|
Libby is spending a year with Dependance!
What am I going to be doing?
I have come to the end of my school years and finished my A levels and decided that for a gap year I wanted to dedicate it to God.
Three years ago I did some work experience with a rap, dance and theatre company called Dependance and they asked me to work with them again when I was able to, so having a year to do as I please I decided that now was a great time to take them up on the offer.
What is Dependance?
Dependance has been a successful company now for 10 years and is made up of 5 members - four paid full-time members: Stephen Riley (the director), Jill Foster (dancer), SJ Penberthy (singer) Sam Rogers (break-dancer and rapper); and a gap year volunteer (me). It is part of a massive organisation called Youth For Christ (YFC). Billy Graham founded YFC in 1946 and there are now 68 centres in the U.K and a few around the world. Dependance is part of YFC Northeast, and is directed by John Hawksworth.
What will I be doing?
Throughout the next year my main role within Dependance is to become the new dancer along with Jill Foster. This means that, in performances and workshops, my area will be dance but also drama! YFC’s aim is to take the good news relevantly to every young person in Britain. Dependance set up the Mercury Tour and is now one year into the mission. The Mercury Tour is to go into every high school in the Northeast within 5 years. This means that we are contacting schools trying to get opportunities to go into their school. We might do a week's mission but sometimes they only want us to a day's work. If we do a week we will work with all year groups and on the Thursday night we put on a performance doing all the songs from the album and then sharing testimonies and delivering short talks. When we are in the schools we carry out dance, drama, rap, song-writing and break-dance workshops, which is a great way to make the learning process more appealing and interesting to young people.
We will be doing RE (religious education) lesson for each year group in the schools we visit, which really gives the young people an opportunity to ask questions and to learn more about God. So many young people don't know Jesus, apart from being a swear word, or just think he’s boring and it’s for boring people.
Doing these workshops and RE lessons means that we can build up relationships with the young people, giving us the opportunity to share the gospel with them. From the start they know that we are Christians and throughout working with them we constantly show them Jesus in the way in which we act, speak and work and show them that the stereotypical image of Christianity just isn't true.
We do performances around the Northeast and especially at a YFC organised event IXth (9th) hour which happens every month or so, and is a big youth event for young people to all come together and meet with God. We will be performing at Harvest, a youth festival in August 2009
What have I done so far?
In order to be able to go into the schools and teach, I have to know what I am talking about and for a week I went on a training course at Nottingham Uni with all the other year volunteers, which was highly intense but I learnt a lot about myself and a lot about God and the Bible. So already I have benefited a lot from doing this gap year.
We have been practicing all the dances too which has been fun but very tiring.
What ways can people support me?
- I love dancing, singing, acting and generally performing and that’s why I chose to do this but it’s not going to be an easy ride and so I would love it if you would pray for me. Especially for day to day strength to keep dancing and not forgetting the moves of all the dances!
- Already I am seeing how much the devil doesn’t want me to be doing this, and so I really ask that you pray for protection against attack, and for strength to keep going when I feel that I can’t.
- Please pray that God opens doors into schools.
- The confidence to be me and show Jesus to all the young people I work with.
- That I can survive financially, as its costing £1500, plus weekly expenses. If you feel that you can support me financially I would appreciate it very much.
- That I find a church that I really feel at home with and will really gain from.
- Finally, that my family don't miss me too much because I am loud!!!!!
Thank you for the support and prayers I have already received. I am sure I will be back home sometimes, we don't get much holiday so I will probably be back next at Christmas.
|
Libby Pollard, 13/09/2008 |
|
| |
