I met Lauren in Mazatlán a few minutes after I landed. Both of us had just flown in from the States to embark on artistic adventures in very new territory. From the moment we shook hands I knew that God had a unique story awaiting her.

Lauren exudes a child-like delight, I think I may have called her a ‘fairy’ shortly after our introductions. She hails from Colorado, turned 26 while we explored Mazatlán destinations together, is notorious for picking up (and stopping for) every living creature and flower that entered our path, hula hoops like a pixie on caffeine, is your biggest encourager purely out of her bursting enthusiasm, asks the questions we all want to, and will always opt to be in nature.

I had the pleasure of asking Lauren 10 questions about her love for art, teaching children, and what God revealed to her specifically while serving with the Cerro de Ocho (Hill 8) ministry. Needless to say, it was a breath of fresh, crisp mountain air. 

Give us a quick summary of your journey that led you to Mazatlán… I had just come off a year of teaching at a Montessori school where I was able to connect with children through creative arts and learning. This gave me the opportunity to express my love of art through a different avenue, experiencing art with children. This sparked my interest and I wanted to enroll in an art school so that I could better learn how to teach children the beauty and uniqueness of colorful expression. I began to search for art schools and found that YWAM Mazatlán offered an Art Evangelist School. My expectation was to not only learn what it means to be an art evangelist, but to also take note of how to incorporate the things I was going to learn into a way that kids could also learn.

What are your favorite things about doing art with children? Observing the way they can so freely create. Children have a unique way of artistic expression, and that is something I admire very much.

Tell us a little about the Cerro de Ocho ministry and how you got involved?  Each week, a group of us from YWAM would visit Cerro de Ocho, an impoverished and drug-saturated neighborhood, and we loved on the kids who lived there. I naturally chose to go every week because of the ministry’s focus on children.

From my recollection, you dove all in from the very start! So your Thursday group visits quickly evolved to something more. What came next? My heart was captured by the children in Cerro de Ocho. So I asked if there was any way that I could provide art lessons for the kids there, to offer a safe creative outlet for them. Within a week, the leaders of the ministry gave me a space to have art classes on Saturdays with the children from the Cerro community. One of the leaders, Omega, hosted the classes and cleared out a spare bedroom in her home for us to learn and create in. Each week would be a different art lesson, and so I would bring different art materials for them to explore and use. Most of our art activities were simple, using markers, crayons and paint, so that the kids could recreate these art projects at home or with their friends.