Home Sweet Hood

After over 24 hours of travel, I've arrived! I'm living in the Harehills, which apparently is the ghetto of Leeds. Needless to say, I'm loving it. One of the most diverse areas in England, over 72 ethnicities represented. I share a rented house with 3 other girls, right up the street from the other 4 of our team. 

So lectures carry on tomorrow, Holy Spirit week so I am quite excited. The following weeks will be concentrated on community outreach. The team here has quite a heart for the community, it being an urban DTS, so the focus is spread out in several directions. We have an art piece due every two weeks, community projects and then we tackle a social justice issue the alternating weeks. On weekends we're expected to volunteer with one of two organizations. One is kids club, which shuttles and hosts about 500 kids to programs ever Saturday. The other is Street Angels, which provides a monitoring system for the night life here in Leeds. Seeing that people get to their homes safe, handing out water, flip flops ect. 

It's pretty spectacular being surrounded by so many different art forms, we have dancers, a sculpter, painters, photography, visual artists...heaven on earth for inspiration. I'm excited to see some collaborations born :) 

I'm also praying I can find somewhere to get my 8mm film developed....

They tell us it gets pretty dangerous round these parts sometimes, drugs and all. This is where I thank my Pops for all that street wisdom he imparted to us kids. Thank God for being from the D. 

Looking forward to lectures! Please keep me in your prayers as I am still support raising. Thanks so much whoever is reading this, I appreciate you keeping up with me :) 

The flight from London to Manchester!

My new street!

Travel trudging. 

Steps

I've got a plane ticket!!!!

And suddenly it becomes all too real. Visa is approved, ticket is purchased, date is set. Talking to a friend on the phone late last my Detroit night and her early Malawi morning, she laughs and says, well....there's no turning back now. 

Duhn duhn duuuuuhn! (dramatic sci-fi movie music) 

As inch by inching brings me slowly closer to September 28th (yeah, my newly solidified departure date) I get to see with blazing clarity the steps the Holy Spirit laid out for me way ahead of time to get to this point. Most of them didnt really look like steps as my feet stumbled over and around a path I couldn't (and still can't really) see. But from this vantage point it makes sense how my insanely and universally wise heavenly Dad set me a-walkin' a course only He could set up. It makes sense that of course I need to be humbled in order to be in a position to learn, it makes sense that desperation leads to reliance on something greater than self. That my fear-crazed scramble for answers can only be assuaged by sitting with, talking to, spending time with, yelling and screaming at, reaching for the God who just wants to see my face turned to Him. 

As I tramped around Northeast Detroit a couple days ago, photographing abandoned buildings and vacant lots for a private real estate investor, I noticed myself instead of hopping in the car driving from place to place, spending more and more time outside in the gorgeous day connecting with  spaces and structures. It's startling the disparity between the distance one feels surrounded by a steel cage and the intimacy felt with gravel and broken glass beneath one's feet. All of sudden I am a part of this scenery and I have lent to the story of this sidewalk, building, neighborhood.

(At this point I have to resist going on a tangent about the Burroughs of Detroit ignored by the grand development craze  and giants of gentrification in midtown and downtown)

The point is, I like to traverse through life surrounded by a cage of certainty and surety, forgetting the fact that God wants me out on my feet connecting with the scenery of this life He has called me to. Yes, getting glass stuck in my shoes and uncovering squatters and getting chased off a lot by huge pitbulls is a bit sketch; so is letting yourself be emotionally vulnerable or believing instead of knowing ...or hopping a plane to a different continent for a year with little to no money praying that God will provide. I guess it's chalked up to learning how to follow step by kind of scary, misplaced step. 

Keep me in your prayers, and I will keep you posted! 

P.s. here are some photos from my little excursion. I'm going to miss this beautiful city! 

Visa stress and family goodbyes

Yesterday my entire family got together for the last time in what looks to be at least a year. I can't remember the last time all my siblings were together.  Everyone is growing up and going different directions, myself to England, my brother to the Army, another sister to India, and who knows when we'll all be together again. But family is love and specifically the kind of love that doesn't crumble with distance. So looking forward to seeing where life takes us all!

 

So the most recent item on a rather long checklist to consistently keep me up at night is the suspenseful visa wait. There is to be no purchasing of airfare until that blasted visa is safe within my two shaking hands, so as you might imagine, I am a teensy bit antsy. Yet another practice in trust. God certainly likes to follow trends when it comes to teaching me. Or it just takes me forever to learn things, most likely the latter. Either way, please keep myself and this visa process in your prayers. I will continue to haunt the post office doggedly, night and day. 

Postscript: It has been absolutely incredible to be on the receiving end of so much support, all across the board. Thank you thank you to everyone who who is praying, has given, and has provided the most unbelievable encouragement to me. There is nothing like the family of Christ!  

Stand and Stare, Move and Make

"we are most of us too busy, too worried, too intent on proving ourselves right, too obsessed with ideas, to stand and stare." - Bill Brandt, 1948

This statement has been slamming me in the face for the past week as I sit and realize its relevancy to life, to art, to growth....this responsibility to sit and take in. Many times 'Selah' is used in scripture to the same effect. Be still and listen. The affect that small act can have. The way it can impact the most influential art, the most passionate convictions. How it can spur one to move and to make. 


In less than 2 months I will be moving my life, my art, my growing pains 3,000 miles away to Leeds, UK, the 4th largest city in the United Kingdom. Its an urban city, over 72 ethnicities represented in a 2 mile radius.

 In the next year I will be interning at the Arts & Justice Discipleship Training School (to learn more see here! http://www.ywamleeds.com/#!the-dts), a 12-month internship program lived out in the YWAM Leeds community. It’s a full-on discipleship experience, focusing on: art, creatively communicating life to a broken world; and justice, what is required to practically restore a broken world. It is grassroots, involving interactive community. I will be mentored in developing my creativity and in learning new skills to enhance and process my creative journey. I will be working with video and photography, focusing on documentary style film.  I'm looking forward to implementing my work with 35mm and 8mm film. (Stay tuned to glimpse some of my work, coming soon!) 

We will focus on social justice tackling issues such as  Human Trafficking, Global Warming, World Hunger, Poverty and I hope to bring steps Detroit has taken to combat Digital Justice to the table as well. 
These issues are not foreign. Living in, as they say, Detroit Proper these are realities I see confronted daily. Having the opportunity to process through solutions on a global level is crucial to the strength of the change I would like to see in my own city. 

To be perfectly transparent, there is some fear involved. Its all faith right now. I'm in the process of raising money for visa and plane ticket. The tuition of the program is a whole other story. I'm the type of person to think I can figure everything out, the classic control freak. Well this is one I can't manage (talk about learning humility!) I need all the help I can get! Prayers and support notwithstanding! If you feel so led to support financially, please donate using the helpful paypal button!

One thing is sure, I will be challenged in more ways than I could probably ever imagine. Forced to grow in ways I never have before. For the past month I've woken up every single morning and said God, its too big. I haven't the means, I haven't the talent, I haven't the perspective. But nothing has been able to shake the quiet confidence that this is where He is leading me, this is where I am supposed to be. 

I can't wait to make the leap and start staring at this world through the eyes of one who will change it