We’re home! Our trip to New York with the Migrant Leaders Club
and Underground Writing was a big, fat success!

Here’s a short teaser of the documentary film I was tasked to create.

Thank you:
Your support to my role at Tierra Nueva, to outreach and communications, made this trip possible. Every frame of this film exists because of your generosity and commitment.

These kids are incredible. Every last one of them. It was awesome to hang out with them, to hear their stories, and to see them be goofy tourist-high schoolers.

We stayed at an AirBNB townhouse in Brooklyn! Brooklyn is great!

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Back to work at the office, many projects (continue) to develop.

• Coordinating the post-production of this film involves working closely with Janice Blackmore of the Migrant Leaders Club, the 15 students that traveled with us, Matt Malyon of Underground Writing, and Quiara Alegria Hudes who wrote the musical and invited us to attend.
• Tierra Nueva’s Volunteer Appreciation Night is this Monday evening. Our staff has been collaborating closely to plan an evening to celebrate our many metaphorical field workers. (I’m especially excited to be distributing tomato and jalapeno starts that we first planted in January of this year. (The office bathroom is a vibrant grow room; I love it.))
• Our jail ministry continues to grow in number and develop in strategy. Kevin and Danielle, two of our Emerging Leaders, are now regularly visiting the Mount Vernon Community Justice Center as chaplains. Both of them have spent time in addiction and incarceration, now bringing the Gospel back to the jail cells.
• The support raising effort continues. I am informed and encouraged by generous donors all around the world–donors like you! Before New York, I spent a week in the Midwest (Minneapolis, Sioux Falls, Sioux Center, Des Moines, Iowa City, Minneapolis again!) to meet with current and potential donors. Loved it.

 

 

Next week today, we’ll be
en route to New York.

Alvin with Underground Writing, Migrant Leaders Club, and Pulitzer-Prize winner Quiara Alegría Hudes.

15 high school students from the Mount Vernon Public School’s Migrant Leaders Club and students of Underground Writing are traveling to New York to

• Attend the musical MISS YOU LIKE HELL at New York’s Public Theater
• Speak on stage after the performance with Quiara
• Meet with students at a sister school in the Bronx
• Visit Ground Zero, the Statue of Liberty, and Times Square

Full details and a short podcast to explain are at the GoFundMe. The students’ travel is funded by a grant written by Quiara, and Alvin is filming a documentary of the trip. 

Click to read and hear more.

The Migrant Leaders Club was mentioned
in this article on Time.com.

Underground Writing
Migrant Leaders Club
Quiara Alegría Hudes

Dear donors, this is one of many projects I get to support with administrative and communications muscle. This is a case of several unique, fruitful organizations in careful collaboration to take advantage of a HUGE opportunity. For 15 incredible students!
Your support to my position keeps this trip from going unnoticed and undocumented. Thank you!
-Alvin

As we celebrate Lent and consider what it means to hunger for Christ…
As we learn about the seventeen students and teachers killed in Florida…
As we try to fathom the statistics gathered on the opioid addiction in our country…

I’ve been thinking about my understanding of justice, mercy, and who deserves what.

A visitor attended our Sunday worship service at Tierra Nueva this week. He shared that he was homeless and he wanted to change his life. “I’ve been told that Tierra Nueva will welcome me.” Our staff didn’t “vet” him at the door. We don’t know if he ever skipped school, disrespected his parents, or stole from his friends. Nobody asked him if he had ever abused a wife or girlfriend, lied to his neighbor, or spread hatred and violence.

It’s inaccurate to say that none of that matters to us… but it’s partially true; we exist as a ministry in order to build relationships with sinners. As redeemed sinners ourselves, we gather in order to share Christ’s transforming love to His lost sheep. We exist to love bad people who “deserve” what they get. And we fight to correct the thinking that we are the creators of truth and justice.

Jesus came, died, and defeated death for the liars, the corrupt, the school shooters, the racist, the hypocritical, the self-righteous, and the addicts. Anything that we can hold against each other and ourselves crumbles under the power of Christ. Our World Belongs to God and our lives are owed to our Savior.

It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge, and my job to love.” -Billy Graham

We are a team that welcomes the visitor to the Lord’s Table. We’re getting really good at receiving new members in our community, to assess needs and contact the appropriate agencies.
Our staff collaborates weekly, in prayer and ideas, around our community members, before breaking off into our respective roles–some of us hit the streets and meet with the homeless, the fresh-out-of-jail, and the traumatized. Others contact lawyers, build bridges between organizations, and write grants to fund our efforts.
I am really digging my role in sharing the efforts of the church, making our work more transparent and more effective. Your support allows me to continue doing so and I am grateful. May the name of the Lord be praised.

Next month, Underground Writing (which is currently a program at Tierra Nueva but launching soon as an independent, arts non-profit that I’ll happily keep in my list of duties because TN wants to give UW a good and equipped start) is hosting a number of events to celebrate the anthology book!

What No One Ever Tells You is a collection of pieces created by Underground Writing students in juvenile detention, the Mount Vernon High School’s Migrant Leaders Club, and other such incredible places.

Definitely learn more about Underground Writing and buy the book on their website. Read further, RSVP, and share on Facebook.

Part of what I do as Communications Administrator is promoting, organizing, and creating media to better tell the story of this book (which tells the story of transformation through literature and community). I created the Facebook page! I’m producing the Underground Writing podcast! I created the flyers and collectible cards to share logistics about the events!
Here’s what they look like! Let me know if you want one!

 

 

On Resurrection Day God will say, “What did you do with
the strength and energy your food gave you on earth? How did you use your eyes? What did you make with your five senses while they were dimming and playing out? I gave you hands and feet as tools for preparing the ground for planting. Did you, in the health I gave, do the plowing?”

You will not be able to stand when you hear those questions. You will bend double, and finally acknowledge the glory.

God will say, “Lift your head and answer the questions.”

Your head will rise a little, then slump again.

“Look at me! Tell what you’ve done.” You try, but you fall back flat as a snake. “I want every detail. Say!”

Eventually you will be able to get to a sitting position.

“Be plain and clear. I have given you such gifts. What did you do with them?”

You turn to the right looking to the prophets for help, as though to say, I am stuck in the mud of my life. Help me out of this! They will answer, those kings, “The time for helping is past.
The plow stands there in the field. You should have used it.”

Then you turn to the left, where your family is, and they will say, “Don’t look at us? This conversation is between you and your creator.”

Then you pray the prayer that is the essence of every ritual: God, I have no hope. I am torn to shreds. You are my first and
last and only refuge.

Don’t do daily prayers like a bird pecking, moving its head
up and down. Prayer is an egg. Hatch out the total helplessness inside.

-Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks. 2001.

I come back to this poem over and over again–moreso lately, as my time with Tierra Nueva is a blessed regular breaking of my heart. Maybe an answer to prayers offered years ago, asking to be made useful in God’s Kingdom, asking that the things that break God’s heart will also break mine.

I emailed recently with a local services provider. They wanted to participate in our annual Christmas gift drive for the families of incarcerated individuals. (A program that I would be cynical and snooty about, but ask me how I feel now!) They had reached out to the local Toys for Tots chapter, but were rebuffed because the jailed population “don’t have rights, do not qualify, and should have thought about the consequences when they broke the law.” AKA their children do NOT deserve presents on Christmas morning.

Newsflash to the Toys for Tots Skagit coordinator: None of us deserve presents. The actual recipients of your drive don’t deserve it, and the people who can afford presents for their families deserve it. It’s an act of grace and compassion and undeserved joy, in spite of our self-destructive and decrepit selves. Left to our own devices, we have no hope. Looking at our world, we are torn to shreds. We deserve all the pain and suffering we inflict on each other and ourselves. Jesus is our first, last, and only refuge. Rejoice, rejoice.

 

 

I found this short, interesting bit through Medium. (I think it was on Medium; I don’t how I got there. The internet!)

[W]hile Christianity may never be relevant or cool, here’s what it will be: Attractive.

People will be curious why you were kind to them when they may have been a jerk to you. That’s attractive. People will wonder why you value the broken, poor, and marginalized and use your finances, life, and time to help them (even if they never change). That’s attractive. People will marvel that your friend group doesn’t just consist of people the same color, sexual orientation, or nationality as you, but it spans different beliefs, races, and political views. They’ll be shocked you serve, love, laugh, and mourn with them. That’s attractive.

And finally, people will come to understand the truth of what we believe as Dr. Timothy Keller so eloquently put it:

“So loved that we don’t despair when we do wrong, but so sinful that we have no right to be puffed up when we do right.”

It’s a post by HeartSupport, which is a Christian organization that offers support, advice, and answers to practical, contemporary questions. That’s my description, from about fifteen minutes of poking around on their site. (I suggest you do the same!) They travel to schools and set up booths at places like the Warped Tour. They post blogs with titles like, “Why American-ized Dating is Screw Up Our Marriages,” and “Ten Random Good Things I Remember When My Heart is Smashed To Bits.” These are intriguing headlines! And I’ve opened several of them for reading. But if you’re like me, you start to worry that you haven’t seen the word Jesus or grace or sin after ten minutes. I literally thought, “Whew.” when I read this bit from a post titled, “Why I’m a Christian (and Continue to Suck at Being One)”.

[T]he cross where Jesus died was a reminder that as good as we try to be, we still need someone to save us from ourselves because at the end of the day we love to compare ourselves to scoundrels. But Christianity teaches that if anything we realize what a train wreck we are, and so when we see people in this light it humbles us.

I say hallelujah for bits like this. While I hope to see more of this kind of truth in HeartSupport, I understand this kind of Christianity-framing that often invites criticism from “learned Christians.” The criticism may well be valid on its own, but I often notice that when I am postured to see WHAT I WOULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY, I end up feeling primarily really good about myself. Of course, that’s entirely beside the point. The truth that is being clearly touted here, to a people that (I would imagine) rarely hear this kind of truth, is that Christ brings grace and mercy.

 

 

The main takeaway from our staff prayer and worship time, from conversations with community members, from the just-finished series of messages on The Armor of God, and from time spent reading about our world is this: For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12 ESV)  Our hearts are broken as we battle for freedom from addiction, trauma, self-destruction, and hatred. Our enemy is not the individual shouting in the streets, attacking God’s people. Our enemy is the systemic oppression and injustice that does not adhere to the sovereignty of God or the love he has for his people. Our enemy is chaos and disorder, separate from the light of Christ. In that light, we challenge each other to pray in humility for our leaders and elected representatives. As Saul was struck on the road to Damascus, we see similar transformations of mind and spirit within our community, and we pray for further deliverance in our world.

What I’ve Learned So Far

Hello from the admin/communications desk at Tierra Nueva. I’m about a month and a half in at my new position. Here’s some of what I have to show for it.

Podcast: Tierra Nueva

• on Apple Podcasts
• 10+ posts from our Sunday worship
• more incoming

Audio Download

• audio files are available to download on our media pages at tierra-nueva.org and peoplesseminary.org distance learners

The People’s Seminary

• designing new manual layout for CTMM global (Certificate in Transformational Ministry for People at the Margins) (This doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a big project with a large impact!)
• researching three output tiers of data access and education for global students

Siberia

• editing footage from recent trip to Russia to meet with church planters, evangelists, and addiction recovery experts

Staff Meetings

• adjusted format for meetings and documentation process to increase organization, transparency, efficiency, and morale

New Copier/Printer

• coordinated order and installation of new copy/printer in admin office
• Remember that scene in The Office when Pam spends her day setting up the new copy machine (successfully!) and then impulsively quits to join the Michael Scott Paper Company because she felt like she was wasting her life? I had the very OPPOSITE experience. There were high-fives and laughter. Weeks later, there are still utterances of, “Ugh. I love this new printer.”