This past year at Times Square Church was an amazing one that pushed us so much further in our understanding of production, the use of media to impact ministries and causes and simply in working with a team effectively. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t hard; changing pace from Alabama life to NYC life, changing from freelance to working on a staff, and changing from a few projects a year to a few a week…all of those things were challenges that we were faced with upon our arrival in New York. But those challenges increased us in so many ways that we’re not even fully aware of them all yet.

One of my first travel assignments for TSC was to go to Reynosa, Mexico and to document and create a ‘trip report’ of the work that’s being done there. It was the perfect transition piece into my new job at TSC because I’ve worked in Reynosa countless times over the past few years. In fact, I’ve worked at the exact canal with the same people. Here is the final multimedia piece produced as a trip-report for TSC on the Mexico project:

Mexico 2010 Trip Report from TSC Missions on Vimeo.

Okay, so it’s a bit late. But trust me, we’ve been busy. This year is going to be big. After our time ‘off’ working in NYC, we’re so excited to be back and working with Bedouins International projects again, starting with our friends over in Kenya at KIINI. We’ll be kicking this new year off (soon) with a new website, including new work, new photos, new information and a refined vision and mission statement. We’ll also be launching our first new project in over a year, the KIINI project…which is going to be amazing.

This year we have big plans, big goals and a re-ignigted passion for storytelling. The blog will be rolling again, starting now, with fresh photos, videos and stories from our time in NYC with Times Square Church. We’ll be showing you what we learned, and what we produced while we were there.

We’ll also be continuing to tweet and blog updates on the KIINI project as it goes through the many stages of production. Currently we’ve finished editing all of the photos, transcribing the audio interviews and have started sorting and cataloguing the video clips for editing. If you want to keep up please check us out on twitter: HERE or follow us at @bedouins_intl

Thanks for your support, thanks for lending us your ears and thanks for sticking around. It’s great to be back!

-S

some woman show off their shop in Kenya that they own thanks to the mirco-loans and support from KIINI

It’s 10:30 pm on my first night here in Zambia for Times Square Church and I’m beat.  I’ve been moving for 23 hours now and, a good portion of that was on airplanes and in airports.  Once I landed here in Lusaka I made my way straight to the Kakabalika house to visit the kids and see the farm.  After that dinner with Warren, one of the missionaries here and then some guitar playing before I made my way back here to my hotel room.  On that note I’m going to bed.  Ask me about the project tomorrow…it’s amazing and I’ll have a lot to say!

The home where many of the boys live at the Kakabalika House in Lusaka Zambia.  These boys were ’street kids’ before being taken into the home.

Preparing a typical meal made of corn meal or ‘mealie meal’

Two of the boys cary the finished meal into the kitchen to be served for dinner.

It’s hard to believe that it’s already mid-April.  Where has the year gone?!  It still seems like it was yesterday that we loaded up the moving truck with Paul in Birmingham and hit the road for the Big City.  But in reality that was over 3 months ago.  Some how the pace of living has not only sped up, but filled up.  Something I didn’t think possible after the intense pace we were going at back in Alabama.

To say that we’ve been busy is a gross understatement.  What a journey…we’ve really fallen into place here at Times Square Church and are helping to produce some killer media.  It’s been quite an adventure, starting with a few weeks of wondering what we were doing here, and if this was where we were supposed to be, quickly followed by a steady stream of meaningful work that we could see huge potential in.

The last few weeks, for me, have mostly consisted of traveling with Times Square Church on various missions projects as a journalist of sorts.  My role has evolved from simply photographer to capturing video, creating daily blogs (often video blogs, but mixed with photo blogs), creating long term projects out of the trips (known here as ‘trip reports’), capturing audio and even getting my hands dirty doing some construction and ministry work as well.  It’s been amazing, refreshing and a huge blur all together.  Now, back in NYC for the first substantial time period in what seems like months, it’s been great to sit back and catch my breath…to feel grounded again for a little while.

Although I can’t post any of the project images up here yet (because they haven’t been released on the TSC site yet), here’s a shot of me in the mirror in Mexico a few weeks ago that I’m sure they won’t use for anything or care if I share with you.  The rest of the stuff is looking incredible so far, video and photo, and I can’t wait to show you what we’ve become a part of up here.  You can check out some of the work that I’m doing in the field as I go at some of the TSC missions blogs for BrickThink and OnCall.  I’ll try to do a better job of updating this blog from the field as well, and also linking to the places that I will be blogging on during my trips.

One cool thing that I’ve learned about missions at TSC while I’ve been here is that they’re very similar to Bedouins in heart.  They team up with missionaries and non-profits around the world to aid them in their work for many of their projects.  It’s great, because not only do we get to serve Times Square Church with our media while we’re here, but also dozens of other organizations in the process.

All in all it’s been a huge blessing to have this time here and we’re excited to see where it all goes in the end.  For now, we have an item of Bedouins specific news for you, that we’ve touched on before.  Jessi and I leave in 2 WEEKS for Kenya to complete the KIINI project finally!  We are so excited, and, thanks to TSC and a project in Zambia we were able to afford my ticket over to Africa at a much discounted rate, which was a huge blessing.  We’ll be landing in Nairobi on April 26th and spending about a week in Nyeri with the folks from KIINI traveling to their communities and sites to help paint a picture of what they’re doing there and why we should help them.  I can’t wait to get there and to be back in Africa.  Honestly, I’ve missed going by Stephen Kamau

Thanks for sticking with us through our slow period (as far as blogging is concerned at least!) and know that we’re still working hard, still believe in the power of media and still plan to use it to change the world!

-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!