Hello everyone!
Welcome to another blog post! We're so happy you're reading and interested in what we're up to here in California. We love you!
Just wanted to give a quick update of what's been happening the last few days. Since the weekend we've packed in a fair amount of things.
We were back to school on Tuesday after the weekend off. We have a new addition to the house for a few weeks, Josh, Em and Ad's friend Sam, who is here doing some work experience for the design team at Bethel Church. It's awesome to have him here, he's been in Australia for most of 2010 working for YWAM. He's currently working on the ibethel.tv website so look out for a new design on there.
This week in school we have been doing some recording for the new Bethel Live album which will be out in January sometime. We've been recording to various songs so when it comes out you'll have to listen out for us! I always knew my beautiful voice would be on record someday!
On Wednesday Kris Vallotton came in and did a Q&A session and sex and purity. It was awesome to hear some of his insights and advice, all stuff that is never discussed in church but definitely should be. If you get a chance read his book, titled Purity, highly recommend it. We also got 2 packages from home, one with Galaxy chocolate in and one with a new laptop charger. Both are invaluable to us! Izzy is loving having Galaxy, and even though I didn't eat much chocolate at home I've been missing english chocolate so the taste of Galaxy was much appreciated.
Today was a good day. It started off with more recording for the new album, followed by a staff speaker who today was a guy named Chris Cruz. He is a 2nd year Pastor and he was amazing. He was talking about the outreach projects we're all doing and he was focused on the story in Mark 2 where Jesus heals the paralysed man. His point was that our faith creates a platform for people to experience Jesus. We get to be the people in the story who were so desperate for the paralysed man to meet Jesus they made an opening in the roof to get him in the meeting. Another point was the blessings of God that we have received were not supposed to isolate us from the world, but so often the church shuts itself off.
So with that teaching ringing in our ears we headed off to our respective outreach projects. Izzy and myself are on a team focused on a little town just outside Redding called Shasta Lake City. So we met with the team and spent a bit of time getting to know each other before the coming weeks where we head over to the town to meet people. It was so encouraging to hear people's stories, strengths, weaknesses and dreams and realise we'll be playing a part with them over the next 8 months in seeing them and ourselves grow and impact Shasta Lake City. We discussed a few ideas on what we think and some of the events we would like to put on. We're really excited to see what God is going to do in Shasta Lake this year and how He's going to use us there!
I think tomorrow we have some more recording and some other amazing, life transforming stuff followed by a very long weekend. We have no school Tuesday or Wednesday as they have a church leaders conference so we get time off. Looking forward to relaxing and catching up a little bit on homework. Although the weather has really dropped recently. It is SO COLD. Like UK cold. It was only a week and a half or so ago that we were sunbathing and now I'm thinking of getting the thermals out! It's crazy.
Overall though we're good and still loving it here. Hope everyone back home is good, we'd love to hear from people, about what they're up to, whats going on etc. Thank you to everyone for your love, prayers, best wishes etc. We hope Phil and Heather Wright have an amazing holiday!
Bless you all and love you loads
Izzy and Lil x
1 John 3:1
'How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we we are!'
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Sorry its been a little while since our last blog. We have been really busy getting all our homework done and handed in.Its Saturday today so we have time to rest.
So, to update you a little bit, last week we had Che Ahn speak to us at school. He spoke mostly about money, about how God has asked them to sacrifice a lot, but then he has rewarded them with much. The church building that they have bought was 4 million dollars, and the Lord provided it all, when they thought they wouldnt make it, having only 3 mill, on the last day a business man rang and said i want to pay the rest whatever it is. so he gave 1.2 mill!!! The building is amazing and because its near LA, Hollywood and big secular conferences and performances often come and ask to hire it. They have to sign a contract, and on that contract it says they can use the building but Che Ahn or another pastor has to preach the gospel 1st. So he has got to minister to HUGE people, like Beyonce, he prophesied over her!
Over the weekend we had to go to the doctors for izzy so we missed church. we were in there for so long waiting, and it cost $94 just to see a doctor! so we got some antibiotics and izzy is feeling better now.
We had another good week of school. Had Chris Overstreet, the outreach pastor at Bethel (He was in Bath last week doing some stuff with Bath city Church) on thursday, which was really good. He just spoke about love, and the secret place, and all the miracles etc all come out of intimacy with God. Favourite Chris O. quote was 'a lot of people have watches, but not many people have time'. After they started to pray for bad backs and necks, and lots of people were getting healed.
We also had Danny Silk this week, he showed us his wedding video. Bill, kris and danny were all there looking soooo young, Bil and Beni sang during the ceremony and it was really good! Bill had black big hair with a big 'tache and glasses. he looked SO funny. You couldn't tell it was him at all.
Anyway Danny spoke about covenant relationships. it was real good.
Last night we went out to our friday night service. izzy was real tired and not really worshiping, the band were good though. at the end everyone was praying for more of God, for his glory/rain to come down. So they started a rain tunnel... izzy went through twice. WHAT A NIGHT! sooo good. although izzys brain hurt from her head shaking so much, a friend of ours was shaking violently, God was shaking off fear and other issues, it was intense, shes gunna ache today!!
After church we went to in and out burger. a very popular fast food place, and most of our revival group had the same idea, so we sat around chatting there for a while, then went home to bed at 12am.
Good times.
its raining today and all yesterday. tonight we are going out to some friends for dinner with another couple. looking forward to it, Sarah's an amazing cook!
Our car has a very bare tire on, so we have to go buy some today.:(
love you all, thanks for reading.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
So, to update you a little bit, last week we had Che Ahn speak to us at school. He spoke mostly about money, about how God has asked them to sacrifice a lot, but then he has rewarded them with much. The church building that they have bought was 4 million dollars, and the Lord provided it all, when they thought they wouldnt make it, having only 3 mill, on the last day a business man rang and said i want to pay the rest whatever it is. so he gave 1.2 mill!!! The building is amazing and because its near LA, Hollywood and big secular conferences and performances often come and ask to hire it. They have to sign a contract, and on that contract it says they can use the building but Che Ahn or another pastor has to preach the gospel 1st. So he has got to minister to HUGE people, like Beyonce, he prophesied over her!
Over the weekend we had to go to the doctors for izzy so we missed church. we were in there for so long waiting, and it cost $94 just to see a doctor! so we got some antibiotics and izzy is feeling better now.
We had another good week of school. Had Chris Overstreet, the outreach pastor at Bethel (He was in Bath last week doing some stuff with Bath city Church) on thursday, which was really good. He just spoke about love, and the secret place, and all the miracles etc all come out of intimacy with God. Favourite Chris O. quote was 'a lot of people have watches, but not many people have time'. After they started to pray for bad backs and necks, and lots of people were getting healed.
We also had Danny Silk this week, he showed us his wedding video. Bill, kris and danny were all there looking soooo young, Bil and Beni sang during the ceremony and it was really good! Bill had black big hair with a big 'tache and glasses. he looked SO funny. You couldn't tell it was him at all.
Anyway Danny spoke about covenant relationships. it was real good.
Last night we went out to our friday night service. izzy was real tired and not really worshiping, the band were good though. at the end everyone was praying for more of God, for his glory/rain to come down. So they started a rain tunnel... izzy went through twice. WHAT A NIGHT! sooo good. although izzys brain hurt from her head shaking so much, a friend of ours was shaking violently, God was shaking off fear and other issues, it was intense, shes gunna ache today!!
After church we went to in and out burger. a very popular fast food place, and most of our revival group had the same idea, so we sat around chatting there for a while, then went home to bed at 12am.
Good times.
its raining today and all yesterday. tonight we are going out to some friends for dinner with another couple. looking forward to it, Sarah's an amazing cook!
Our car has a very bare tire on, so we have to go buy some today.:(
love you all, thanks for reading.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sunday, October 10, 2010
End of another week...
Hi everyone back home in the UK. Greetings from Redding, California.
Just wanted to give you all an update of some of the things we've been up to this week and some of the teachings.
After being away on retreat last week, it was a little bit tough to get back into the routine of going to school again. We had the added pressure of Kris Vallotton teaching all this week on basic training for the prophetic, something which normally takes longer than one week, so we had a lot to squeeze in this week. However, it was great, really amazing.
All week Kris covered a manual aptly named 'Basic Training for the Prophetic Ministry', where he would teach for an hour or two and then get us to put into practice what he had been teaching about. Which was a little scary, we often had to grab someone we didn't know and either name something about them that we felt God was telling us or call out a prophesy over them that we felt the Holy Spirit was telling us. We all had mixed results! But we all feel more comfortable doing it and practice does make perfect. One of their big things here is that faith is spelt R-I-S-K, so although it's often scary, we wont learn or progress without doing it. Some of Kris' insights on the prophetic were awesome. He's been in ministry over 30 years so some of his stories are just amazing. And it's so encouraging and exciting to hear his vision for it and where he wants it to go, especially at Bethel. Prophecy has been misused or misunderstood in the church for so long and he wants to cultivate a prophetic culture which is both accountable and edifying.
One of the big things that struck me this week was when Kris was talking about why Jesus often spoke in parables and seemed to conceal or hide the truth. He said that in the modern world, and I guess throughout history, knowledge has meant power. So Jesus would often conceal the truth from the prominent members of society or powerful people, and leave it for the humble and hungry to search out.
Proverbs 25:2 says
'It is the glory of God to conceal a matter,
But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.'
And once we've been saved we're now kings in the Kingdom, so it's up to us to stay humble (not thinking lowly of ourselves, but thinking highly of our God) and be hungry enough to search out the wisdom of God. God doesn't hide things from us, He hides things for us. It was just another priceless lesson in how the kingdom works, which is often contrary to how the world works.
We also started our activation this past week. Izzy and me are doing the Community Activation which involves us going to a local town just up the road called Shasta City, and basically seeing what we can do each week. We're just going to show up and see what God has for us to do, whether it's hang out in a coffee shop chatting to locals or something a bit more practical. We're in a group of about 12 and the others seem great. Should be fun. We also chose our missions trips choices. The whole month of March is designated as missions month and as part of the school course we are required to go on a trip. They range from a trip to a local church down the road for 2 or 3 days, to 2 weeks in Africa with Iris Ministries. There's about 40 or 50 trips to choose from all over the world and we had to select 5 that we wanted to be on and they'll most probably put us on one of those 5 trips, depending on numbers. So we chose which trips we liked and we'll see where we'll be going soon I think. It was hard to narrow it down to 5 trips because there's a lot of amazing trips, but hopefully we'll be able to afford where they select for us.
Weather-wise the week started off quite mild (Think it got to as low as 25 degrees centigrade!!-chilly!) but towards the end of the week it's gotten back up into the early 30's which has been nice. The forecast for this week as far as we can tell seems to be early to mid 30s again which will be nice. Especially as our friends have a pool!! They are also amazing at baking and this week gave us a container full of banana and chocolate chip muffins which were amazing. If they're reading this then thanks very much guys! We also watched a film last night called Furious Love. It's absolutely amazing, if you've watched and liked Finger of God then definitely get yourself a copy of Furious Love, you'll be changed.
This coming week will be an interesting one, we have a bit of homework to catch up on, but also at the end of the week is a conference so we wont have any school. On Wednesday we have Che Ahn coming to talk to us which should be very interesting. Che leads a church in Southern California which by all accounts is amazing and he's written a few well received books. Should be insightful and inspiring.
Anyway, hope everyone is good back home and things are going well. Please do write to us and let us know whats been happening and whats going on, anything we can pray for etc.
We really do love it here, we feel it's absolutely the right place for us at this time, so thank you so much for everyone who has been involved in making it possible.
We pray God's rich blessing on you and hope you all have a great week.
God bless
Izzy and Lil x
Proverbs 25:2
It is the glory of God to conceal a matter,
But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.
Just wanted to give you all an update of some of the things we've been up to this week and some of the teachings.
After being away on retreat last week, it was a little bit tough to get back into the routine of going to school again. We had the added pressure of Kris Vallotton teaching all this week on basic training for the prophetic, something which normally takes longer than one week, so we had a lot to squeeze in this week. However, it was great, really amazing.
All week Kris covered a manual aptly named 'Basic Training for the Prophetic Ministry', where he would teach for an hour or two and then get us to put into practice what he had been teaching about. Which was a little scary, we often had to grab someone we didn't know and either name something about them that we felt God was telling us or call out a prophesy over them that we felt the Holy Spirit was telling us. We all had mixed results! But we all feel more comfortable doing it and practice does make perfect. One of their big things here is that faith is spelt R-I-S-K, so although it's often scary, we wont learn or progress without doing it. Some of Kris' insights on the prophetic were awesome. He's been in ministry over 30 years so some of his stories are just amazing. And it's so encouraging and exciting to hear his vision for it and where he wants it to go, especially at Bethel. Prophecy has been misused or misunderstood in the church for so long and he wants to cultivate a prophetic culture which is both accountable and edifying.
One of the big things that struck me this week was when Kris was talking about why Jesus often spoke in parables and seemed to conceal or hide the truth. He said that in the modern world, and I guess throughout history, knowledge has meant power. So Jesus would often conceal the truth from the prominent members of society or powerful people, and leave it for the humble and hungry to search out.
Proverbs 25:2 says
'It is the glory of God to conceal a matter,
But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.'
And once we've been saved we're now kings in the Kingdom, so it's up to us to stay humble (not thinking lowly of ourselves, but thinking highly of our God) and be hungry enough to search out the wisdom of God. God doesn't hide things from us, He hides things for us. It was just another priceless lesson in how the kingdom works, which is often contrary to how the world works.
We also started our activation this past week. Izzy and me are doing the Community Activation which involves us going to a local town just up the road called Shasta City, and basically seeing what we can do each week. We're just going to show up and see what God has for us to do, whether it's hang out in a coffee shop chatting to locals or something a bit more practical. We're in a group of about 12 and the others seem great. Should be fun. We also chose our missions trips choices. The whole month of March is designated as missions month and as part of the school course we are required to go on a trip. They range from a trip to a local church down the road for 2 or 3 days, to 2 weeks in Africa with Iris Ministries. There's about 40 or 50 trips to choose from all over the world and we had to select 5 that we wanted to be on and they'll most probably put us on one of those 5 trips, depending on numbers. So we chose which trips we liked and we'll see where we'll be going soon I think. It was hard to narrow it down to 5 trips because there's a lot of amazing trips, but hopefully we'll be able to afford where they select for us.
Weather-wise the week started off quite mild (Think it got to as low as 25 degrees centigrade!!-chilly!) but towards the end of the week it's gotten back up into the early 30's which has been nice. The forecast for this week as far as we can tell seems to be early to mid 30s again which will be nice. Especially as our friends have a pool!! They are also amazing at baking and this week gave us a container full of banana and chocolate chip muffins which were amazing. If they're reading this then thanks very much guys! We also watched a film last night called Furious Love. It's absolutely amazing, if you've watched and liked Finger of God then definitely get yourself a copy of Furious Love, you'll be changed.
This coming week will be an interesting one, we have a bit of homework to catch up on, but also at the end of the week is a conference so we wont have any school. On Wednesday we have Che Ahn coming to talk to us which should be very interesting. Che leads a church in Southern California which by all accounts is amazing and he's written a few well received books. Should be insightful and inspiring.
Anyway, hope everyone is good back home and things are going well. Please do write to us and let us know whats been happening and whats going on, anything we can pray for etc.
We really do love it here, we feel it's absolutely the right place for us at this time, so thank you so much for everyone who has been involved in making it possible.
We pray God's rich blessing on you and hope you all have a great week.
God bless
Izzy and Lil x
Proverbs 25:2
It is the glory of God to conceal a matter,
But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
*Click on photos to make them Bigger
Evening all, its getting cooler now, the temp has dropped by about 10 degrees. its was pretty cloudy today which was annoying.
Yesterday we arranged with 4 friends to go to a local cliff jumping place with an amazing water fall. So we all arranged met at church, we got there and there was about 4 cars worth in all going. word had got out that we were going so there was about 15 of us in the end which was lovely. We got there, scrambled down a path and along the river a bit and came to an amazing clear pool with a huge waterfall going into it. we spent about a couple of hours there, people jumped in from the cliff at the top. it really didnt look that high when looking from the groud. Lil went straight up and jumped off, he is scared of heights, but this year he said hes breaking off fears. others went up and jumped off while i was taking photos. The water was freezing. you couldnt swim in it cos you cant stay under, it was icy cold.
So people started leaving to go to some nearby hot springs, and then i decided i needed to jump, i dont know what i was thinking, i just thought i would regret it if i didnt, so me and ben climbed up the side of the cliff, which is steep and slippery. Got to the top and looked down. it was SOOO high. i turned round and said to ben i'll climb back down, but he said the only way down is to jump. it took me ages to work up the courage, i had to go to the river and splash cold water on myslef to get used to the water before i could jump. then i did it, mainly because it was so hard to climb back. if it were easier i wouldnt have jumped!! everyone cheered and said they were proud which was nice, but i was just grumply cos it hurt and i was cold.
we then couldnt find the hot springs, because they were futher than we thought. so we went home, aching all over, with a painful ear.
today-sunday im still aching, but mostly glad i jumped, but it was a once in a lifetime thing!
We went to church this morning, its lovely knowing people now, rather than walking into a big room not knowing any one. the worship was all holy spirit led and really peaceful and nice. then Kris vallotton spoke.
WOW what a talk. i wish everyone everwhere couldve heard it. he spoke on the kingdom at 1st.
points-
we come to church to get equipped , deployed.
Apostles transform cultures.
Jesus said he'll build the church and we should extend the kingdon. but we try and build the church and wonder who's extending the kindom.
All of the church is in the kindom, but not all of the kindom is in the church.
gathering people is not synonamous with transforming cultures.
You can tell how close you are to the palace by how you respond to injustice- Moses in egypt.
we are the answers to peoples problems/prayers.
- he went on to speak about abortion.....WOW. Try and listen to the podcast, or subscribe to ibethel tv. which you can get through the website.
tonight ive been sitting out with the kids from the block for a little bit and lils been catching up on his reading. Finshed 'The happy intercessor' by beni johnson. amazing book, worth a read, very insightful into prayer, if you get bored in prayer, or want to learn about breakthrough in prayer.
i have my hour prayer slot in 20 mins in which think i might do some painting.(beni talks about art in prayer in her book)
love you all. Blessings xxxxxxxxxx
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