Summer Madness and Aaron Weiss

Well friends, if you live in Northern Ireland, chances are you will have heard about Summer Madness. Each summer thousands of young people gather for this Christian festival to hear different speakers, camp out together, attend seminars, worship together, and just have a lot of fun. At least this is what I gathered from my first experience of Summer Madness a few weeks ago!

Ruth and I had a stand at SM and held a seminar called “Life After No More Traffik.” Our stand was in the Urban Saints tent (thanks for sharing, guys!), which was also a café and a concert venue. A lot going on in our tent! YWAM was also with us in the tent and it was really lovely to meet some fellow Americans that are serving with YWAM in Rostrevor. Anywho…

We were really proud of our stand, which you can see here. Ruth did a great job while I was in the States getting everything ready for this. Loved the cardboard idea! So simple but it looked awesome. We wanted to tell people Mien’s story and take them along her journey through the board. (To read Mien’s story for yourself, click here.) Since it began, IJM has rescued thousands of victims, so we have loads of stories of hope to share with everyone. We printed several stories on the back of photo cards and asked people to take a card, pray for that specific person and pray for others like them who are still waiting to be rescued. Our goal was to have 200 people take these cards and we met that goal!

Ruth and I had some really incredible conversations with young people and youth leaders over the weekend at SM, both at the stand and as a result of our seminar on the Monday. About 50 people attended “Life After No More Traffik” and we held four discussion groups which were led by Ruth, Evangelical Alliance, Belfast Abolition Collective, and Craigavon Stop the Traffik Act Group. The aim of our seminar was to push beyond simple facts and awareness and into action. Each discussion group led by the various representatives focused on different ways to act against the injustice of human trafficking such as: Fairtrade chocolate, lobbying your government, utilizing the resources from various NGOs and challenging the demand for trafficked victims in your own community. How exciting!

I must tell you, though… as wonderful as being at SM for IJM was… I was also BEYOND EXCITED about meeting Aaron Weiss! For those who are confused about who this is, he is the lead singer of my favorite band, mewithoutYou. Aaron is friends with Shane Claiborne (If you are confused about this name as well... shame on you! Go read the Irresistible Revolution.), who was one of the main speakers for the weekend. As Shane travels very often and likes to live in community, he invites a traveling companion, and this time it was Aaron Weiss.

YWAM asked Aaron to hold a workshop, which consisted of him allowing us to request songs (I, of course, asked for Timothy Hay first!) and ask him questions about anything. This time with him was very encouraging for me. He answered questions about his relationship with God and his answers caused me to think about God in a much bigger way than I ever have before. I may blog about this a bit more, actually, so I won’t go into detail here. Remind me if it isn’t up soon!

We also spent some time with Aaron after the workshop, learning a Sacred Harp song, which was good for the soul! Paul and I are going to look into Sacred Harp meetings in Belfast. Let me know if you want to join us! All together, meeting Aaron and spending a bit of time talking to him and singing with him was one of my favorite experiences… ever. I am so thankful for this random meeting at a castle in Northern Ireland.

Although I was completely exhausted and had a cold by the end of Summer Madness, I am so thankful that I got to experience it as part of my internship with IJM. I loved sharing about our work and telling loads of stories of freedom and justice. We met so many wonderful young people, each of them so capable of doing great things in God’s mission for justice. I am excited to go to other festivals this summer and continue to spread the hope that God is doing great things for the oppressed and encourage fellow believers that we GET to be a part of it!

Who knows… maybe I’ll get to meet more of my musical heroes along the way!

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Part of the Story

Dear Friends,

Thank you for following my blog as I am the Church and Development Assistant for International Justice Mission in Ireland. As you may know, this position is a year-long voluntary internship and I am raising awareness and support for the work of IJM and the issues of injustice that we are fighting against.

Please take the time to look through a few posts here and consider supporting me with prayer and finance. My goal is to raise £80 (About $125) a month to support my mission. This money will meet a very practical need of mine, making my student loan payment in America. This is an increasingly difficult task and I would love the support from my friends and family as I continue to volunteer for this work of justice.

I am part of the story of freeing thousands of victims from violent oppression and injustice. Please support me and be part of the story, too!

www.ijm.org, www.ijmuk.org

Much love,
Brittany

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Speaking in Detroit

In June, I had the privilege of speaking about the work of IJM at my home church in Plymouth, MI. On a Wednesday night I spoke for the youth and college groups at Solid Rock Bible Church. This was a really wonderful experience and I am still so encouraged by the response from both groups!

Speaking and hosting stands at different churches and events is one of my favorite parts of the internship. The more I speak about issues of injustice around the world, the more I am convinced that what IJM is doing is such an important part of God’s redeeming work for his creation.

Josh, the youth pastor at Solid Rock, opened the night with a game called “Agree/Disagree.” The whole group stands in the middle of the room and Josh will pose a statement and everyone chooses a side of the room to stand on, “agree” or “disagree.” He then goes to both sides of the room and each student has to give a reason for their answer. I LOVE this game! I think it is such a clever way to allow each student to think for themselves and express their thought behind it.

For this “Agree/Disagree” game, one of the statements Josh used was:

“There are more slaves today than there has been at any given time throughout the history of mankind.”

Each group had so many interesting responses to this question, but I was truly blown away by how many people didn’t know about the number of slaves in our world today! This was really encouraging for me, which may sound strange, but it helped me to remember that we are spreading the word about the reality of injustices like slavery for a reason: people don’t know about them and they need to. Some people get tired of raising awareness, but until everyone is aware of slavery, this will remain a crucial dimension in the fight against human trafficking. I was reminded of this as some of the young people there learned about modern-day slavery for the first time.

I was also encouraged by the amount of response from the people at Solid Rock. So many were excited to take action and be part of the stories of freedom and rescue and justice. As they should be! Each person truly can make a difference. I think about the beginnings of IJM, which was essentially one man seeing a need and asking God to help him meet it. Thousands of victims of violent injustice have been rescued because one person saw a massive need and didn’t think it was too big a problem to solve. Each rescue tells us that the end of slavery is not too audacious a prayer to bring before our Lord.

God loves the oppressed and longs to rescue them. We get to be a part of this redeeming story. The young people at Solid Rock know that and I am so excited to see how God uses them in his mission of justice.

Let’s keep raising awareness. Let’s take action and be part of the story. Because justice for the poor is possible. God loves them. God hears them. And in the end? God wins.

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