The YWAM Leeds team: Dave Nevard, Doug and Beth Howland

The team, which was started in September 2009 by Doug and Beth Howland, is using the visual arts to build community in the poor and ethnically diverse neighborhoods of Harehills and Chapeltown, opening up opportunities to share Christ.

“We want to introduce people to God in all His expressions,” said team member Dave Nevard. “We are creating a space for people that meets them where they are, taking them step by step and leading them to Jesus.”

The team believes that it is important for people from all walks of life to have avenues to express themselves, particularly in areas of economic hardship like the area where YWAM Leeds works.

“Giving art to people for free gives them life,” Doug said. “This part of the city has always been a dumping ground for different people groups who immigrate here. Some are asylum seekers or refugees. There’s not a lot of programs available at low cost for people here to learn how to do art or other activities to enjoy life.”

Youth work has also become a key focus in an area where parents are often absent, and children clash as they wrestle with a new culture.

“Youth work keeps falling on our lap, even when we don’t announce who we are. There are a lot of young people who have been kicked out of school. They have no role models,” Doug said.

Beth added, “There are a lot of kids who are out of school, but just hanging around. There are lots of opportunities for them to get in trouble. Art is the perfect outlet for them.”

As the team’s work and influence in the city expanded, the house they used to establish the ministry in Leeds became cramped.

The YWAM Leeds team is working to build relationships in their new neighborhood.

“Once, we had a Nigerian pastor over. They are a lot more formal, but the kitchen didn’t have room for a table, so we had to eat in the living room.”

“There was not enough space in the other house to do hospitality in a way that would honor people,” Doug said. “Hospitality is a big thing with us, so we knew something had to be done.”
They prayed for new accommodations. In September, their prayers were answered in the form of a new house nearby that gives them plenty of room to entertain, welcome new staff, and continue building relationships to bring change to the city.

The kitchen, which could contain four kitchens the size of their old one, is now the center of hospitality.

“Eating is a big thing for us, so having a huge kitchen is a blessing,” Doug said. “We can all sit together and talk while cooking. It has made a huge difference in how many we can invite into our home.”

The team has noticed a difference since moving into the new house. Many neighbors turned up for their house-warming party, brought cards, and made them feel welcome. One man invited Doug to a Ramadan celebration.

“There’s something cool about this neighborhood. A lot of people in the area have been really friendly,” Dave said.

To create dialogue and give people the space to interact with art, Dave decided to rent a studio space in Chapeltown, doing his own artwork, and creating a drop-in program in the afternoon.
“The word I had when I got the studio was about it being a training ground and a classroom,” he said. “I’ve started doing a drop-in for anyone in the community to have free materials, lessons and workshops in the arts.”

Dave said that his own feelings of loneliness in moving to Leeds made him recognize others must feel the same. “The art space is where people can come and meet, build friendships, but also learn to develop creatively and find their voice.”

YWAM Leeds continues to expand their network, and hopes to draw more staff who want to join in the work of opening lines of communication about God through the arts.

“It’s harder, and easier than you think it is all at the same time,” Beth said. “Daily, meeting people, that’s not complicated. But it can be spiritually difficult. There are spiritual implications of moving into a new city, and you definitely feel those.”

Doug summed up the experience as only an artist can. “Pioneering is daunting at times, but it’s really fun having a blank canvas and creating from nothing. It’s exhilarating,”

“2012 is a significant year for the UK. With all the things YWAM is hoping to do surrounding the Olympics, it is a significant year for YWAM as well,” said Hayely Bullen, who is leading the prayer team.

Participants sign up on the Brick by Brick Website, taking a “brick” of time, and pledge to pray. All the bricks together build up to create a wall of prayer for the UK during the Olympic year. People have already begun filling time slots.

The initiative is open to both individuals and groups, inside YWAM and outside, and every person is encouraged to use the time as they feel God leads. Each prayer slot will have a different feel, depending on who initiates it. Individuals can take an hour each week, or at random as they have time. YWAM bases and churches can take a day, week, or month, and format the time to fit their personality. Bullen is putting together resources on the Website to give people ideas.

“Instead of giving a format, we’ve given people lots of resources and a list of things to pray for.”

Brick by Brick is not about YWAMers joining in a year of prayer already in progress, but making it integral to the next year of the mission.

“I feel that this is something God has said we need to do as YWAM,” Bullen said. “Not just have YWAM join in a year of prayer that was already happening, but as YWAM, having a year of prayer.”

YWAM Harpenden, where the Forever team is based, is taking the first week, and will kick off the year by reading through the Bible over a four-day period. Other bases have shown interest in doing a 24-hour worship session. The Brick by Brick site has a list of resources to help direct the prayer and give people ideas. The field is wide open, Bullen said.

Following the old adage of ‘Do first, then teach,’ the team at YWAM Harpenden organized a week of 24-7 prayer in October to prepare for the coming year.

“Before I could ask other locations to pray for a week, I wanted to be able to say I had done it. In Olympic terms, this was the athlete’s warm up. We wanted to stretch some spiritual muscles so we would know we could do it again,” Bullen said. “During the time I’ve been here, that’s never happened.”

The week was focused on intimacy with God, and truly had an impact on the staff who participated. Bullen hopes that the attitude of prayer will grow as people join the Brick by Brick movement around the world.

“God often does things in layers. The surface layer for Brick by Brick is to pray for the UK during the Olympics, that it would be a nation that blesses other nations,” she said. “The layer underneath, I am wanting to see YWAM learn how to really pray in unity for things again, to take our prayer to the next level.”

With so little time to plan an alternative venue, I was devastated. I just cried.

I asked people to pray and began making inquiries. I must have asked about 20 people but nothing was moving. I was wonderfully surprised when Emma, a girl I mentor in York, told me she thought I should come to her home church in the Wirral. I could feel the anticipation and faith rising in my spirit.

Emma referred me to Christine, a youth pastor at Emma’s church, Christ the Good Shepherd, and I could sense right away it was the perfect venue for us. Things fell into place and the leadership agreed to let us come to the church.

Then a few days later I was praying for the church and I began to write a song for that night. These words came out:

“Verse 1:

I was made for more than this

I was made to fly

I was made for greater thing—

To spread my wings and touch the bluest sky…

Bridge:

Jesus, I want to see who you are

Show me the way

Show me my part

Jesus I want to be where you are

Show me the way to touch your heart

Chorus:

And I’ll go where you want me to go

I’ll pray for your kingdom to come

I’ll go just as long as I know

You are here,  I am not alone

I’ll go where you’re going

I’ll say what you’re saying

I’ll be what you’re calling me to

Trust you with my whole life too…”

Verse 2:  I was made to see the heavens

I was made for life

I was made to live forever

To feel Your love in the pleasure of Your smile…”

I sang the song for the first time with Emma and the Trumpet Tour band at the Wirral meeting Maged Kalta preached. Over 120 people were there, mostly between ages 11 to 18. One young man, who wants to go into the marines, was crying because he was so touched during the response time.

Maged had encouraged us to obey God the way Moses obeyed God even though he felt inadequate and unable to do it.

Christine said the youth group has a phrase they have been using recently: “availability, not abilities.” Maged mentioned this several times in his sermon and the young people were a bit amazed at how God was speaking and confirming things to them and how this fit into the rhythm of where they are. As a team we had prayed for the evening and felt the youth were going to be the ones leading the church. Christine was so encouraged by that.

The conversations and prayer times that followed the service were impacting. Christine showed me a text she got from one of the kids who she said was “on the fringe” and it said “Thanks for tonight. It really changed my thinking.” Christine was so excited that God had reached this young boy.

Many of our team were talking and praying with people who lingered, wanting prayer, well into the night. People kept thanking us for coming and for the special song. The vicar of the church said it was the right timing for us to come as they are in the middle of the series about “stepping out of the boat.” 

To read more updates from the Trumpet Tour, click here.

20. Million. Can you even begin to wrap your mind around that? When I first read these words on International Justice Mission’s Website, I couldn’t grasp the numbers.

To be honest, I live in Letter Land, that happy place where writers live in oblivion to things like numbers. Slapping a number in front of the word million doesn’t phase me.

20 million what? Dollars? Writers never make that much, so that’s out. Words? That’s a Dostoevsky novel. Perhaps too many words.

20 million people? What does that even look like, that mass of humanity, nameless and faceless?

To make up for my numerical deficiency, I have taken to creating word pictures to make more sense of numbers beyond the reach of my imagination. It’s a journalist’s trick my former editor taught me. We are in the age where information often gets thrown at us with little or no explanation, so we have to grapple with the meaning of the numbers.

So, 20 million. Let’s put that into a frame we can understand:

First, Fly to New York City. Check out the Empire State Building. Cruise Broadway. Then enslave the entire city — everyone from Mayor Bloomberg and the Rockettes, down to the last struggling mother in Harlem.

Don’t stop there. Next, travel to Los Angeles, and make slaves of the entire population of metro LA, celebrities included. If you’ve ever driven through LA County traffic during rush hour, you can imagine what a difficult job it would be.

But that only puts you at 12 million. To get to 20 million people, you need to conquer Chicago, Houston and Phoenix as well.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot – these numbers are from 1999. The numbers have now leaped to an estimated 27 million. And numbers from closed countries are hardly accurate. So you can easily throw in Philadelphia, San Antonio, Dallas, San Diego, San Jose, Detroit and San Francisco into the mix as well.

I am not an alarmist. I tend to walk pretty calmly through life. I’m not easily rattled, even when others around me are whipped into a frenzy, squawking about global warming. Or food chemicals. Or the inherent evil of (insert cause here.)

But when I started looking at these slavery numbers and figuring out what they might look like in real life, I was ready to throw a full-on, loud-mouthed, squawking activist fit.

Once I calmed down a bit, I started asking questions. Who are these people? What does slavery look like?

Take a look at the tag on your shirt. Look at your shoes. Many of the items we wear, particularly cheaply made clothes, are made in factories where people are bought as slaves and forced to work long hours in horrible conditions.

You know that sketchy massage parlor in town, the one people talk about as being “that kind of place?” Women are often trafficked in from other countries and forced to work as prostitutes.

In some foreign countries, slave laborers make bricks and toil in the hot sun next to their master’s palatial homes. Sound familiar from history class?

According to Paul E. Lovejoy, in his book Transformations in Slavery, from 1650 when the slave trade began, until it ended in 1900, 10.2 million people were transported. While slavery is tragic no matter what era, double that number were reported in one year just 10 years ago, and it is on its way to treble that.

In various countries, from North America to Asia, in small pockets of tens and hundreds and thousands, there are 27 million people with no option where they work, where they live, how they move about.

It’s enough to make a journalist squawk. So let’s do something about it.

Sure, you say. It’s easy for me, sitting behind my computer, making weird noises, to talk about doing something to impact a global pandemic. It’s overwhelming.

I know. Even I am sometimes overwhelmed with the facts, but if we are all concerned, and we move in one thing to stop slavery, imagine the difference it could make.

We all have a voice, which might seem insignificant. But add it to another voice, and another, and the sound grows to a roar.

What will you do with your one voice?

My challenge is this: Educate yourself. Visit International Justice Mission, Not For Sale and Because Justice Matters. Read about slavery, and be informed. Let the information soak into your soul, let the numbers go past your head and into your heart. See where it leads you. It just might change the world.

And that’s something to squawk about.

Lauren Nelson is the editor and chief troublemaker for Hope Ink Magazine. She is currently fascinated with 19th century English fiction, tea, and print making. You can e-mail her at hopeinkmagazine@gmail.com.

“We really learned about God’s authority and power in a realm that sometimes we’re not very aware of ourselves,” said Hayley Bullen, who organized the booth. “Over six days, we prayed for about 400 to 500 people at the stand, gave away over 100 Gospels of John, referred about 200 people to the Alpha course, saw numerous physical healings, and watched as seven people made a decision to follow Jesus.”

It was easy to point people to Jesus, said team member Seth Dunham, because so many people at the festival were open about where they were on their spiritual journey.

“One of my favorite times was talking with a Reiki healer. She was telling me about how she talked to angels, and I asked her if she would like to go straight to the source and talk to God. She said OK, so we sat there and listened, and she got to hear God for herself,” he said.

In an environment thick with various spiritual beliefs, God made his voice clear to the team, and to those who came to the booth for prayer.

“Several people asked, ‘How did you do that? How did you get that information about me?’ And we were able to tell them it was God,” said Phil Manning.

A large number of people who came for prayer commented on the peaceful feeling they had upon entering the stand. Others saw visions and heard words while they were being prayed for.

Dondi Carter recalls an encounter she had with a woman named Dena*: “I got a really clear picture in my mind of her surrounded by boxes. She was crying out for help, and didn’t know where to go. It turns out her entire house is filled with boxes right now as she’s divorced. I really felt like God was just saying that He loved her. She said she wanted that ability to just talk to God like we were doing. She said, ‘Wow, I wish I had that!’ We told her, ‘Guess what? You can have it!’ We prayed with her and she accepted Christ! As she was leaving, she said, ‘For 8 or 9 years I have been searching for something, trying all these different things. Who would have thought that the answer was so simple as Jesus?’”

Bullen said the incredible response was a result of lots of prayer and reflection on what God wanted for this year’s festival.

“Spiritually, a lot of prayer went in to this time. We didn’t want to assume that God was going to do the same thing He did last year. We didn’t want to barge ahead with what we knew how to do,” Bullen said.

From the practical side, the team needed a larger booth to be able to offer more prayer, and more signage to show people what was being offered..

“We decided to take a step of faith and book a bigger stand, which was twice the price,” Bullen said.

Another need was follow-up, a place to point people who were interested in learning more about Jesus and Christianity.

“This year we partnered with Alpha [course], who allowed us to put their Website on our contact cards,” Bullen said. “We also knew we needed Bibles, or a portion of the Bible to give away. We ended up giving away over 100 Gospels of John, not just to anyone, but to people who really wanted them.

“I think this year, we came better prepared, and it proved to be really powerful,” she said.

Despite the many healings and words of knowledge that the team received throughout the festival, the most powerful thing was seeing God’s love for the festival goers.

“I got to see how much God loves people, and how He chases after them,” Dunham said. “No matter how many times I prayed for people, and got all these incredible words, in the end, I just felt God saying over and over how He loved people, and wanted a relationship with them. So many great things happened, but in the end, it was simply, ‘I love you.’

An answer to prayer, perhaps? At the start of the journey, Nelson and her crew prayed that “God would reveal his beauty and creation and nature, and allow me to endure this long trek.”

“Last Friday, IJM’s Chennai team rescued 13 children, women and men from slavery in a large rice mill. Forced to live in tiny shacks within the compound, the slaves were desperate for release. One of the victims, Mukesh*, was suffering from tuberculosis and had been forbidden from leaving the mill for treatment. At rescue, he had not eaten for four days.

Today, he and the rest of the slaves are free. Mukesh is receiving medical treatment, and he and the other former slaves will receive funds and supplies from the government to build their new lives. IJM aftercare staff will provide them with continued assistance as they resettle in their home villages.”

International Justice Mission works in countries where there is a functioning legal system that allows them to prosecute people who are trafficking in human lives, along with other injustices. The process is a slow one, but when criminals are punished for breaking laws, others are more likely to think twice before committing the same act. Over time, an entire culture can be changed.

This is the hope we are talking about with Hope Ink. Hope for people in slavery. Hope for the downtrodden and those living in extreme poverty. It’s a gut-wrenching, one-person-at-a-time operation to begin with, but like a snowball, if we can get things rolling, the impact gets larger with each turn.

You might not be a lawyer, but you can help rescue people condemned to a life of slavery. See how you can get involved by visiting IJM’s Website.