It's been ages since I've had the time to actually sit down and write a decent post. The last couple of weeks have been the climax of not only my outreach, but the entire YWAM Urban Key, London's year. It's been really busy, to say the least.
Bones Camp started on the 15th of August. Bones is run by the Arts House (one of the three houses in YWAM London) and is basically the preparation time for going out onto the streets during the Notting Hill Carnival. Unlike the global carnivals (like the one I was at in Rio de Janeiro back in February 2012) that take place at the beginning of lent, the Notting Hill Carnival started in the mid-1960's. One of the reasons that the carnival began was due to widespread racial attacks that had occurred in 1958 and the poor state of racial relationships at that time. In 1975 it became a major festival, and has become known as one of the most famous carnivals, along side the Rio Carnival.
For me, the Notting Hill Carnival was quite a different experience to the night evangelism we did in Rio in February 2012. Due to my participation with the kids, I wasn't as involved with what was happening at the Bones camp as the others were. They'd spent most of the week practicing their dances, their drumming and their stilt walking. So when we arrived, with the kids, on Sunday morning, it was a nice surprise to see everyone dressed in bright colours and with vibrant face paints. We had an incredible time raising the joy levels of the carnival. Once the kids had been taken back to Dartmouth Road, we went out and talked to people. There were a number of people who were open to talk with us about God, whilst with others, we could tell right away that they just wanted us to leave.
Then on Monday, it rained for more or less the entire day, but that didn't stop us going out to do another parade. The stilts weren't used because of the slippery conditions of the roads. This time I helped with keeping people from walking amongst the dancers. It was a lot of fun, but meant that we had to keep an eye out on where everyone was.
Yesterday, everything from the carnival had been cleared away, this included the rubbish, the stalls, everything. We tidied up the church we'd been staying in and had a debrief session with lunch. That's when I ended up leaving. I dropped a bag off and headed to Liverpool Street to catch the train to spend a few days with my aunt and uncle. I'm going to be doing some travelling over the next weeks, which include going to Paris to visit my sister, Hannah (who's working there as a chef) and going to another YWAM gathering in Harpenden.
I'll post again soon with more news and an outline about what the next chapter of my adventures will look like.
Photographs: the first and second photos are of the street where the church, we were staying in, is. The first one I took Friday 22 August, before the carnival started, and the second one I took yesterday morning, the day after carnival ended.