Oh man, has it really been a month since we moved to New York?? Wow. Time has seriously flown.

Living in the city has been incredible. There is such beautiful diversity here that I really don’t think you can find anywhere else. And the people are wonderful. New Yorkers really seem to take care of each other for the most part. I love that. It’s like family.

We’ve been working with the Missions department of Times Square Church, and I think it has been a growing experience for all of us. We are asking questions we have never had to ask before – like how can I fit my art and what I do to really serve these people? I mean we have always used our art to serve, but I think now we are learning to use it differently, if that even makes sense.

I dunno. But what I do know is that we are learning and growing and, I hope, becoming better artists AND servants in the process. Please pray for us as we learn how to be humble and patient and wise…

Sorry for the belated update but please keep in touch – update on Kiini coming soon!!!

Love,

Jessi

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!

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!

So in honor of our story telling tonight I wanted to post an image from the body of work that I’ve been editing through lately. I’m really excited about wrapping this stuff up and getting it to TSC so that we can start sharing some of the stories with you guys, but until then, here are the pyramids. I hope to see you all out here tomorrow night!

To view it larger click HERE