I’m sitting in the terminal at the Atlanta airport and thinking about the months to come. The last two have been nothing less than insane and the coming months look to be much of the same. I have to admit that it’s the ‘organized-chaos’ of my life that fuels me, keeps me moving. It’s the slow times that are difficult for me.

Here’s a quick recap for those of you who have noticed a lack of updates on the blog lately: Jessi and myself, joined by my friend Taylor moved to New York city in January where we began work at Times Square Church in the missions department. We now live in the Bronx and have braved two blizzards so far. We’ve become a part of the new missions media team, joined by our new friends Cheyne, Erika and Arthur. Together our job this year is to use our skills in media to give TSC’s missions a face.

We’ll be going on trips to shoot and film, putting together new websites, banners brochures etc. and producing a variety of short films and ‘field reports’ to show the world what not only Times Square Church is doing, but what God is doing through them around the world.

To be completely honest it’s been a tough transition for me so far. I’m so used to being on my own, with a team doing our thing. We’ve traveled, produced and created and always with the freedom that is fairly unique.

Since coming to TSC I’ve had to learn to not only work with a large team (much larger than Bedouins has ever been), but to work under a whole organization with several voices and levels of approval. It’s not in any way been a bad transition…just a hard one. I still want to just drive forward at a 110 miles per hour, and I’ve had to learn to slow down, get approval and make sure that not only am I happy with the project, but is the project head, and his boss, and the communications director etc.

Like I said in earlier posts, I believe that God has brought us here to grow us, and I still stand by that. This year will be hard. It has been hard. But it has also been good and, I think, will continue to be good.

Keep us in your prayers and continue to keep up with us here. Now that we’re settled in I think I’ll be back on here more regularly.

Now…I’m off to Mexico for my first field trip with TSC. I’ll be updating a few different TSC blogs from the field (links to come) and hopefully I’ll be able to post a few images on here as we go!

Thanks for your support, your prayers and for taking the time to keep up with us. You make everything that we do possible (seriously).

-S

The first story of the year. I’ve been wanting to write about my time in Africa for a while now, but busy-ness has kept me from it. So today, as I lie in my warm bed on one of the coldest mornings of the year, I decided that it was time to start story telling again.

In October I had the amazing opportunity to travel to Cairo, Egypt with a team from Times Square Church (the Church that we will be working for this next year in New York). There were two distinct purposes of the trip: to send a medical team into areas that needed medical attention and to send an evangelism team to work with and support the local church.

I spent the first part of my time in Egypt with the Evangelism team documenting the work that they were doing, which varied from teaching kids clubs, to leading worship services with local churches, and much more. We spent a day working in an area of town where the Sudanese Refugees have been living for the past ten years. It was a really incredible experience, to get to go visit families from the local church in their homes and to pray for them.

We spent the majority of that week doing a wide variety of things, all aimed at sharing the gospel and supporting and encouraging the local church. It was beautiful to see a group of people give up their money and time to fly across the world and invest into the lives of others, not knowing day to day what they’d be doing, only that whatever it was, they were going to do it well and do it with the love of Christ.

After my time with the evangelism team I ventured across town to meet up with the “On Call” (medical) team. When I arrived they were doing free medical clinics for a Sudanese Refugee Primary school. It was a really awesome thing, working all day long to give the kids the same sort of medical screenings that we would’ve gotten going into a new year of school. These kids may not have seen a doctor in a long time and it was obvious that the parents and teachers were very grateful for the blessing.

Later in the week the two teams joined together at the school and while the On Call team was doing the medical clinics the Evangelism team performed skits, gave testimonies and sang songs with the kids.

We ended the week by going to the Garbage City, a place where people live in and amongst the garbage, making their living by digging through it and finding anything of value to sell. It was a very dirty and very very poor place…removed from the city and outcasted by society. We provided a full day of games and bible lessons for kids and just spent some time loving them. It was a beautiful way to end the trip…trying to teach these egyptian kids how to play whiffle ball and American football, and just hanging out and loving people who so seldom are even acknowledged.

Times Square Church sends missions trips all over the world, and it was a blessing and a privilege to get to be a part of this one to Egypt. They are doing some really great work and are reaching out and touching lives in a tangible way through their efforts there.

As I got into my taxi and left my hotel for the airport, headed for Kenya alone, I was really sad to leave my time with the team there in Egypt. It was an amazing period and a wonderful story to be a part of. I’m so excited about joining up with them this next year and can’t wait to see what stories come from our new partnership!

With the end of the year (and the decade!) only hours away, I thought that I would take some time and update the Bedouins Blog. I’ve been out on vacation for the past few weeks and have neglected the blog, so, for one last time in 2009, welcome to the Bedouins Blog World.

I’ve been thinking a lot about next year lately; how could I not with the big move coming up. There are a lot of changes in sight for Bedouins this next year…most of which weren’t even on our radar a few weeks ago. Obviously Jessi and I moving to New York means some big changes…most of which I blogged about a few weeks back. But beyond that there are more big things coming.

One of the big changes, which I’ll go into more detail about soon, will be the shift from just providing media back to telling stories. We started by telling stories and using those stories to change the world. It was a simple, but very clear vision. This year we’re going to think a lot about that as we reflect and regroup during our time with Times Square Church.

Some things to expect: You’ll see a new site coming up, a new emphasis on the blog and on story telling and, hopefully, a much more refined vision as we explore, grow and venture into new things in 2010.

I hope you’ll continue to be a part of our story as we disover what adventures lie ahead. You are the people who make our story possible…the ones following it…reading it…investing in it.

Happy New Years from the Bedouins Staff!

it’s crazy to lay here in a nice bed in a nice house with my nice new christmas gifts typing on my nice computer and looking at this photo that I took in October.  There are people living here right now.  They didn’t have a Christmas.  They dug through garbage again for stuff that they could sell in order to survive.  To them, yesterday was just another day of digging.  Pretty crazy to think about that.  Even crazier not to let things like that change you.  This new years, be changed…and in turn…change the world around you.

- S

When we started Bedouins International we were prepared for anything. We had no clue what it meant to own a non-profit, or how we were going to do it.

As the years of progressed we’ve learned. We’ve slowly settled into a place of comfort knowing that we have the reigns and that we’re in charge.

All in all I think that’s a very dangerous place to be. You become complacent, you don’t take change easily and you’re not prepared to do what needs to be done to carry the mission forward, unless it’s easy and goes along with what you’ve been doing.

While I was in Africa God put on my heart a lot of changes that needed to take place in Bedouins. Most of them had to do with leadership and stepping up into our roles here. A lot of them involved tough choices or uncomfortable conversations. All of them were good for building character and for learning how to become what we needed to become. I came back to the states knowing that this was a good time for Bedouins, that, if we were willing to follow, we were about to enter a new chapter-a chapter full of surprises and excitement. Most of all, a chapter that was fulfilling because we were falling into our place as an organization doing what we were called to do.

I had no clue what that meant or looked like realistically.

Last week I got a call from the Missions Pastor of Times Square Church (the church that sent me to Egypt and Paul to Scotland last month). He said that he had an idea to run by me, and he was obviously really excited.

The conversation led to him offering the Bedouins staff all positions as paid interns there in Manhattan working through TSC for a year to tell stories of the work that they’re doing around the world.

We said yes.

What does this look like for Bedouins?

We’re not entirely sure, but we know that it’s where God’s leading us for this year. Mostly likely it’ll look something like this:

We will have a year to grow as artists and individuals. In New York we will be mentored and grown by a highly successful missions organization, which will help better equip us to be leaders of Bedouins as we move forward with the mission. We will learn logistics, and management from people who have been doing it for a long time, and then when our year internship is up we will hit the ground with Bedouins, applying all that TSC has taught us to the way that we lead it.

That’s the best guess that I have.

There will be some noticeable changes right away, the most prominent being that Paul and Josh will be staying down south due to prior commitments, while Jessi, Taylor Gonzalez and I will be heading up to Manhattan (on January 16th).

So please stay “tuned” as we enter a year of unknown and as we re-embrace the excitement and adventure of letting go of the need to control everything and dive into a chapter of freedom.

Thanks for being a part of this and we’ll be back with more soon!