Do you remember that movie 'Freaky Friday' from 2003 where the mother and daughter switch bodies and are forced to live each other's lives? That's sort-of what it feels like is happening, except without the life lesson of learning to get along and appreciate someone else's life...
On the 28th of June, Greater Sydney entered a two week lockdown after the spread of the Delta COVID variant. With those two weeks having come and gone, and lockdown extended for at least another week, it's quite surreal to watch the rest of the world open back up again. It's an uncomfortable feeling to be limited again in what we can do after months of no cases and relative freedom, but I'm trying to keep the bigger perspective in mind of staying safe and healthy.
The last two weeks we were limited to staying within our household except for four essential reasons - one of those reasons being exercise outside with others. To use that to our full advantage, many of my coworkers and friends started little walking clubs: getting us out and exploring our beautiful neighbourhood. To encourage and boost morale for the YWAM campus, we created a 'walkathon': a 1,000,000 step challenge. We spent the week tracking and adding up our steps to reach 1 million together, and we did it in 6 days with 33,000 steps to spare! It was a great way to connect with people and keep ourselves sane whilst being under the stay at home order.
This upcoming week is bringing stricter rules to our lockdown with the Delta variant gaining more traction in the community. Thankfully our medical system is well set up and there is a great contact tracing system in place. Our biggest issue is the lack of vaccines available, which is due to a myriad of reasons: no manufacturing facilities, the EU barring shipments of vaccines to us, sending what little vaccines we did have to other harder-hit countries... It's a big problem that is even bigger as the disease continues to mutate and becomes more contagious. There is a vaccine roll out in place but the distribution to my age-range won't be for a few more months.
In the meantime, my plan is to keep supporting the mums that we work with in the Peaceful Birth Partnership, and making the most of this pared back season! One of the mums is due to have her first baby any day now, and although my involvement with the birth will look quite different than we had hoped and expected, I'm still looking forward to being with her as much as I can. Doula support is currently classed as essential under 'compassionate care' so I do know that I'll be able to support her labour at home until she needs to transfer to the hospital - under current healthcare restrictions, birthing women in Wollongong are only allowed one support person with them at the hospital, women in other areas are dealing with even worse. In Western Sydney, mums have to apply for an exemption to even have one support person (spouse, doula, friend or family member) with them! Becca, an incredible birth-educator, doula, mum and coworker of mine shared about this issue and explained "Birth is extremely impacting on a mum's mental health and therefore her family & community. Trauma happens when mums feel unsupported and disempowered. I believe we need lots of restrictions to stay safe currently but birthing alone should not be one of those."
Navigating the health system at its best can be a big challenge for many of the women we work with, but trying to do that in the midst of lockdown and harmful restrictions can be debilitating. Still, I am struck time and time again by the resilience of mothers, especially mothers with refugee and trauma backgrounds - they are some of the strongest women I know. "So here's to strong women: may we know them, may we be them, and may we raise them."
Analies
THE BIG BANANA
Coffs Harbour is home to the big banana, the original of all the ‘bigs’ (Australia is home to and is very proud of its big items: there’s the big guitar, the big merino, the big prawn, the big pineapple just to name a few). The students that we leading on the service trip weren’t very stoked about it, complaining that it wasn’t that cool and wasn’t that big, to which I replied “But have you seen a bigger banana?” From there we all decided that it was indeed pretty cool and pretty big.
If you’re confused to why I’m talking about a big banana, let me tell you. At the beginning of April I went on a service trip to Coffs Harbour with some year 10 students (Sophomores for the Americans). Typically the students go on an international trip to Cambodia when they are in year 10, but due to the ban on international travel, we were able to adapt the trip for a local context.
Coffs Harbour is a town 7 hours north of Port Kembla on the north coast of New South Wales. It is very much so a country town but situated at the beach - everywhere takes 10 minutes to get to and all the shops are closed by 5pm. The first few days we were there it was super rainy and unfortunately most everything in town was closed, although we were able to spend some time learning about the local area, meeting people and doing some landscape work at the botanical gardens. Once it dried out a bit more we got to spend a lot more time connecting with people - at the beach with public volleyball competitions and a sand castle building competition for the kids, at the skate park with a free barbecue and hot chocolate, going to the shopping centre to hand out encouragement notes and lollipops…
It was so cool to see how the students grew in confidence over the trip! A lot of them had never talked to a stranger before, so practising that was really nerve-wracking at first, but once they realised it can be a part of normal every-day life, they started to really get into it.
For me, one of the most important things I wanted to students to take away from the trip was that their world can be so much bigger than just home and school; that even at 15 years old, there’s a lot of opportunity to get to know their neighbours - engage in the people and what’s around them.
When I was in the 10th grade, I went on a trip to New Orleans. We got to meet with organisations that had been working to rebuild homes for 7 years since Hurricane Katrina destroyed entire neighbourhoods. We also got to learn about a lot of the culture and see the city’s most famous sights. But the part of that trip that had the most impact on me was meeting people and hearing their stories. Those stories inspired me, enraged me, humbled me, and most of all, impacted me. In fact, I was so moved by my week experience that I returned that summer because I just couldn’t get enough of the people and their stories. I got to spend time with some of the friends that I had made and make some new ones. I learned how my world could be so much bigger than just what was happening at home or with school - that there was so much out there constantly offering people opportunities to engage.
I have no clue nor any expectation that the students we took to Coffs Harbour will be transformed by what they experienced, but then again, I doubt the teachers who took me to Louisiana expected that of me either.
Only time will tell, but from the short time I was able to spend with them, I know they have incredible things ahead of them.
Love, Analies
My mailing address is:
Analies Steensma
Dharawal Country
PO BOX 132
Port Kembla, NSW. 2505
Australia
2012 - Back in New Orleans again, hanging out with friends I had made earlier that year.
About Me & What I Do
Hopefully you've already gathered it from the title, but my name is Analies Steensma. I joined Riversgate Church when I was 16 years old, and now I am a missionary. Yep, you read that right, a missionary. Now, don't get stereotypical picture of me in your mind, I wear normal clothes, go out on the weekends, I don't live in a shack in the jungle, and yes, I have wifi. But hopefully there are some things about being a missionary that you would think of that are synonymous with what I do: I love God, I love people, and I love loving on the least reached people the way God calls us to. That's all you really need to know, but if you want more details about my journey of getting to that point, keep reading below.
When I joined Riversgate as a high schooler, I was immediately immersed in younglife, youth group, and church. I spent most of my evenings joining in on service projects, worship, bible studies, small groups, and younglife ‘clubs’. I loved every minute I got to be a part of it; I came alive in those moments and as soon as one event would end, I would start counting down the minutes until the next one began.
During the spring break of my sophomore year, I was part of the team that Riversgate sent down to Tesoco, Mexico. Knowing no Spanish, and having never done a short-term missions trip before, I felt like I had a very tall wall in front of me, too tall to jump or climb over. I felt super unprepared, but God met me in that place. He taught me that there is no such thing as a language barrier, because my actions were much louder than any Spanish word could have been. He showed me that He was always going to give me the tools I needed, and that He was going to be with me every step of the way, so that no matter how tall the wall was in front of me, I was always going to be able to get over it.
Coming home and leaving Mexico left my heart raw and longing for more, so when a close friend of mine left for a six month adventure pursuing God in Costa Rica when I was a senior in high school, it got me thinking again. After trying the typical road of university and not feeling right about it, I decided to spend a gap year in Australia doing the same six month school my friend had done the year before. That school is called the Discipleship Training School or DTS, and is run by an organization called Youth With A Mission. I spent 12 weeks in Australia, in classes, doing workshops and community service, making life-long friends, learning about evangelism, and most of all, discovering who God truly was and who He said I truly was. I went to DTS feeling pretty confident in my identity and in my knowledge of who God was, but quickly realized my identity wasn’t formed out of truth from God, but rather what the world had defined me as. I also had a lot of problems of letting God into my heart, places I didn’t trust Him, see Him as good, or understand Him as my loving Father. Through my three months of lectures, the hard places in my heart towards Him were thawed, and my view of God totally changed. He showed me how treasured I was and that I could simply just be me for me, and I didn’t have to be someone for anyone else. The next three months were spent on outreach in India, a place unlike any other. In my time there, my team preformed skits for schools, did a lot of christmas caroling, taught english in slums, lead a women’s bible study, took care of babies, visited people in their homes, prayed for anyone we could, and much more. I got to witness incredible moves of God, and experience hearts change from darkness to light. I learned a new language and how to live in a new culture. I lived with people who had the most faith I had ever seen, and in turn, that grew my faith. God showed me His heart for India and for the people there, and how much He longed for them to know His love.
As I prepared to leave India, I knew so confidently in my heart, that God hadn’t called me into the season of discipleship for only six months, or even for just a gap year. I was on fire with what I had seen God do I my life, in my friends’ lives, in the lives of people in India; all I wanted was for other people to experience what I had experienced. With all of those things in my heart and more, I decided to join Youth With A Mission (YWAM, pronounced ‘why-wham’) as a staff member and move to Australia. My new role was very unique to other jobs and to other missions organizations. YWAM is a inter-denominational, non-profit, missions movement of Jesus followers from many cultures, age groups, and traditions, and it operates in more than 1,100 locations, in over 180 countries, with a staff of over 18,000 people. All the campuses are unique, but they are all united in a common purpose “to know God and make Him known.” At YWAM Wollongong (the campus I live and work at), we are passionate about living out a life that focuses on putting Christ first in our relationships - with each other, with the people in our city, with the people in our country and with the people in the countries we go to. Those are a lot of long sentences, but the bottom line is this: We are dedicated to living out God’s love through the way we teach, serve, learn, and live life. There aren’t any facades or masks that we put on, we are real and raw with the community around us, and we live to bring God’s love to the world. I get to serve in many different ways; in the past year, I have been a part of a DTS, lead an outreach to Bangladesh, worked in base operations, and have run the kitchen. Each job offers different opportunities and has taught me different skills, from patience to grace, flexibility to boldness, but most importantly, how to rely on God.
I think the biggest thing I have been learning, in the last month especially, is how far am I willing to trust God? I’ve grown and experienced enough where I can trust Him with a lot of things, but every once and a while, something will come up and test my trust; it usually is something I hold close to my heart: my family, deep friendships, my dreams. It’s a funny place to be in too, because I’ve spent the last two years of my life living in a place of having to trust God in everything I do, yet there’s still doubt. That can either provide an opportunity for condemnation to come in, or it can be a chance to draw close to the Father, and I hope that more often than not, I chose the latter. I’m never going to get to a perfect point of complete and utter trust in God, but I’m never going to stop pursuing His goodness, and I’m definitely not going to stop sharing about His goodness either.