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,”

The idea was to head to a small village in southeast El Salvador, but before we left, we made a visit to the first orphanage. The sight of the vans pulling into the compound brought the kids running our way. The plan was simple. Get out, spend some time with the kids and leave in a short while. Impossible. Most of these kids were abandoned by their parents. Just having someone stop by to see them was a treat.

The children at the orphanages in El Salvador were excited to see the 'gringo' visitors.

During our entire visit at the orphanage, she and Kenny were attached at the hip, his smile as bright as hers. All these children wanted to be held, thrown in the air and swung around. And we did just that. As we left, each person in our crew was speechless. A few tears were shed and a spot in each of our hearts was put aside for these kids. Spending a couple hours with the kids clearly had more of an impact on us than them.

Down the road a ways, we ran into some rain and traffic. At one point we were at a standstill and noticed a mid-sized car at the crossroad that was stuck. His front wheel had fallen into an enormous pothole. The car was unable to move. Other people walked by and cars passed him as he sat helpless in the rain. Almost instantly, Mike looked at us in the back of the van and said, “We need to go and help that guy; let’s lift up his car and get him out of that hole.”

Half laughing, six of us ran over, lifted his car out of the hole, making this guy’s day with one simple act. As traffic started moving, I stopped long enough to exchange names and say “Dios te bendiga!” (God bless you.) Kindness rubs off of the guys from Surfers on Mission and becomes contagious.

We spent the rest of the week in a small fishing village on the southeast coast. Each day we surfed early in the morning and late in the afternoon and spent the rest of the time with the local people. Salvador Castellanos, our friend and contact, had arranged to drive his Toyota truck to distribute food in a needy area. Walking door to door, we split up into groups of three and four with one translator. The response from each family was smiles and gratefulness. Some said a simple “gracias” and others wanted us to come in and talk or pray with them.

The team surfed in the morning and afternoon, and spent the rest of the day meeting the locals.

Tin for a roof, trees and scrap wood for walls and natural dirt floors, these people were content owning very little. Life was simple and there were no distractions like iPods or Wii games. When we were down to our last food bag, we called from the fence to a small makeshift house. A middle-aged man made his way to us with a look of confusion; three gringos (white guys) and a frizzy-haired Filipino.

You could see the gears turning in his head, “What could these guys possibly want?” I explained we were making our way through the village blessing people with large bags of food. He shook my hand and did his best to hold back tears. He explained his family “was on their last meal and didn’t know where the next meal would come from.” His next comment showed me how important that whole day was — “Now I know how much God loves me and cares for me.”

The next day we drove an hour or so to another orphanage. At first the kids were reserved, and understandably so, as 10 gringos more than twice their size walked into their building for the first time. After a couple hours of singing, dancing and playing with them, we asked the woman in charge, “What would be a way we could really bless you and the kids tonight?”

The adults loved the pinata as much as the kids, but the little boy who climbed the tree to get the pinata got the laughs.

As we drove back to our base camp that night, all I could think about was how much I take things for granted. How many times I’ve had fried chicken. How many times I’ve spent money carelessly. How many times in the future I’ll stop and think about the things I want versus the things I need.

The big party was set for Friday night. We had posted and handed out flyers all over the small village. With permission from the mayor, we took over the soccer field in the middle of town. We had a raffle for the kids and adults, soccer games, piñatas, and topped off the night with an animated movie about Jesus.

Nearly everyone in the village turned out, or so it seemed. The hardest task of the night was holding the adults back during the piñatas; they all wanted some candy too. Everyone crowded around the boy swinging the stick at the piñata, waiting in anticipation for candy to fly everywhere. It was then we noticed a small boy had secretly climbed the tree from which the piñata hung. The boy in the tree pulled the piñata up and began reaching in to grab hand full after hand full of candy. Ingenuity at its best. Everyone had a laugh.

The highlight of the night came after the movie as we were packing everything up. A man approached with his eyes full of tears. He fought to spill out a few words and explained he wanted Jesus to be number one in his life. A bunch of us gathered around him as he prayed a prayer of repentance.

These are only a taste of the stories and experiences from a trip that was ‘all that and then some’. Not because we surfed great waves on the trip, but more because what we were able to give.

Adventure photographer, “Looman”, looks for the perspective that others wouldn’t and stops time with the shutter of a camera. He’s traveled to over 30 countries and his work has been published in various web/published material. His goal? Showing others the world the way he sees it; from a different perspective.

Faith, Hope And NOLA

“If there was no New Orleans, America would just be a bunch of free people dying of boredom.” — Judy Deck
There is the United States of America.
There is the South.
There is Louisiana.
And then there is New Orleans.
May Seventh, Seventeen-Eighteen.
La Nouvelle-Orléans.
Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville and
The French Mississippi Company.
My life. My love. My city. My home.
I was born in San Jose, California. But I came alive in New Orleans.
Her story cannot be forgotten, and her voice must never be silenced.
She struts and sings, dances and screams for help.
Purple, green and gold, my love is beautiful and bold
and she’s drowning on August Twenty-Ninth, Two-Thousand and Five.
She’s drowning on August Thirtieth.
She’s drowning on August Thirty-First.
She’s drowning on September First, Second and Third
because there is no FEMA, no food, and no President for “refugees.”
Hurricane Katrina slams into the Gulf Coast, and
houses in the Lower Ninth Ward are inundated with over nine feet of water
and levees break
and the roof of the Superdome tears open
and Interstates Ten and Ninety fall into the ocean.
My heart is broken and her streets are flooding.
Eighty percent of my heart is underwater and I don’t know what to do.
They’re dying because they’re trapped in the attic.
Because the walls were supposed to hold.
New Orleans wails and mourns
and prevails and scorns those who wish her dead,
who wish to forget her and bury her under the waters.
The world could not go on without New Orleans, kicking and screaming since that wonderful seventh of May.
And those who’ve fallen in love with the city know that, and so we rebuild.
We play for keeps and we play for resurrection.
In my dreams it’s raining, and the waves are rushing
Lake Pontchatrain steel blue crush.
Then I see black Moses with trumpet armed, my Fat Tuesday miracle.
Suit black as night wrapped tight
the spirit of fiery New Orleans might fight and might right these wrongs;
might take, might make this broken city strong. Again.
You hope and you pray and you realize God loves New Orleans.
God didn’t flood the Lower Ninth Ward.
You’re mixing up God and the Corps of Engineers.
You set your hands on the heart of this city and you tell God
“Open my eyes—“
And He crushes you.
Miss Linda Lewis finds her brother dead in his home. She was under the false assumption that he’d evacuated. Her van has no middle seat because she took it out to make room for her belongings and Katrina washed it away. She drives through Orleans Parish and we are years beyond the storm and it looks it happened yesterday. “We ain’t back,” she says. “Not even close.”
Mister Warren is old and homeless. His eyes are bloodshot and he sleeps all day. He loves Motown; The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, The Supremes.
Tomorrow he sleeps against a park statue that looks like a hand. He sleeps there because he didn’t make it to the shelter in time and they ran out of beds.
Stephen Gonzales’ family has lived in St. Bernard Parish for two-hundred and thirty-seven years. He takes care of his feeble wife and escapes his house after it floods in a matter of minutes. In the twelve months after the storm, his wife loses strength and dies of a broken heart.
Lucas Russ laments his friends, gone because rent has tripled, because most everyone packed into a bus in September of two-thousand-and-five was given a one-way ticket and they didn’t know where they were going, and they weren’t told how to get back. His friends don’t know how to get back to the city they love. They don’t see houses in which to live, schools in which to send their children, or jobs in which to work.
“The only way to get back into New Orleans is to die. They can’t feed you, clothe you or house you, but they can damn sure bury you.”
“I wonder how man can build a spaceship and walk on the moon, but he can’t fix the levees.”
“Ain’t nothing changing but the time on their watch.”
“It’s hard…It’s hard…”
And now you throw up your hands, and with it all the love and hate and rage and confusion and despair and wonder and awe and fury inside of you.
Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani, you asshole? What did they ever do to you?
You are in the wind you are in the whisper, but right now I feel that neither is doing much good. And I’m sorry…but actually, I’m not.
I’m angry that things are still like this. I’m angry things have not changed.
In my dreams the Lower Ninth Ward is the Red Sea,
giant jazz-blasting away water and past.
In my dreams there is resurrection and healing.
And in this hopeless moment, I feel the wind.
In this darkest hour, I hear the music.
And I hear His whisper. I hear His love.
A Love Supreme at all costs.
It swoons and sorrows and rises and beats back the night.
God’s love and Christ himself buddy, bringing the Saints who come marching in.
Hot heat in the hot hall,
small hall smoke-filled sweat beads
sink down purple green and gold light
moonlight packed in
to-night
for the Preservation Jazz,
for the four on the floor, St. Peter Street Serenaders Preservation Jazz.
To preserve and protect
to reflect the shining light of the all night so right so tight New Orleans,
REnew REvive REstore
for man is more than wind and water.
Man is greater than hurricane weather,
and whether or not you believe it
you and I will build this home together
and we will sleep in its bed
and rest our collective head on its pillow
and we will have to think about what we’ve done together.
And music is made together.
The trumpet machine-gunning
on the skins a drum-drumming,
the piano keys dancing
ebony ivory tossing back sharps and flats
crescendo crashing smashing into a beautiful New with
bass line heart-thumping
and the voices of the saints be calling us home.
The saints go march
go round and call out and shout out and belt out and break out
and bust out and bust down barriers,
treble and bass, economy and race,
whatever lines lie between you and me
they lie to us
about who we ought to trust and these lines
these lies
they push us apart.
But when we step through the doors of the Preservation…
we.
are.
Together.
Because Together is what we are called to be.
We are St. James Infirmed,
and in the sweltering night the healing will come.
The music will come and save our souls.
God won’t you bless the Preservation…
I love this city at all costs and at all potential for criticism.
I will show you a city the likes of which you have never seen.
It is the greatest show on earth, the greatest tragic, x-on-the-door, feet-on-the-shore-mississippi-satchel-mouth-heart-as-big-as-the-crescent-moon show on earth.
Watch because something’s happening. New Orleans is turning a corner. Because people care enough to love the city and love the people and love what it means to be New Orleanian. This is the love that wraps around the whole world and teaches the rookies how to second-line.
Jesus Christ is my mighty-mighty Mardi Gras Chief,
united-as-one-Lake-Pontchatrain-son.
New Orleans, Louisiana. Bonjour, mon ami. Where y’at, baby?
Now recruiting for the New Orleans Five-Oh-Four Armored Division.
Must know how to:
Play trombone, drums, trumpet, clarinet, tuba, saxophone and guitar.
Cook Gumbo, Étoufée, Crawfish, Catfish, Crayfish, Shrimp, Lobster, Po-Boy, Atchafalaya, Muffulettas.
Sing, dance, smoke, drink, pray, love, love, love and never give up.
My life. My love. My city. My home. Laissez les bons temps rouler. Let the good times roll and roll and evermore roll. God Bless New Orleans.

Photo provided by Kellie Linder.

Rainy Season Rising

Sometimes the monks rode on top of trucks,
Their robes blowing back.
Blur. Beetle-nut color.
The superhero capes of Myanmar at superhero speeds.
It was natural to kneel here.
Water from the rain sat smooth upon the tiles.
The bare feet of monks and merit-seekers move slow.
Incense and jasmine lilt
upon the softer fog of the rainy season rising,
and I prayed too.

Their hands as they put them together
touched ephemeral.
If this falls through;
There are always golden owls.
There are always bells.

Easter Drama in India

Our Jesus hadn’t eaten for a couple of days.
Traveler’s sickness was pulling out his strength. The black
shirts were all too quiet for Calcutta: City of Color.

Our Jesus broke his heart easier this morning.
His tired arms fell from the cross with relief, readiness
to be held to our dust. For a few measures,
it was good Friday. It was the slums of this city
fifty years ago; the trafficked girls in San Francisco;
the Karen fleeing into Thailand.

While he hung his head, while the music slowed,
the Holocaust itself descended upon his shoulders like the last plague
of Egypt- and in this way, every event of earth connects.
He started to breathe.
Inhale. Beat, Exhale. I maybe heard the curtain ripping.

That carefully preserved canvas of blood. Ripping. And the Levites
pulling at their hair in horror- The Holy leaking out everywhere.
A downbeat and explode. The cave went supernova and the thick fumes
of Uganda, Palestine, and the Bolshevik revolution
were sucked into the nether-space.

Watermelons in India

We ate with our hands as the Bengali woman taught us.
It was late at night and loud with honking taxis in the heat.
I don’t think I was remotely hungry, but it is rude not to eat.
Even more rude if there are people starving down the block.
After rice and roti, she gave us watermelon.
But India was bananas and mangoes to me.
Watermelon meant the fourth of July back home.
For barbeques and the picnics of people who wear sweaters at night
and drive home on quiet streets.
Tonight I know that watermelon was made for India.
It was a clean chance at hydration.
It was all over my face.
I swallowed the seeds, and I saw how badly the watermelon
would like to populate the earth.
Just so the kids dying from holy rivers
would have something sweet to quench their thirst.

Virtues of Vaseline

It takes movement to lift a child. Awe to watch him sleep.
I am no physician, but my father is.
That seemed to be enough. Thrust into a closet with metal cabinets.
Prescriptions. Medicine, expired, in Hindi, in German, in Spanish.
A bottle of clean water.
The train station kids came in one by one.
Presented their battle wounds. The battle of living
on a crowded and careless earth. Vaseline. Gauze.

We can use those for anything. Most of the kids still wanted a bandage.
I had nothing to make them not hurt.
Glue, they said. That is another thing we can use for almost anything.
They were exhausted at mid-day because guards catch them at night.
Make them leave, hit them with sticks. My sister sat on the floor,
instantly had three heads on her lap, the children wanting to sleep
just once under benevolent hands.

I knew that if she would simply wash her eye in decent water,
the infection would fade. She said she would not.
I used Vaseline.
One of the kids was trying to choke the other. Had him flat
amid the scarred building blocks, I shouted because a child
was in my arms, and my brother pulled the aggressor away and fell
to his knees before him, murmuring “Oh no, no don’t be this way. Please.”

I prayed for a visual gift of tongues to read the medicine bottles.
Checked again. No good. Excuse me; did they by chance have antibiotics?
No. Vaseline then. I prayed for God to make it sting.
When I had heads in my lap like that, nestling into my legs,
I would have disarmed a mad Calcutta taxi.
I would have done it without waking the darlings.

“(It’s) chaotic, for sure. The driving is a pretty good picture of how everything around there works. Just about every one of your senses are overloaded. The noises, colors, heat, smells, and spices,” she said.

Viducich, who is from Hillsboro, Ore., recently spent a month in the Bengali city of Kolkata with Youth With A Mission team from California. The team worked all over the city, with Life Connection, Kings Kids, Light of Hope, and the Mother Teresa Homes. Amid the chaos of this volatile city, Viducich also found beauty and hospitality.

“The people there are so hospitable there,” she said. “The first day we were there, a few of us were in the market and a woman befriended us. She later invited us into her home, her church, and just shared her life with us. She also gave us some insight into the city.”

Viducich used her Nikon D50 SLR to document the many layers of India and walked away with a collection of photographs that touched on the many stories and faces she encountered along the way.

“I love photographing things that tell a story. People, objects, textures – I’m pretty much down with all of it,” she said.

“The concept that photography can be a tool – a method of transferring information, ideas and truths – is fascinating to me and challenges me every time I pick up a camera.”

Below is a slideshow of Viducich’s work. To read commentary about each photograph, click the white talk bubble on the left hand side.