Lassen volcanic park, first two weeks of BSSM and another fire!

What a whirlwind this last 2 weeks have been for us! We have been forced to slow down for a day due to really poor air quality (more on this later) but up until now it has been a huge week for all.

Monday was Labor day here, the last public holiday of the summer. We headed out to Lassen Volcanic National park for the day with our other Aussie friends! The photo above was from our walk around the lake at the entrance of the park, it was such an amazing walk and such a great view of Mt Lassen. This is an active volcano the last time it erupted was in 1915, it is more than 8000ft above sea level and most of the year it has snow on it! You can usually see this from Redding but because of the smoke around it has been a lot harder to spot! 

 One of the other highlights of the park was seeing these Sulfur pools, they are seriously bubbling away and they stink like rotten eggs. They are unbelievably gross but amazing to see! 

The landscape here is so different to what we have at home, really thick pine forest and it is so green even though its at the end of a hot summer. It was amazing to drive through the park and get to the highest point you can go without hiking, the view was spectacular, but also clouded by the constant smoke that is across the state! 

Tuesday was the beginning of the BSSM school year for Chris and I, our first day of classes! Kids off to school early then collect our badges and off we go! I have to be honest We had an idea of what it would be like but I'm not sure we quite expected the absolute wildness of what we have stepped into. So you can undersand fully I need to take a moment to explain the school a little.

BSSM is not a theologial school, it is not an accredited college it is a vocational school, so like a TAFE at home in SA. This means that although we get theologial training it is not your typical Bible school. We start our main sessions with worship all thogether as a large group - 1400 students in first year to be exact! Now I'm not talking 2 songs with a piano I'm taking blow your face off loud music, wild yelling and screaming across the auditorium! Basically like a concert - EVERY SINGLE DAY!

The civic inside the main auditorium.

We meet in the Redding Civic Auditorium which is where the city also have concerts and large conferences - its a building owned by the Redding city not by Bethel church. It's a large facility and by having the 1st year BSSM classes in the building they have actually saved it for the community as it was going to be closed down because it was loosing too much money! 

School consists of a few different elements: Main sessions (everyone together), a revival group (a group of 65 students, a Pastor and their Interns), a small group (4 students from your revival group), city service and AMT's (more on these another time!).

Our Main sessions have consisted of the wild worship I mentioned above, then 2 sessions (at least). We have had Ps Bill Johnson, Ps Kris Vallaton, Ps Dann Farrely and the leaders of the school. First week was a lot of information about what school is like. Second week has been about kingdom core values of Bethel Church and BSSM, a Transformed Mind, Healing and Identity. We feel so blessed to sit under the teaching of this leadership it is life changing and incredible. Already God has been showing us so much about ourselves and how he sees us! Then breaking off some stuff that is just not needed! So freeing!!!!

We had our first Revival Group on Monday just gone, we are the only Australians in the group and we have a lot of Germans in our group but also some from England, Pakistan, France, Ireland, Norway, Netherlands, China and of course the USA. We are so excited to get to know all these amazing people. There are many young people probably the majority under 25, but there are a handful our age and then some who are older! We are so blessed that our next door neighbor is also in our revival group, we have become instant friends! 

This week coming we are looking forward to doing a ropes course in Weaverville with our group, we hear it can be scary but is an amazing experience! Something about Ropes and tall trees! We'll fill you in on the next blog! Then at the end of the month we have retreat with our revival group - its going to be amazing!

The plume of smoke from the most
fire outbreak last Wed as seen
from the Civic car park in Redding

The first two weeks have been amazing but also challenging. With the outbreak of a third fire in the vicinity of Redding in the last 2 months. It has posed some major challenges with the traffic and the smoke and air quality both inside and out. We have constantly been wearing masks to help filter the air as the quality has been extremely dangerous for most of the past two weeks. I can pretty much tell just by looking out the window if its a mask day or not. It can often change throughout the day too! The school the children are attending take the air quality very seriously and so they made the difficult decision on 3 days to close the school. This has meant a very messy week for us, leaving school, doing child swaps with other families and running all over the place trying to make sure we missed as little of our school as possible! They eventually have secured some industrial air purifiers and that has really solved the issues! Today is the clearest day we have had in about 3 weeks but still there is a haze across the horizon! Hopefully soon the fire will be out and the haze will clear!

The last 6 weeks has been an absolutely amazing time and we feel overwhelmingly blessed to be here in this environment! Thank you for your prayers, messages, cards and emails - we truly appreciate it! Please keep praying: we are again trusting in the faithfulness of God for financial provision, with our unit refusing to sell and us unable to drop the price any further we have truly been living on the grace of God and trusting in him for our every want and need. Please keep praying that he will continue to give us wisdom around finances but also provide for us, we need approximately $5000 Aus dollars per month to live here! Please pray for the children (especially Charlee) as the reality of living in a different country is taking its toll and is showing itself in different ways!  Please pray for protection as we head off to our ropes course and Retreat that all of us would be safe. Also that God would continue the work he has started in us and grow us exponentially! 

Much love and blessing to you all from Elle, Chris, Charlee and Declan xx