Touching Down

I am in the States for a few days on the way back from Puerto Rico, visiting my family for a bit before heading back to London and the winter internship. I had the opportunity to speak at my parents' church in Savannah this morning and to meet some of the people who have been praying for and supporting me for the past few years. It is always a blessing for me to remember that there are people around the world who pray for my team and for me, and we have certainly seen the power of those prayers in different situations in the past years.

For the last week of our time in Puerto Rico, we had a pre-Sanse (Fiesta de la Calles de San Sebastian, or the street party on the streets around San Sebastian in San Juan's Old Town) camp with Christians from the area, and then we all went to Sanse. We got to participate in the parade before we set ourselves up on the Plaza of San Jose, where we did drumming, dances, stilts, fire pois, fire breathing, and live painting. All of this drew a crowd to whom we got to speak about Jesus.

One of my favourite parts of the festival was seeing the way the Puerto Ricans came to parties with their musical instruments. They brought drums, guiros, and one guy even brought a trumpet. He played the trumpet one-handed so that he could hold his beer in his other hand. They joined in the music and dancing wherever they were, and more often than not, they started speaking to me before I spoke to them! They even waded through my Spanish with me in order to talk to me, and I got to know a lot about their lives and the beautiful island on which they live.

Now I am with my family, and it is odd to open my mouth and to not have people look at me. I understand what signs say, and I can buy my favourite foods at the grocery store. And while I love being home, I also look forward to returning to London and to the winter internship. It is good to live the unconventional life that God called me to, in a house with people of sixteen nations and nearly as many art styles, and to serve God together.

For everyone who is just joining this journey, there are a few links that may help you out. The first one is here, a step-by-step guide to supporting me on Paypal. The second is my email address, which is deborahestevenson@gmail.com. If you are looking for the Facebook of my team, you can find it by typing in "Londons Arts" (be careful to get the "s" on "London!")

open eyes, open hands

Today marks three weeks of being in Puerto Rico, of traveling the island in our four-van caravan, of visiting churches, schools, rehabilitation centers, public parks and squares, and even the beach and the rain forest!

One of the things that God has been teaching me while I have been here is to open my eyes to see the beautiful things that He is putting in each of my days. We are on outreach, which means that we are prepared to give up the comforts of our lives in London. However, the people of Puerto Rico have such generous hearts that they keep taking care of us in unexpected ways, whether it is through donations of clothing and flip flops or through feeding all thirty of us the traditional Puerto Rican meal of chicken or pork, rice, and beans. 

Puerto Ricans also love to get to know new people. Even as I was just in the queue at Starbucks, a man read the name on my cup and starting asking what I was doing and telling me about his life as a chef on the other side of the island. Evangelism is much different than it is in London, because people love to stop and chat for a while, and we leave with new friends. When we spent a week at a church in Caguas, a city near San Juan, the people of the church all came around to check on us and make sure that we had everything that we needed. The women all wanted the chance to cook for us, and they were upset when they didn't have a turn!

This is a culture of extremes, and while a lot of the people here go to church on Sundays, they often do not carry that into their weekday lives. It is heavy on our hearts to inspire the people of Puerto Rico to commit to Christ, to fall in love with Him and to pursue Him with their lives, rather than to go to church on Sunday and live the rest of their weeks in their own ways. Puerto Ricans have passion and perseverance that we desperately need in this battle that we fight to bring God's Kingdom to Earth. I believe that, as God stirs more of their hearts, and as we pray for them to commit their lives to Him and what He calls them to, we will see more Puerto Ricans being sent to bring nations back to the feet of the King.

There is only one more day left in 2015, and I am so glad that I will get to spend it here, looking back on the miracles that God has done, on the places that He has led our team to visit, on the ways that He has provided unexpectedly, and on the challenges that He has led us through. And I look forward to spending 2016 doing the same: meeting new people, traveling to different places, and following God.

 The musicians and drummers singing worship songs on the streets of Bayamon.

 Luis, a man that I spoke to for a long time in Bayamon. He sees evidence of God in creation and captures it in words.

A little girl in a school in Caguas who didn't want to dance, but was keen to learn photography instead.

 Christian speaking at a church in Carolina.

 The dancers and musicians at a Christmas festival in Cayey.

 The ferry from Culebra, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico.

Old San Juan

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

new reasons to wonder

It's the season of the year in which we constantly clean the leaves out of the garden (despite not actually having any trees - where do the leaves always come from?), when we press in deep with the Discipleship Training School teachings and turn our eyes to outreach. In a few weeks, the whole team leaves for six weeks of outreach in Puerto Rico. While there, we will use our arts to tell people about Jesus and His love for them. We will be staying at the YWAM base there, which is still a new base, and going to various churches, as well. After outreach, I will visit my parents in the States for a week, as well!

This time of preparation for outreach has led to me trying my hand at videos several times. It's an area in which I've felt God prodding me, encouraging me to move forward, so I've picked up my camera (and my iPhone, let's be honest), and tried to capture pictures that move. It seems like a small leap from photography to video, but it makes me think a lot more of the over-arching message, of the story that encompasses a day or an event of a moment, instead of focusing on the details and split seconds. It makes you think in motion, in movement of light and noise, and to see more broadly than photos alone.

Here are two videos that I've made this month. The first is of the practical time that we have every day to do our art in the church. We spend hours all creating together to prepare for outreach, so it is a glimpse into our everyday life. And yes, that is me getting beaten up in stage combat.

This second video is one that I made by doing two-second clips of video every day for seven weeks. It shows more fully my life (or at least, the funny or beautiful moments of it) for the past seven weeks.

And with that, I just have to say, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then I've just shown you hundreds of thousands. This is my longest blog post yet!

so we gather

Every year since I joined the arts ministry here in London (and for several years before that), we have hosted the International Arts Gathering, a time when Christian artists from around Europe (and around the world!) can come together to discuss the role of artists in society and to get to know what each other is doing. We host the Gathering to come against the competition and comparison that is inherent in artists, and to build connections with each other.

This year, the Gathering moved from London to Berlin, and we moved with it! We spent six days co-hosting the event with YWAM Berlin, and there were over 40 people from 16 different nations involved in the event. I got to help organise everything, so by the time the Arts Gathering began, I was quite excited to get to meet the people with whom I had been corresponding for several months.

It always surprises me how much I can do art, and do art for God's glory, without thinking about my role as an artist on a global level. Lately, God has been challenging me to see the purpose in the arts, which are the tools He has put in my hands so that I can do my part of the work of bringing His Kingdom here. The refugee situation is the current event that is heavily on my heart these days, and while I can see why government workers, social workers, and healthcare workers are greatly needed to help the situation of the people from the Middle East seeking refuge in Europe, I find it harder to see where an artist is needed. But God has impressed on my heart the importance of the gifts that He has given me. As an artist, I am prone to comparison. But as God's child, I am told that I am unique, and that the gifts given me are intentional and given so that I can glorify my Father.

There are so many people using the arts around Europe in order to reach people, to put out media and entertainment that glorifies God, and to help train and disciple artists. I met several of them in Berlin a few weeks ago, and I saw their determination to use their arts to grow God's Kingdom. We walked along the Berlin Wall together and looked at the graffiti there; we ate kebabs and mulled over the entanglements of our nations and cities, we worshiped and discussed and dreamt together.

And we did it all together because we are co-labourers, siblings, and friends who were given similar gifts with which to fight. I do believe God is asking us to fight, to be intentional, and to speak with the different voices that He gave us. Now is not a time to be silent, whether God has given you the ability to build, to listen deeply, to organise chaos, to teach children, to cook, or even to do art.

We have a voice, we have tools, and we have a society that needs to hear what our Father has given us to say. And so we gather. And so we fight. And so we live.

 The London team that went to the Gathering in Berlin (minus me, because I took the photo)

Carrissa, a photography student, running through the Holocaust Memorial

 With the girls at the Holocaust Memorial

 One of the sessions of the Gathering

Worship

 Worship

 Berlin

 The participants of the Gathering

Elin saying goodbye to Charity, our friend from YWAM Berlin

The video Andres, our videographer, made (and which I helped film)

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