living outrageously

Last week, I won a contest that I had not entered. As events transpired, somebody who won could not go and asked if I'd like to, and when I agreed, the tickets were posted to my address, and I got to attend the RadioTimes Festival for free. The tickets that I received were for the Call the Midwife talk, and as it is one of my favourite shows, I was terribly excited.

Then I became nervous.

You see, I have been praying for the actors, writers, and producers of Call the Midwife for quite some time. And I realised that the very actresses I had been praying for would be at the event, as would the producer and head writer, for whom I also pray. I knew that I could not let the opportunity given me go to waste, so I prayed for them, received Bible verses, and due to a lack of notecards, wrote the verses on the back of 35mm film prints that I'd taken around my area of London in the past year.

Micah, the other actress on the team, accompanied me to the event in Hampton Court, which is the first time we'd been out of London since May. We wandered around the Palace grounds in the autumn sunlight and prayed that God would give us opportunities to speak to these actors and creatives, and that He would tell us what to say. However, when we eventually entered the marquee for the talk, and I saw that there were several hundred people, I thought that I would not get to talk to the cast. Quite a large part of me was relieved, and when they announced that there would be a book signing at the end of the event and Micah nudged me saying, "We have to go! You brought Bible verses for them!," I immediately grew nervous again.

The part that surprised me most was by who showed up at the signing. The talk was given by Dame Pippa Harris (producer), Heidi Thomas (creator and show writer), and two of the actresses, Jenny Agutter and Emerald Fennel. However, my favourite actor, Stephen McGann (he plays Dr. Turner for those familiar with the show) was not meant to be there. So when we queued for the book signing and he strode over and sat down, I was rather surprised. He is the one I've prayed for the most, and I hadn't expected him to be there. I hadn't made him a card or anything. When we went through the queue and explained to Heidi what we were doing and that I prayed for them, she was surprised and asked us questions, then wrote on a card to me that she was praying for me in return. Stephen asked if I prayed for him as well, and when I said that I did, he was very touched. He even offered to take a selfie with me, which quickly became my Facebook profile picture. I explained to him more of what I prayed for him, and then Micah and I managed to collect ourselves and headed back into London.

It has taken several days for me to wrap my mind around the favour of God in my life. Just a few weeks before, Micah and I had been wondering how God would use us to influence the area of television, which is an area we are passionate about. We pray for actors regularly and try to keep up with what is happening in British television, because God has placed it on our hearts. Then God gave us an opportunity to speak to the very people that we pray for, and we could see the way that God is working in some of their hearts, making them receptive to hear what He has to say. We don't understand what God's plan is for us in this area of society, and God has proven that He doesn't work in ways that we understand. But He is faithful, and we have surrendered our passion for acting, theatre, television, film, etc, back to Him to use as He wants to use it.

It is always an adventure, this life that we live. I never really know what will come next, and I think God delights in that. His blessings aren't something that I deserve. They aren't anything I can take for granted. Sometimes His favour and blessings don't look as exciting as free tickets to see a talk on my favourite tv programme. Sometimes they are in dealing with difficult people, in having to patiently wait for the desires of my heart, in frustrating situations with banks and visas and flight tickets. But they are all a part of His plan, and I've told Him that He can have His way.

Last week, His way was in speaking His truth to some of my favourites in the television industry.

And this week?

I'm looking forward to finding out.

 Micah and me with our free tickets!

 Various free things given us at the festival.

 The Festival was held on Hampton Court Green, across the road from the Palace.

 The panel at the talk, with (L-R),  the interviewer, Dame Pippa Harris, Heidi Thomas, Jenny Agutter, and Emerald Fennel.

 Hampton Court is beautiful.

 The palace on the river

 This was my first time seeing Henry VIII's Palace!

Stephen McGann (my favourite English actor!) and myself.

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

from the middle of the race

For the past few months, we have only been staff living in our blue house in North West London. While we thought that we would spend the months furthering our arts, it soon became evident that we were actually going to spend the months preparing our home for the fourteen students that arrive in a few days. We grew muscles this summer, both physical and spiritual, as we worked together to build  foundations for this group of Discipleship Training School students.

Yesterday, at the church meeting that we began holding in Camden earlier this summer, Christian spoke to us about perseverance. It hasn't been an easy summer, but it is one that we needed to pull us closer as a team, to make us less independent and more invested in our common goals of using art to show Christ and building relationships with those who cross our paths.

Just as we finished everything this week, there was a surprise dismantling of the kitchen (a cabinet self-destructed and took out the sink with it), and now the guys are working hard to put the kitchen back to rights before the students arrive.

They are persevering most admirably.

It talks in Romans 5 about suffering producing endurance, endurance producing character, and character producing hope. While I am not claiming that we have suffered this summer, I will say that we have had to endure.  Part of my character, the part of the flesh that I was holding onto, got squeezed tightly until I finally let go of it in favour of living God's way. And I have hope for the months to come. I know that we will be terribly busy, that we will not sleep much and will laugh a lot and will probably cry a fair amount, as well. But I have hope, because after being pushed past my own limits this summer, I know that God shows off when I give Him the chance to take control.

And in three days, when the students show up and we welcome them with open arms and hearts, it won't be the end of persevering with God. It won't be the end of this race we've been running since we got back from Spain in May. With Notting Hill Carnival and Bones Camp still to come this month (this will be my fourth Bones Camp!), it will only be a new leg in this race.

But as I look forward to the students coming, to a production to be written, a homeless feeding ministry to be continued after we piloted it last month, a church in Camden to be firmly rooted, and outreach to Puerto Rico in December, I must confess this: I have hope. I have hope that it's going to be beyond what I can imagine.

the Saviour and His hands

Last weekend, all of us joined in an evangelism event that was happening in Trafalgar Square. When we got there, we were amazed to see a stage set up, a trailer that hosted a sound system, and tents and banners loudly proclaiming prayer, massages, etc. Several different churches had come together to reach the whole of Trafalgar Square, the centre of London, with the news of Jesus.

We got to lead worship, give free massages, and pray for people that came to us. On the main stage, various Christians were preaching and giving testimonies about God's ability to rescue us.

I was surprised to find a young Indian man willing to talk to me about Jesus and faith. I kept expecting the conversation to end, for him to remember something more important that he had to do and walk away. But he kept listening. I explained how Jesus came to rescue us from our lives of sin and certain death. I had forgotten how complicated it is to explain the Gospel to somebody who doesn't have a foundational knowledge of it. Most often, the conversation ends long before any talk of Jesus's substitution for our sins comes up. When I asked him if he wanted to ask Jesus to be his Saviour, he said yes. We went to a quieter part of the square, and he prayed.

But that isn't the end of anything. It's just the beginning.

The thing that I've learned about evangelism is that the end goal is not for us to lead people in a prayer. It isn't even for them to be able to say, "Jesus is my Saviour!" The Christian life is not about saying a prayer; that prayer alone, uttered and forgotten, does not bring transformation. Being a Christian, a true follower of Christ, means going deeper and further than a prayer. It means opening our hearts to being changed by the Creator of the Universe. It means letting Sovereign Hands mould our hearts. It means letting go of the old man, the sinful, selfish, independent human, and opening ourselves up to being divinely, and slowly, transformed into the image of Christ.

That takes discipleship.

I invited this man to come to the church that we are planting in Camden, and he said that he had plans with his mates, but that he'd try to make it. Unfortunately, he could not come. This weekend, I texted him again, inviting him to come. I'd been praying all week, beseeching God to move in his life in such a way that he could not be kept from going deeper with his newfound Saviour. And this week, I watched him come down the stairs in the Costa and join my family in our new church in a Camden coffee shop. I listened as the guys spoke with him and told him about the Bible. I watched my family embrace him, invite him into our home, and help him to take the first steps past the victory of the Cross.

You see, the victory of a Cross is not a one-time thing. That's why the Bible tells us that we must walk in victory and run the race set before us. It's not like when athletes take a victory lap, then disappear to change and wash and eat. We must continually fight for the victory of Jesus, because it means laying down the very bits of us that are not victorious. It means following God in victory and trusting what He says is best.

I am humbled whenever I think of the past week and of God allowing me to be a part of this race that has begun. God didn't have to use me; there were plenty of other people in Trafalgar Square willing to talk to this man about Jesus. And from the openness of this man's heart, I think that others have helped prepare the way before. I am also both humbled and joyful when I see my teammates open their hearts to others to draw them in. There's a beautiful fragrance of Jesus in the room when it happens, and I know that we are doing what God has us here to do. We are not perfect; we each struggle with various things in our lives. And still God has called us here and uses us. We are loving the ones He sends us. We are so lucky to get to be the ones that He has called here for this time. We are so blessed to be called by His name and to get to follow Him in shared victory.

finding the foundation

Today was a special day for Taboo Arts. After six years of praying in and for Camden (a neighbourhood in north London that I've talked about incessantly on here for the past three years), today we met with two other churches and had a church meeting there. It's been on our heart to start church in Camden for several years now. Today, as we crowded into the basement of a coffee shop a few blocks from the Camden Stables Market, we saw the beginnings of an answer to our prayers.

God has been teaching me a lot about faithfulness. Being faithful means remaining consistent with God and taking steps forward with Him even when I don't see an outcome. We have been visiting Camden every week. We have been building relationships with stall owners in the market, with shop keepers on the High Street, and even with estate agents as we look for a property of our own. And many days, we get frustrated, because we want to be in Camden now. We want to interact with the people there when we pop to the corner shop for a Coke, when we go for a run, when we get on the bus.

Today, God reminded me that this is a time when He is letting us see the dream. We had church in Camden today. We saw the fruits of our faithfulness.

But at the same time, we looked back on churches that have been planted in Camden and are no longer holding meetings. The people that planted those churches also had dreams for Camden. They invested their hearts and hands, as well. The work that we want to do will not be done on a place with no foundation. The soil has been prepared by others before us, others who, like Abraham and David and Isaiah, looked forward to a promise of a Saviour, a promise that was not fulfilled in their lifetime. But their dedication and work was important to pave the way for that Saviour.

Sometimes we are faithful, and we do not get to see the results. Sometimes we are faithful, and we have to remain faithful for years without achieving what we desire. Our team has a lot of dreams for Camden; starting church in Camden is just one of them. There are a dozen other things that we have as a team and as individuals that we are having to continue to wait on.

Faithfulness doesn't stand still. Waiting isn't a lack of motion.

We have to invest time on our knees for these dreams that we have, because where we invest our hearts is where we invest our lives. We have to give up the things that God asks us to give up, because if He wants them gone, then they have no place where we are going. We have to trust, to lean in, to go deeper, to say "Yes!" To learn to love those around us deeply, because where we are going, we will need to know a love that is stronger than our superficial human hearts.

Today we got a glimpse.

And now we walk another mile.

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.

Widening the Tent Pegs

The winter internship has been going on for four weeks now, and it has been a whirlwind. I had forgotten how different it is to staff an internship as compared to a DTS. I am leading the media track this internship, which means teaching lessons in photography every day. We also go to Camden, Soho, and Notting Hill for evangelism and intercession every week. On top of that, the team is helping to start a ministry of feeding the homeless in Notting Hill, which means training with some nearby nuns. We also got to participate with the council of Harlesden, the area of London where one of the base houses is, to provide the entertainment (and therefore to do evangelism through stilts, music, and face painting) for a community event on the 14th of February.

I love the times of evangelism that we do, because it means that we get to build relationships with the people in the areas of London that God has placed on our hearts. We go into the Portobello Road Market on Saturdays and visit the same stall owners over and over again, sharing life with them and telling them repeatedly about the God who created them and loves them. In England, it takes quite some time to build relationships and invest in people to a point where they are willing to hear more about God. Over the past few visits to Notting Hill, I have gotten to speak quite a bit to Maria, a jewelry maker from Austria, to Michelle, an antiques collector from England, and to Crystal, a trans-gender musician who used to live on the streets and is struggling to keep performing with new licensing laws.

The most difficult evangelism that we do is in Soho. We go every week to partner with a church and hand out teas and coffees. The evangelism always begins with worship, which helps to focus us on doing it to glorify God. Soho has cleaned up a lot since I began going there in 2012, especially after a lot of the brothels were shut down a year ago, but there is still a lot of brokenness visible there. I've talked to a lot of people who struggle with confusion: sexual confusion, confused identity, confusion about their purpose in life, and more. These are the conversations that tear my heart wide open. I cannot give them correct answers to their questions, because my wisdom and experience are limited by age and culture and past experience. I can only offer them love and the possibility of God, who created them and loves them beyond any earthly love. I know that the love of God can transform lives. And I pray, I pray, I pray that they will know that the love of God can transform their lives.

One of my jobs during Soho evangelism has been to go down to a massage parlour to get hot water for the teas and coffees, which means wading through Buddha idols and clients and the women and lady boys (It's a Thai massage parlour) who service the clients. I have been praying for years to have the opportunity to talk to them, and when it was presented to me unexpectedly, I was unprepared for what I saw. I have come to the realisation that it is not my job to heroically go in and save them. I don't know the situations that they are in; in fact, I am only just now, after several weeks, at the point of being able to have conversations with the people who work at the parlour. The first week, when I saw the small corridor where they sit on the floor and wait for clients, I couldn't remember how to breathe. I knew that I couldn't cry, so the only thing I could do was pray fervently as I waited for the kettle to boil.

God has been widening the pegs of the tent that is my heart. I have done nothing to deserve the sheer honour of talking to all of the people that I encounter in evangelism. I am still amazed when they are willing to open their hearts and pasts to me, a stranger on the street. It is still a challenge to swallow my own self justice and understanding to let God be magnified inside of me. However, I am so, so thankful that God is using me. I make mistakes, I trip up in conversations, I snap at my housemates or behave selfishly or any number of other things, but God still uses me. Some days, it hurts to talk to people who are hurting and who spew that hurt in words of anger, or who ignore me like I'm not even there on the streets with them, but it is worth it. It is worth it for the absolute privilege of bringing my Saviour's name to the streets of London.

Soho Evangelism: