Looking Back; Looking Forward (season wrap up)

Life at YWAM Urban Key goes quickly; it seems as if a new season begins every few months, and I pack my suitcase again and switch houses or travel the world. Another season is coming to an end for me now, and the theoretical phase of the counselling school ends in a week.

A month ago, we were in the base's Notting Hill Carnival outreach, at which I photographed and made videos of the evangelism and parade that we created. It is the largest evangelism event that we do every year, and it lasted for ten days. I love getting to go out and do evangelism every day, because it is a time when we go out, all different nations, to encounter the nations on the blocks around us. I paired up with some of our Bones participants from Italy and Austria, and even though we do not speak the same language, we joined together for the common purpose of telling people about Jesus. Some days, we used stilts, live music, and drama, but some days we just approached people in Portobello Market to tell them about the One who changed our lives.

During Carnival, I also went out with Cris Barrios, one half of our husband-and-wife media team at the base, to interview people about what Carnival means to them. It has always interested me that people come to Carnival for no apparent reason; it is not a holiday (although it is a bank holiday, which means that everyone has the day off of work), and there is not a common cause being celebrated. A lot of people mentioned coming to see the different cultures and celebrate with everybody, because it is a weekend that everyone comes together and doesn't mind if you talk to them. England is a pretty closed culture; rarely do you just speak to strangers on the bus, Underground, or street. It is really cool to see everyone speaking to each other. And it's a great chance to talk to them about the reason that I am in London. 

Here are some of the people I talked to:

We are also coming to the end of the counselling school, and yesterday, we all went to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to see a show for Micah, one of our members', birthday. It was my first time seeing a show there, and it was amazing.

When the theoretical phase of the school ends, we go on outreach to Spain and Italy. The outreach is two months, and I will join the team once I receive my renewed visa. The outreach focuses on restoration, and we will go into schools and churches to talk about areas such as eating disorders, true love, co-dependency, family relationships, etc. It will be a good time to give back what we have learned, but it will also be a challenge, because it means putting into practice what we've spent three months discovering.

You can join my journey by praying for me or supporting me financially. When you pray, please pray for us as we enter this phase of our school, that we will be safe and that the details will all be under God's control. Please also pray for those of us who do not speak Spanish or Italian, that we will be able to communicate clearly with those to whom we will be ministering. We also need prayer for our hearts, that we will remain pure and united, and for the hearts that we will encounter.

I would also appreciate it if you would pray about supporting me financially. The visa that I renewed was $375, and I will also have additional outreach travel and accommodation costs this month. You can support me monthly, if you are so led, or at any time that you want. For those of you who are in the United States, you may contact susancookstevenson@gmail.com if you would like to support me. My mother handles all of my contacts in the United States. If you are elsewhere in the world, feel free to email me at deborahestevenson@gmail.com. I appreciate any support and prayers that I receive. It helps me to stay here in London, doing what God has told me to do. I rely on your support to remain here.

You can also email me if you'd just like to chat or find out more about what is going on in my life, or if you would like me to pray for anything for you. I may not be able to come and have coffee and a deep discussion with you physically, but I'd love to talk, anyway.

and so my home is much larger (nine things I've learned in 14.5 months across an ocean)

I just renewed my visa to stay in the United Kingdom, and as I have filled out the application and gathered all of the materials, I thought about my last fourteen and a half months in the United Kingdom. My life is different than it was fifteen months ago, when I graduated university and moved across the ocean. I am also different. But God? He's the same.

Here are some of the things that I learned:

1. I do not need a room to myself.
But seriously. My whole life, I had my own room. Except for my freshman year at university, I have always had a place where I could shut the door and breathe, where I could block everybody out, and where I and my possessions were safe. I thought that it was necessary for my sanity. I thought that it was my right.

But having my own room is not my right. As I write this, I am in a room with three other girls, all whom I love dearly. I have half a cupboard to my name, and I sleep in a top bunk, and let me tell you, I am just grateful to have a bed.

Even having a bed is not my right.

It is my privilege to be here. It is my privilege to share a room with these three women of God. I learn from them every day, and when I go through hard times, I don't even have to lift my head; they are right there.

Sure, there are times that I want to get away. But I can always run or take a walk or take a shower. Being an introvert and living in community is a challenge, but it has also taught me how to be vulnerable. It has taught me how to live life without hiding from things that overwhelm me. And if I had to guess, I'd say that it's probably preparing me to have a family.

2. I am just as loved when I am struggling as when I am doing well.
Part of living in community means that I am around people all day, every day. I cannot hide my bad days behind a smile and a tight-lipped, "I'm fine." These people that I live with are my family, and they genuinely want to know how I am doing. And when I'm not doing well, they love me just as much as they do when I am good and lovely and caring and giving. In fact, when I am really struggling, they show me love even more clearly. God is a relational God. He created me for a relationship with Him, but also for relationships with others. It is in those relationships that I often see His love for me acted out.

3. Home is not necessarily where you have a bed or a key. Home is where you wake up and know where the breakfast stuff is (and how to work the shower).
By this definition, I have three homes in this YWAM base. And while I do not sleep in all three of our base houses, I know where the breakfast stuff is in all three, and I definitely know how to operate the shower. I also know that, if I knock on the door, I'll be greeted with a hug, coffee, and a lot of love. I think that is really what home is: being greeted at the door with love.

4. Showering is overrated (at the same time, showering is a way to feel sane again). 
When we do Notting Hill Carnival, we live in a church and have to walk 20 minutes one way to shower at a sports centre. With all of the preparation and evangelism, there isn't time to shower every day. And during Carnival weekend, we go for four days without showering and with all 90 people living in one church.

It can get pretty gross.

But at the same time,  it has taught me that I don't need to shower to be a human. People can rarely tell that I have not showered every day. Showering is another thing that I grew up with and assumed was my right. But showers have not been around for long. Millions of people lived before them, and they seemed to do just fine.

However, I also know that, when things go really wrong, a shower is often what I need to feel sane again. Just the act of cleaning my body helps cleanse my mind and spirit. Which brings me to,

5. Cleaning is a great time to talk to God.
In YWAM, we do this thing called work duties. Basically, the whole team comes together to clean the house. It is a daily activity (when you live in community, you need to clean the house every day), and it is one of the best times that I have with God every day. While my body is busy scrubbing toilets or mopping floors, God has a chance to speak to me without being interrupted. It has gotten to the point where just the thought of washing dishes makes me think about God.

6. You do not need to talk to somebody daily (or weekly) to keep a strong relationship with them.
This was one of my big fears when I joined YWAM. I did not want to end my relationships in the States just because I was moving to England. Everybody says that, with Skype, it's easy to keep in touch, but I think we all know that that's a bit of a lie. It takes a lot of time to Skype people, and to set up Skype dates. With a time difference, there is even more of a challenge. But I have learned that when I finally do get to Skype with the people that I love, it's as if the past fifteen months have only been a month or two. The love and communication is still there.

7. National Holidays are still important, even if you are not in your own country.
Today, we celebrated Chile's Independence. We ate empanadas and danced to traditional songs. At Thanksgiving, I ate three Thanksgiving dinners. The base also celebrated Norway's independence day, and we have Argentinian barbeques several times a year. I love getting tastes of other cultures and seeing the pride that people have for their homeland, even when it has been years since they've lived there. I also appreciate that the people I live with will celebrate days that are important to me, even though they may not understand why it is necessary to sing "I'm proud to be an American" seven or eight times on the Fourth of July. Living in England does not mean that I was not raised in the United States, and it does not mean that my Chilean teacher does not feel pride for her homeland on their special day. It really just means that we have more reasons to celebrate.

And more reasons to fiesta!

8. My value is in who I am, not what I do.
Having a university degree does not make me more valuable. Being able to speak more languages would not make me more valuable, nor would being the best toilet cleaner, or the best email writer. My value is that I am God's creation and daughter. My value is equal with Christ. I have security in that fact alone, not in who loves me or where in the world they are. Certainly not in my bank account. Not in where I sleep or what I do during the day.

I know this seems a bit deep and poetic, but it is a revelation that has taken me 14.5 months to come by. I am valuable. I am just as valuable as I was when I was born, and I cannot lose that value. It does not depend on you. It does not depend on my family here in London, or my family at home. The same is true of you. I do not determine your value. Neither does your boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, roommate, boss, or professor. You are worth the life of Jesus. Your value is the same as the son of God. That is exactly what you are.

God loves me (and you) just as much as He loves Jesus.

9. I love the God I serve.
This is not new, but my love only grows as I learn more about my Father.

and you should come join our family

Every year, our base does a base-wide outreach called Bones that leads up to Notting Hill Carnival. Notting Hill Carnival is the second biggest carnival in the world - a time when millions of people come to Notting Hill to drink and eat overpriced food and "experience cultures" (really, though, I think they mainly experience Red Stripe beer and rubbish-lined streets). Still, despite that, the carnival time is one of my favourite times of year on the base.

For the ten days leading up to Carnival, everybody on the base moves out of our three houses and into the church that we attend, which is right in the middle of Notting Hill. We sew, paint, glue together foam, and practice drumming, dances, and dramas to perform in the street. This year, I was helping with media, so I ran around with a camera the whole time. We invite others to join us, and we had teams come from Italy, Brazil, Spain, Austria, Scotland, the States, Canada, and more. There were 90 of us living in the church by the end.

Each day, we had worship and evangelism as well as preparation for carnival. We stayed up late at night working together, and in the afternoons, we filled the streets with the news of Jesus. During one of these evangelism times, I was accompanying Ezra, one of my counselling school classmates, as he walked on stilts. We stopped and talked to a man, Raj, at a bus stop, and we invited him to church. He showed up at the church that night, and after prayer and talking, he accepted Jesus.

Raj is the first person that I have led to Christ in London. I could barely contain my excitement. Here in London, we talk to a lot of people, and we even get to pray for many of them, but we rarely see people get saved. Raj told me that he had friends from the States who prayed for him, and I know that I got to reap a seed that had been sown a long time ago.

During Carnival, I put down my camera long enough to take part in a flash mob, and also to talk to a lot of people. Many times I just had time to explain that Jesus loves them, no matter what they do, but one woman allowed me to pray with her and gave me the chance to explain how to hear God's voice.

I'm sad that Carnival is over, and I'm back to the busy life of counselling school, but I just wanted to share what happened in the past two weeks and to encourage everybody to actually go for it when you tell others about Jesus. Don't be afraid to tell people the truth - that Jesus love them and that they need to take the step to accept Him as their Saviour. Maybe you aren't the first person to tell them, and maybe you will get to be the final person that they speak to before they take the step to join our family.

(Here is a link to the video of the flashmob. I am in the front right, wearing black).

and the seasons change

A week and a half ago, I had a significant change of season in my life.

I am taking a brief sabbatical from the arts team. While they are headed to Paris and Edinburgh on outreach, I have joined the first-ever counselling school that my base is offering.

The lecture phase of the school is three months long, and the slogan is "Receive to Give," which means that, while we are learning how to counsel others in a Christian way, we are receiving healing ourselves. I am receiving a lot of healing at the same time that I am being prepared to return to my ministry with the skills to help disciple the nations - and our future teammates - with Godly wisdom.

It's been an unexpected blessing to be here, to have peace and the chance to spend extended amounts of time with God. This is the busiest season for the arts team, and my leaders were gracious enough to allow me to leave the internship that we are running so that I can come be a part of this school.

As you pray for me in this time, please pray that God gives me the strength to say yes to the decisions that He places before me. It is a huge growing time for me, and I am only too aware of my own fragility. But I also know that He will not ask me to do anything that He is not preparing me to do.

One of the best parts of the school thus far has been how we focus on giving back. We do evangelism every week, as well as going to the Salvation Army to serve dinner to the homeless on Wednesdays. I have always loved going to the Salvation Army, and it has given me the chance to have weekly conversations with the people that are there, and to follow up with them about prayer, illnesses, and the evidence of God working in their lives.

God has also been using music a lot in this time. I began playing the ukulele this past winter, and I have been playing the piano again, as well. I am currently praying about purchasing a 3/4 size guitar (because it fits my size better than a full-size guitar). God has spoken to me a lot about the place that worship has in my life, and I am trying to take concrete steps to move in the way that He is leading me. Music has a way of bypassing the mind and touching the heart with truth that I find hard to accept when I filter it through rational thought.

when we stand and fight

Over the past two months, I have gotten to experience a different side to being a missional artist. In the month between internships, we fixed up the house, but we also partnered with an organisation that stands up for Christian opinions in the politics and media, and along with them, we worked to champion some of the causes that we feel passionate about. I went to the meetings that our leader had with the organisation, and I got to watch Christians fight for their beliefs in the political arena. I've never helped organise something of that magnitude before, and it was an honour to stand outside of British landmarks and declare the Lord's presence and ask for His grace and mercy to come down. There were hundreds of people there to sing God's praises and declare our love for God and the other people of the nation, and it was powerful to see so many people take a stand for God's heart.

The process also allowed me to use gifts that God has given me for which I never understood the purpose. I've never understood why God let me do one year of a broadcast journalism degree before having me change to theatre. I didn't know why I had taken so many public speaking classes, or why God led me to do an advertising minor with my degree. And yet, through our work with the Christian organisation, I found all of those aspects of my education useful. I attended planning meetings, helped with the publicity ideas, and did an on-camera promo for the events. God has a funny way of preparing me years in advance, and while I was complaining about the difficult exams and wasted classes, He could see how necessary it would be now.

That's something I'd like to remember now, as I prepare to do the first counseling school that our base is offering. While I may not understand how it will effect my life, I know that God is using what I am learning now to prepare me for His plans for my future. God's timing is perfect - even in the preparation stages. That is a truth that I am standing on.

river views and sweet buns

Our last location on our January Internship outreach was Linkoping, Sweden, a city about an hour and a half away from Stockholm. We were invited to visit by our friends, Anders and Sarah, and since they've blessed us by visiting us with a team this year, we traveled to their base for a week.

Linkoping is a university town, so our first project was to give a concert at the university. The concert was planned by the Christian group on campus, a group that has only 20 members. For a university with several thousand students, that is a bit discouraging. However, I was really impressed by the amount of work the students put into meeting new students. Their passion for Christ is evident, and not only did they host a concert that included a free lunch, but they also joined us for a talk on intercessory prayer later in the week. They are up against a lot at the University of Linkoping, which is the most humanistic university in Sweden. It takes a lot of energy and strength to fight in that kind of environment, and the students are fighting for souls as well as attempting to keep up with their degrees. Their dedication was quite impressive.

While in Sweden, we also had the opportunity to work with several youth groups. I gave my testimony a few times, and afterwards, I got to talk to Swedish teenagers about what it meant for me to surrender my gifts back to God. It's not something that I think about a lot, but really, surrendering theatre, music, and photography to God is one of the best things that I've ever done. God took back the gifts that He gave me, and He called me into this life. I could have held on tightly to my talents and used them for my own fame, but where would I be then? I'd be struggling alone in New York City, poor and desperate. But now I'm living in a family in London, working with other Christians to use our arts to speak to people's hearts about God. It's incredible.

My favourite part of our trip to Sweden was the Jesus Bus. It's an actual bus that has been converted into a cafe, and every Friday and Saturday night, a group of senior citizens drive it to a central square in Linkoping and hand out cinnamon buns and coffee to the people coming out of pubs and clubs. They stay out there for hours, even in the cold, and talk to the young people. I was amazed at their dedication to the youth in their city; even when younger people went home, they stayed. We joined them with our music, stilts, and painting, and it gave all of us the chance to talk to people. I accompanied one of the girls on stilts, and when people stopped to ask her why she was on stilts, we got to tell them that we were in Sweden to show them God's love for them. Swedish people are surprisingly open to talking about their faith, and several times people let us pray for them or asked us how salvation worked.

The most encouraging thing about Linkoping was how it is able to be grasped. Taboo is faced with a daunting task here in London: to influence a city of millions. But Linkoping is much smaller, and with a few more people on their team, the YWAM Linkoping team has a fighting chance for taking that city for God. While we were there, Christian, our team leader, met with the vice mayor. They have connections at the University, as well, and with prayer and resources, the city of Linkoping could be won for God's Kingdom. We should pray for the team there, that God provides them more workers and connections. They were so hospitable to us, and I would love to see them blessed with resources to make their fight a bit more manageable.

 The concert at the university

 Talking to university students

The Jesus Bus

Daniela on stilts by the Jesus Bus

Lion-hearted

For the second phase of Taboo Arts' outreach, we traveled to Lyon, France. The trip to Lyon was terribly stressful, with a delayed train leading to a missed train and an unexpected night in Brussels, Belgium. But when we arrived in Lyon, we were greeted with blessings. It was sunny, and the team at YWAM Lyon took us to the park for the afternoon. We got to leave our jackets behind for the first time this spring. They also prepared amazing French food for us every day.

For the week that we were in Lyon, we taught our arts to the DTS teams that are leaving on outreach. Patricio, Micah, and I taught theatre to six of the students who are going to Asia. We spent the first few days doing workshops in which we taught them some warm ups and acting techniques, and we also taught them several dramas that they can do on the streets in Asia. It was a blessing for me to be able to teach dramas that I have actually performed on outreach, and I am always surprised at the new ways that God speaks to me through the dramas.

At the end of the week, we went into the center of Lyon to do evangelism. As the director of the dramas, I got to stand in the audience during the performances instead of performing. Several times, I got to talk to people about the meanings behind the dramas - about how God can save them from the lives that they are living now, and about how His death on the cross is relevant to our lives right now. One of the men that stopped next to me asked me if God could really save him the way that the man playing Jesus was saving the girl in the drama from the demons of her life. His friends kept calling him away, but he stayed for the whole drama, and at the end I explained what a life with God means - being healed of the things that are killing us and walking with the Creator that loves us.

I think the coolest part of the day was when I actually spoke to people about God in French. It was clear that the Holy Spirit was with me, because I took two years of French in high school, and I did not remember very much of it before we set foot in France.

My birthday also took place while we were in France. I share my birthday with my roommate, Marta, and in the evening, our team threw us a surprise party that included a delicious cake and ended with Marta teaching me how to break dance. I was also sung to in five languages: English, Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese.

What surprised me most about Lyon was the openness of people to discuss God and their lives with a random American girl. People opened up to me about their lives and struggles, and they gave me glimpses into their hearts. Sometimes I'm amazed by the privilege that I am given to see into people's hearts and to get to tell them about the God who saved my life. I often forget the urgency of what I'm doing, but in the streets of Lyon, as the team performed the dramas that we'd taught them, I remembered.

Teaching dramas in the beautiful weather.

The DTS team performing the drama "Everything" in the center of Lyon's old town.

With some of my family here (from L to R): Heather (England), Juliette (Holland), Marta (Portugal), Sebastian (Argentina), Melody (Puerto Rico, but she's growing up here in London), and me in front of them all.

 

Marta and me with our birthday cake.