and to realise that the King of the Universe takes the time to transform sinners and rebels and uses them to do His work here.

On our first day in Berlin, we got to go into the Parliament with a member of Parliament. At the end, we got to pray with him and for his work in the country.

In Berlin, we also performed in various places in the city. This was in a plaza right where the Berlin Wall used to stand.

In Prague, we washed windows at a local school.

We also took advantage of all of the tourists to talk to people everywhere.

Vienna had some of my favourite times of evangelism and performance in the trip. On our last day, we got to work with YWAM Norway to do performances in Stephansplatz with a permit and a sound system.

This is Christian preaching during the impromptu performance in Stephansplatz on our first day in Vienna, where the crowd came and took video and stayed, asking us to do more. We got to talk with so many of them about Jesus's love for them.

In Milan, we held a seminar to teach the church about using arts in evangelism to bring God's Kingdom to Milan. Several of us taught on various topics, such as Improvisation in Leadership (my lesson), to Teamwork (Carrie and Peri taught what they learned by leading this school together). After the lessons, we taught them the artistic skills we use in evangelism.

Our visual artists did performance art in Milan, as well, and talking to people while they did it. I love watching them use their skills in public for God.

Me with two of my photos (the ones to the right) at the exhibition that we held in Notting Hill.

learning to rest

It turns out that I'm not very good at resting.

It is a free week, and when I spent time with God earlier this week and asked Him what He wanted from this week, He said one word: "rest."

It took me several days to actually let go and stop trying to be productive enough to rest.

The DTS ended a week ago, with a fancy dinner and a few days of goodbye hugs and last moments together, and it took several days after that for me to fully process the amazing work God did in our lives in the past five months.

Staffing a DTS was amazing and challenging and exhausting and fun. It taught me to look at others more than myself, to listen instead of pushing productivity, and most of all, to rely on God's strength. He stripped away all of my own strength through fasting, through illness, through 3 am filmings and listening to what was happening in the lives of the students instead of requiring them to finish a project right away. I had to let go of my criteria and ask God to show me people through His eyes. I had to learn to work better with my teammates, as well, because they have so many gifts and strengths that I do not have. God pulled all of us together as a team and a family, and that was probably my favorite part of the DTS.

We start our winter internship in less than a week, and now I am starting to ask God what He wants to do in this time. We rang in the New Year with the DTS by doing evangelism and worship on Primrose Hill, the highest point in Camden, which is our promised land, and I would like to continue moving in that same way. I would like to continue to build relationships with people in London, to talk to and show strangers His love, and to worship Him in various corners of the city. I'd also like to do more work in the area of photography and justice, which is a topic God has been speaking to me about a lot in the past few months.

And I'd like to spend the next year resting in God. There are a lot of things happening with visas, with ideas for future internships, with expanding to grab various parts of the city, that are coming up and over which I have no control. I've been learning to rest this week, to prioritize listening to God over productivity and my own strength, and that is something that I hope to carry into this next season in the team and year.

in the fruit business

I've been reading a lot lately about fruit. We received donations from Waitrose, an upscale grocery store, this week, and as I eat a medley of berries, I've got fruit on my mind.

In the Bible, specifically in the New Testament, there is a lot of talk about fruit. Jesus says that He is the vine and we are the branches. We are told that they will know that we are God's by the fruit that we bear, that we will be pruned, that we are here on Earth to plant and sow seeds, and the metaphors extend on and on. Bearing fruit doesn't just mean evangelism. We bear fruit whenever our actions bring more glory to God.

This holiday season has been a fruit-cultivating season for Taboo Arts. We are running a discipleship training school, which means that we are investing in lives right in our home. God told us to open up our lives and hearts to those He wants to draw nearer to Him, so we built more beds and welcomed them in. But at the same time, as missionaries in London, we are also called to influence our city. For us, that means going to the neighbourhoods that He has given us: Notting Hill and Camden. We do our arts out of Notting Hill, and we go to Camden to invest in the neighbourhood through prayer, worship, and evangelism (relationship-building) weekly.

This year, we also got to partner with the YWAM team in Earl's Court (west London), the Earl's Court Community Project, to help with the drop-in that they do for the homeless and lonely of that community. We rehearsed for weeks leading up to the days of the drop-in, and for the two days leading up to Christmas, we got to join them in serving our community.

My favourite part of the outreach was that we got to both serve and do arts. We are God's hands and feet on Earth, which is not just a nice saying, but means that God with Us, Emmanuel, Jesus Himself is in us. When we interact with people, if we allow ourselves to be led by God, we are the interaction that those people have with Jesus. Jesus can touch their lives through us. That is what we were doing in Earl's Court; we were doing Jesus's work in the lives of the people who came to eat dinner and sing carols and talk to us. That was their Christmas, and some of them have been coming to the drop in for so many years that it is their family that they visit on the holidays.

It wasn't always easy to serve them. Some of them smelled, or came with the intent on arguing with us about God. However, when I asked God to let me see them through His eyes, I noticed how their eyes lit up when they talked about their children, or I saw their gleaming minds full of philosophy that I've never been able to comprehend. The homeless and lonely of Earl's Court have aspects of God's character that are beautiful to see. They love each other. They take care of one another. I watched them serve each other through getting each other teas and coffees, or moving so someone else could sit down, or listening to the heart-wrenching stories that they needed to talk out over the course of the evening.

I don't have photographs of the aspects of Earl's Court that God used to minister to my heart and show me more about His character, but I have pictures of the performances that we got to do. I just want to let you know that God blessed us as we served at Earl's Court. I left the Project full of joy and thankfulness, and I finally felt like it was Christmas. That is how I know that bearing fruit is what I was created to do. In that pursuit of God, of loving my neighbours as myself, I felt the Light of life alive in and through me. Even better, I got to watch that Light pour out of my teammates and nourish the hearts of the ones that are so often forgotten in this season of celebration of Joy come to Earth.

Sent -->

I have heard several messages lately on the topic of being sent to be God's Kingdom here on Earth. That is something that has been on our team's heart recently, as well. We are artists and missionaries here in London, but we also have a heart to reach the other cities in Europe. With the DTS that we are running right now, we are focusing on visiting artistic cities in the United Kingdom.

In November, we took the DTS to Brighton and to Bristol, both in the south of England. The outreaches were short, with the primary purpose of scouting the arts scenes in the cities with the aim to do longer outreaches in the future. One of my favourite parts of outreach is the realisation that our time in any given place is limited. We only had a few days in each city, so we put all of our effort into talking to as many people as possible. We let go of the inhibitions that can make evangelism and building relationships seem daunting in London. I love seeing the freedom and zeal that come with knowing that we have kingdom work to do and a limited amount of time to do it.

I was struck by how open people were to talk to us. I went into a lot of arts shops around the cities and just started speaking to people that I found inside, and more often than not, I'd end up talking with the people for a while and praying with them. This was not unique to me; a lot of our team had the same experience. We came together after times of evangelism with lists of names of new friends.

At the church in Bristol, the pastor talked to our team about being willing to be Jesus to the city of Bristol. He told us that often, Jesus did not tell people who He was; instead, He showed them. He challenged us to show Jesus to Bristol instead of focusing on forcing the Gospel and a decision of salvation down their throats. He reminded us of the passage in the Bible that talks about God's word not returning empty. It was almost more challenging to go into the streets with that in mind: how do I let my actions shout loud for Jesus, even if I don't get the chance to tell a person how they can be saved? To be honest, that is a challenge, because it means watching your own behaviour instead of trying to force new behaviour on another person. It means that I actually have to love my neighbour and do good to those who hurt me and show others that they are more important than me. I can't rely on quoting the Romans Road or John 3:16; I have to live the love of God and let it pour out of me. I have to become less of my fleshy self so that more of God's Spirit can pour out of me. After all, I go to these cities so that the people in them can encounter God. I don't go so that the people of Brighton and Bristol can encounter me.

On the outreaches, God also impressed upon me the privilege that I have to travel around this land in His name. I spent Thanksgiving in Bristol, and even though I ate (delicious) pasta instead of turkey and dressing, I got to do the work of my Heavenly Father. I got to live the life that He created me to live. My mother texted me to tell me that she is glad that I wasn't home, because it meant that I was where God wanted me to be. She's right. I am so thankful to be right here, living in London and travelling around Europe and getting the opportunity to be God's hands and feet and kingdom here on Earth.

Our DTS students in Brighton!

I got to play a mountain dulcimer (which my grandpa taught me) and talk to the shop owners in a shop in Brighton

One of the guys gave food and his coat to this homeless man.

Andy, a new friend in Brighton

Evangelism in Bristol

A new friend in Bristol.

                                                    Performing songs in Bristol.

Shining in the Darkness

Sometimes, when we ask God to open doors and make opportunities, we forget to expect Him to move. I get so passionate in prayer times, asking God to give me opportunities to influence the secular arts in England, to open doors for me to reach artists who don't know Him, and then, when He opens the doors, it's hard for me to pick my jaw up from the floor.

This week, God opened doors for our team, and some of us went to Sheffield (a city three hours north) to be extras in a film. With only a few hours' notice, we picked out our best party outfits and drove up north for our film acting debuts. We thought that we would just be in the background of a party scene, but we ended up being in another scene, as well, which involved talking to each other in the background of some shots. Seeing the magic that happens behind the camera was a learning experience for me. I never knew how well film crews worked together. Each person was responsible for a specific area, and they did their job, followed orders directly when they were called, and respected other people's work. They also had such obvious love for each other. Best of all, the assistant director who was in charge of working with us was so full of love and enthusiasm for us that I had a great time even while waiting between takes. In the few hours that I was with her, I learned a lot about loving people and leading with gentleness.

As fun as it was to spend a few hours in the middle of the organised frenzy of filming, the best part of the day was probably getting to talk to the other extras. We had six hours between our call time and the beginning of filming, and for those six hours, our team of ten YWAMers talked to the other eight extras about what we do and Who we serve. We got to explain a lot about how God works in our lives to them, about why we do art for Jesus, and to get to know about their dreams and ambitions.

The club where we were filming was full of idols and other symbols of paganism (altars, pentagrams, etc), but we had the opportunity to fill that movie set with God. As Christians, if we have Jesus as our hope, then the people that encounter us encounter Hope. They encounter Love. They don't meet tolerance or blindness, but Grace. That is why we go to film as extras. That is why we intercede and spend time with God every day and worship. We don't do it so that we can be spiritual giants, but so that the Love and Grace and Hope that the world needs to meet can walk onto a film set dressed in party clothes. Love, Grace, and Hope can find them where they are, sitting on the edge of their dreams and forced to face the reality of the emptiness that comes from trying to satisfy the yearning that all of our self-centred dreams leave gaping wide inside of us.

I wish that I could find a way to express how thankful I am that God did not send me into this industry alone. I wish I could find the words to worship God for how wise He is for not throwing me into the entertainment industry without spiritual parents, a family to ground me in truth, a ministry to teach me to form art inspired by God that glorifies God, with no thought to my own fame and success. God sent me to that film set with nine of my closest friends. Even better, we went on the final day of a three week fast that we had been doing. Our bodies were weak, but we spent the day grasping God's hand and waiting for His power to come out of us. There was a moment where I stepped back and watched as our team fanned out to talk to the others about God, and I could see the passion lighting up each of their faces. God's joy flowed from all of them.

On top of all of that, it was one of the most delightful days that I have had in a long time. God has really spoiled me lately. I am always overwhelmed when God makes a dream I didn't even know I had come true. He is such an indulgent Father.