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estherkonamaay-blog · 6 years

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Reaching Out With Birmingham

Sup y’all

Step 7: never ever never believe stereotypes

I spent two weeks on outreach in Muslim Birmingham in a convent.

Ok, so it was technically 13 days, in the predominantly Asian/Muslim/sikh/etc community of Alum Rock, East Birmingham, so not the whole of Birmingham is Muslim, and it’s an old convent so I haven’t been turned into a nun....yet.

Not sure how to write about a whole outreach, maybe I should have been writing this as I went through the weeks... nah! Sounds way too responsible.

Ummm, I suppose I should start with the prayers we had for the week. A big one that I particularly prayed for was rest and peace in God. I really wanted the weeks to feel relaxed and that I wouldn’t work myself up into a panic for no reason and wouldn’t suck up people’s stress and let that make me feel soggy and panicky.

Also praying for the actual outreach we kept getting the story of the Samaritan woman at the well who met Jesus. The leaders really sensed that for the whole trip, so we went into the trip with hope as our theme.

Another prayer was that God would be the centre of all our work and the focus would be about Him and not about church politics or about the art itself.

We got to Birmingham on Monday and met the people who lived there and were showed our rooms and blah blah blah. We especially met the two people who one of our staff members, Julia, works with and who came with us for most of our outreach activities. They were Amber and Helena and they were my favourite people of Birmingham(not taking into consideration our YWAM members).

The first week was predominantly focused on the work we were set to do with the cathedral in the centre of Birmingham. The cathedral and a lovely lady called Louisa gave us permission to put our artwork around the cathedral, initially on the walls but later they said we could only put them on the ground(which was better in the end because it looked weirder and made people look at it more than if they were just on the walls.

On the Tuesday we went out into Birmingham City in groups of 2 or 3 to take pictures of strangers and get a bit of their stories. This was for a project for Friday we were calling Beyond the Surface In the group I was in for the first wave before lunch there was Hannah and one of our leaders, Dave. We were sent off to a very abandoned area of the city as we found out after wandering around for half an hour or so. We spent half of the time punching each other when we saw yellow cars, but I don’t think Dave really got a hang of the ‘cars’ part and punched for dumpsters and a baby’s blanket in its pram.

When we moved further into the city centre, there were about 20 other people trying to stop people to sell them something and we soon found we started looking like them anytime we tried asking for a free picture from a very fast moving passerby.

People in Birmingham seemed even more unhappy about stopping than in Manchester and York combined. Funnily enough when our groups got together and compared how many photos we all got, some had like 8 and others had 2 so I’m not sure what happened.

On Wednesday was a day for getting all our photos and additional activities ready to be used on Friday. I was in a group supposed to do a response to the photos and quotes being exhibited. What had brainstormed a week before or something and come up with something. This initial idea was scrapped.

We decided to go for an instalment type thing where people could write their hopes and dreams on pieces of tracing paper, make them into paper aeroplanes which we could then string up to a giant cube frame that we would build. The idea is write your dreams and let them fly in away, but not really because they’d be in the cube frame.

The next part of the response was portraits. We decided to do 3 types of portraits. One would be literal portraits which I’d be doing, then there’d be poetry portraits which Jaima and a staff member called Garrett were to do, and last there’d be bracelets that Hannah would be doing. So once we had sorted the logistics and made a list of things to get we went on a road trip to shop, which was awesome. We went to a wood recycling company to get the wood for the massive cube and had to get it ordered for the next day. We then picked up some art stuff but not everything so we’d have to get some on the Friday.

The Thursday was different. We were going to a ladies group that takes place in a church and is mostly Muslim women so none of the male leaders could come. We joined in on their exercise activities while others did the crèche and others helped in the kitchen. It was awesome because after lunch which was a really nice soup, we got to do henna and stuff for the ladies. The other activities was a print making station where we’d ask the ladies to print things that meant treasure for them and we’d then exhibit them during a dinner the next Wednesday at the convent.

Let me be honest. Henna is hard. I mean difficult. Like really hard. Struggle type hard. Hurts your hand, always seems to co e out looking messy when I do it, just a stress. But I suppose it was fun...

The day that comes after Thursday is Friday. That day was the cathedral day. It started off super slow and I think it could have really stressed everyone out but I felt a weird calm over the stressful things of the day. Hannah, Julia and I went running around Birmingham for the first hour looking for alphabet beads, and tracing paper.

But once we had put down all the quotes, images and put up the cube, eaten lunch, and settle down to do the portraits, this went ok. It was a weird day because we got maybe 4-8 people to do the responses but it felt just the right amount. It was super calm even though one of the leaders threw pressure on me to start my portraits waaaaay before I was ready and 15 minutes before I was set to start. Not naming any names but (*garrett) was very mean to do that.

In the evenings of the Thursday and Friday that week we also got the opportunity to go on a night watch with some of the community members who had taken cleaning up the streets on themselves and so they sort of walk around and scare druggies and dealers off with a big torch and watch out for prostitutes so they aren’t abused or anything. The cool thing is they started in September when it was awful and now there’s literally no drug dealer or anyone anywhere. The park is clear when there’d been stoners everywhere and out of the 15 prostitutes, 3 or 2 have already gone to rehab or managed to get off the streets (the last two are going to rehab soon I think).

Anyway, the night watch was on Thursday and Friday at like 10-11 (they continued till 2/3 am but we had to go bedy bye).

Saturday we drove a lot to get to a pink church for something they call word by heart. This nice man basically gets us to act out Bible stories which meant we remembered them by the time we were done and they became relevant to us the closer we got to the characters.

Week 2

After a free Sunday we began the week going to ladies groups around Birmingham to get them to participate in the treasure project we had set up the previous Thursday with the printing. While some of us from Monday to Wednesday went in twos to these meetings, the others began individual art projects about the treasure we found in alum rock. It was back breaking trying to do our waaaaaay too elaborate projects in time for the Wednesday exhibition. I know me and Hannah stayed till 2 one night trying to get them done.

(You know when you’ve worked on a piece and sweated away and then you realise it doesn’t look very impressive to you and you just wish you could have made it 10 feet taller?)

On the Wednesday evening families from the community groups we had been to came to look at the exhibition of their art work and ours while enjoying some lovely food.

I hid with the kids.

Events are getting less and less detailed as this blog gets longer and longer.

Thursday was another date with the ladies’ day. Some more exercise which is always welcome. There was a play about Easter. There was lunch and I played with the kids again.

Then there was Good Friday! One of our staff, Julia had an exhibition she was doing for her church during an event called 12 hours where for each hour something was happening at their church. It was absolutely electric! We got there for 12(or was it 1?) and there were these dancers that used hoops hanging from the ceiling. All the way around the building were instalments and art pieces that were both visual and interactive and it was all so creating and touching and beautiful and it literally was one of the best things I have ever seen. Each piece was done by someone else but for some reason happened to work so perfectly with everything else.

Julia’s work was the Garden of Gethsemane and she did it by suspending sheets of translucent fabric from the ceiling of a darkened section of the church and using many projectors to project videos of trees and greenery. Then she had prayer sheets and cushions and you could go in about the strips of trees and meditate and pray. The overall effect was a gorgeous calming place. It was just so beautiful.

That day I got to see what art could really do in serving God’s people in not just a cheesy way it normally does.

To be very honest I’m really tired of this blog but I have now given a full if scanty account of all the happenings of Birmingham.

Tomorrow we are planning to have a special Easter meal at our base back in York. Just have to bare the bus ride back and tally-ho!

Note to all in case you cared: I for some reason don’t feel hungry anymore unless I’ve gone most of the day without food. Should I be worried?

Yours

Esther

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