Promises in the Chaos

Laura Elizabeth
Oct 18, 2019
4 min read

Some of you might know that on our outreach in London we spend a lot of time preparing for Notting Hill Carnival. Notting Hill Carnival is the second largest carnival in the world with about 2.5 million attendees. It originated as a celebration of Caribbean culture and has been a massive part of outreach at YWAM London Radiant every year.

If you are one of the many U.S. readers I have, then you should probably know that this carnival is not what you think of when you imagine a carnival from your past experiences. In the States, carnivals usually involve lots of smaller rides, mini roller coasters, popcorn, funnel cakes, cotton candy, games to win prizes, contests, and face painting. Overall, it’s a very family friendly experience.

Notting Hill Carnival is extremely different. It’s primarily got a parade, street performing and dancing, and some street vendors dominantly selling Caribbean cuisine. Many attendees take this celebration as a time to have a free for all—getting very drunk, very high, wearing all sheer clothing, and performing witchcraft openly. It shows more similarities to our New Orleans Mardi Gras.

There is a cross float, a line up of drummers, as well as stilt walkers. — YWAM London Radiant with Bones Camp in the parade.

Many of you may or may not know that YWAM London Radiant consists of many people that specialize in art or different creative pursuits. Taking advantage of that we spend ten days preparing to be in the parade and to have a spot on the streets with floats that we made, training stilt walkers, drummers, a group of dancers, and so on. We also cut hundreds of thousands of colorful little slips of paper with promises from Jesus printed on them. These promises are handed out individually as well as being used as confetti. It’s a beautiful opportunity to reach out to people to share the gospel, Christ’s love for them, and to pray over them.

Some of the papers were reminders that Jesus loves them, or that he wants the fullness of freedom for them, or that they were created for a purpose.

Once, I was passing out promises when I passed one to a girl that said,

“I love you. –Jesus”

She asked me, “Do all of these say the same thing?” I explained to her that some of them did, but that we had several different messages while showing her the variety in my hand. She told me that she had gotten the exact same message from someone else in my group minutes before. I told her,

“God just really really wants you to know that He loves you.” She slightly freaked out but then gave me a hug and went off to join her friends.

I had so many conversations that day. Some people just wanted to talk about who they thought God is, some wanted to argue. After trying to debate me for a while, this man said "Stop and look around you! Do you see the things that are happening right now." I looked around at the people that were getting wasted, taking part in a variety of recreational drugs, a few of them were topless or almost naked."There is no hope." He added.

"There is always hope, and that's why I'm here," I said.

I had a discussion with young woman on the street that day. She hadn't been to church in almost a year at that point. It had nothing to do with how she felt about God but how the church was hurting her as well as her church community with publicly humiliating individuals and by creating a hierarchy among the body of believers. She said she still was faithful to God, but wanted a community where she felt safe. I was able to offer some encouragement, pray for her, and invite her to join us at church.

And those are just a few stories about everything that happened on that day. Feel free to ask questions, to email, or message me if you have any more questions.

Also, I am going back to YWAM London Radiant!! I will be going back to the same base for their school of Leadership Urban and Ministry Development. I plan on using what I learn here to become a full time missionary immediately afterwards. The cost of this coming mission trip will be £2,400 (about $3,100 excluding transportation expenses.) If you are interested in supporting me financially on this journey you can donate using one of these methods:

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