My DTS Outreach Adventure
By Breanna Robertson (16-30 years age category winner)
My name is Breanna Robertson and I’m a 20-year-old Australian. I did my Discipleship Training School in 2009 with Island Breeze Sydney! Our DTS went to France and Morocco for outreach, which was absolutely amazing.
One of the boys on our team of 7 was a hip-hop dancer and could do all sorts of awesome back flips and tricks. One night as we were walking down the street we saw a group of young boys running and flipping off walls and park benches, so we stopped and Brian joined in.
It was easy to make friends with them – we soon found out that some of them were quite well known in Morocco. They called themselves the “Speed Boys” and their lives consisted of school and free running – a type of street acrobatics that involves jumping and flipping over everything in sight! We spent some time with them that night on the side of the street watching them perform – they were excited to have foreigners watching them and so they didn’t mind showing off for us!
Before we left that night, the Speed Boys invited us to join them in the morning to help film some of their performance. The next morning we discovered that they weren’t merely filming themselves for fun…this was a serious deal! A film-maker from Germany was working with a producer in Tangier to submit the film to the Tangier Film Festival with the hope of winning and being shown at the Cannes film festival! The film was a story about a man who was addicted to drugs and alcohol but was unhappy with his life. He meets a gang of free runners who have a passion and do something constructive with their time, which results in him deciding to let it all go and follow his own passions. It was a motivational story for young people.
So, we found ourselves watching a film being made, but soon enough we were pushed to be IN the film! WHAT!? Here I am doing ‘ministry’ and acting in a film! Needless to say, we had an amazing time and somewhere out there we are in a film that is posted on the internet and has been shown at various film festivals!
We continued to meet up with the ‘Speed Boys’ and it was a teary goodbye when our month in Morocco came to an end. We had had opportunities to share our faith with them and we continue to keep in touch. They became our good friends, even though we could barely communicate – it’s amazing how God can bond you to someone when you can’t even speak their language.
Those Speed Boys will come to know Jesus one day – they have a whole YWAM team praying for them – and then they’ll free run for Jesus!
Great story! Good issue, thanks y’all. I immediately emailed this one to my boy who wants to be a film maker AND a free runner : )
Breanna, thanks for sharing this. Your writing creates such a beautiful atmosphere and this true story of friendship is encouraging. Im mexican and want to be a film maker, I know how to write scripts, but had just stopped writing that kind of things because of my many other activities. But by reading this I get reminded of how God moves trhough so many things, such as films (because He used that for you to get to know this people better) and the spark I needed to fire up again all this desire of starting seriously writing again, God gave it to me trhough this. Plus the story this guys made was a great idea, I´ll look up for the video. Hughs.
I have just come across this artical by Ywam and it reminded me of a holiday spent on the island of Jersey ( Channel Islands) UK. in Aug. 1990 with my youngest daughter Carmen, we were on our way back to our hotel when we heard singing coming from Howard Davis park when we arrived we saw a large group on the stage and they were from YWAM we sat and listened for quite a while when it came to go Carmen wanted to stay and the leader said to me that she would return Carmen when she needed to come in she finally arrived at 11.00pm having had a fantastic time THANK you YWAM and may GOD Bless your ministry.