Spring

Spring is always a great season; The ‘hot with a cool breeze’ weather, the flowers, the baby animals in the fields, the stormy clouds, even the sometimes endless rain. Not to mention the relief that the snow is gone and summer is coming.

At YWAM Lakeside we’ve seen lot of students finish up courses and welcomed new students as they start an exciting season here. Hundreds of (mostly) young people come through the ‘base’ each year and we constantly hear stories of how God heals, encourages, delivers, teaches, and saves people near and far. Our staff and students literally reach all corners of the planet.

It’s exciting to be part of that in a small way, and even in a season with very small kids, God’s calling to parent/disciple these precious lives can’t help but get me thinking about the ripple effect one person can make. I pray Vienna and Jake grow up to be confident in their identity and are known for loving people.

Vienna is nearing her 3rd birthday and although she is still testing boundaries and reacts strongly to the word ‘no’ no matter where we are, it’s fun to see her learn new things and memorize new books. Her imagination is being cultivated as she plays on her own and she has the best laugh in the world!

Jake is nearly 3 months old and a very happy boy. He smiles and started ‘laughing’ which is the cutest thing ever! He is so quiet compared to Vienna – makes me very happy they don’t come out talking, ha ha.

Theron is working hard preparing for September’s School of Worship and will be going to Mexico in September as the worship band he’s in (drummer) has been asked to lead worship at another YWAM conference. Always a good time and hopefully Nicola and the kids can go along one of these times too!

And Nicola is teaching again in this summers TESOL course which is always refreshing and fun. We are still accepting students but at least 15 people will be coming to learn how to teach English – a most useful skill on the Mission Field and American communities everywhere.

If you’re in the USA we hope you have a good Memorial Day Weekend the next few days

Joy & Sorrow

He is here!!! Jake Everett Olsen entered the world on Monday 4th March. He weighed 8lbs 5oz and measured 18.75″. The c-section was smooth and recovery has been 100% better than the first time around!

Jake is nearly 4 weeks old and is a very easy baby so far. He prefers sleeping in his swing or being held by someone. He doesn’t cry much or make many sounds of any kind – Vienna is loud enough for the both of them!!

Vienna thinks he’s ‘little’ and likes to help by bringing us diapers or trying to put the pacifier back in his mouth if it falls out.

And now for some sad news… when Jake was 5 days old we learned that Theron’s dad had died suddenly. Theron returned to Washington the next day to sort things out with his brothers. He was gone for 9 days and conducted the memorial service himself. It was an incredibly hard couple of weeks for us but we had a lot of help and Nicola was never alone at home. We are part of an incredible community at YWAM Montana. Things have slowly been getting back to ‘normal’ as we learn to be a family of 4.

And Nicola’s sister Sarah is currently visiting from England for 2 weeks. It is great to have her here and we are soaking up the hours! It’s also Nicola’s birthday next weekend so we can celebrate with family for the first time in years.

Auntie Sarah with the kiddos

We hope that on this Easter weekend you know how much God loves you. He sent His son Jesus to die for our sins because he loves us… we cannot earn that love, it’s only through the grace of God that we can know him and understand that incredible sacrifice. If you don’t already have a relationship with Jesus please ask us about it or find a church. Life is short and discovering your true identity in Jesus Christ is the only way to live your full potential in happiness and security. There is no other way but Jesus – the most JOY of all.

A New Year

Happy New Year friends!

This month Theron started a 6-week course called ‘New Testament Theology’. It is quite intense requiring a lot of reading, summary papers, class discussion and a research paper at the end. He is more than half way through and doing really well. There are a few other new courses of this nature being offered this year which he hopes to do too. He is also training for a half marathon and ran 12 miles last weekend… his longest run to date!

Nicola has less than 5 weeks left before baby boy is born! We have been cleaning up the house in anticipation and donating many bags of things to charity. There are no complications but she is measuring very big and there has been some strong Braxton Hicks pain this week – we’d appreciate your prayers for a smooth last month with no more pain.

34 weeks

Vienna is in one of those phases where you blink and she is suddenly taller and wiser. It continues to amaze us how fast she is learning and growing up. She is such a joy and loves the endless snow.

Eating fresh snow

The School of Worship outreach team returns from Costa Rica next week and we are excited to hear their ministry stories first hand!

Costa Rica team

We hope your 2013 is going well and God has been speaking to you. Please share your news too!

Love, The Olsens

December

It was a very busy first 10 days as we wrapped up the lecture phase of the School of Worship, had graduation dinner, and sent a small team to Costa Rica for 2 months of outreach.

Graduation (sorry for the low resolution picture)

We heard some amazing testimonies from the students, who were from Nepal, Cambodia, Australia, South Korea and USA. Even in 3 short months they obviously had a life-changing experience through the lectures they heard and areas they were pushed in in regards to leading worship. As we don’t receive a salary for working full time with YWAM the saying around here is that our ‘pay check’ is seeing lives changed. We are blessed that God continues to put us in a position to help facilitate that change. The hard work that goes into running a school is absolutely worth it every time, no matter how many students we have. This year our 5 staff did an amazing job and were the biggest blessing to Theron as the leader.

This year was the first time we got a $5 permit, drove up the mountain, and cut down a Christmas tree! A fun family experience.

Our first real tree!

And finally the snow came to Montana! Vienna loves it and wants to be outside all the time, even if she’s freezing.

Fun in the snow

After the team left for outreach we wrapped up loose ends then jumped in the car to drive over to Seattle where Theron ran in his first race! Those of you who follow us on facebook will know that he’s been slimming down this year and during 2012 has lost a whopping 60lbs! SO proud of him!

He finished his first 10k in 48 minutes!

We’ve been in Western Washington visiting Theron’s family since the weekend. Theron preached in his home church on Sunday (and did an awesome job!). We got hit with snow which delayed our return home but hope to leave in the morning.

It’s been a very busy end to 2012 but as we look back on the year, through some ups and downs, starting the year in Thailand, seeing family around the world, making new friends at home and afar, we are so thankful to God for His character and pursuit of a relationship with us. Thank you for following along with us on this journey, we appreciate you so much and look forward to updating you in January with exciting things coming up!

(p.s. baby boy is coming in about 10.5 weeks… please pray for us as we prepare for his arrival around March 1st!)

November

During November we had some awesome speakers come and teach in the School of Worship from Hawaii and Montana and our students started to have some great breakthroughs in areas they had been struggling in. Very cool.

Vienna has started to come into the good old ’2′ stage, pushing boundaries and with her vocabulary expanding so fast she has a lot more to say! She’s such a funny girl and an absolute chatterbox. Here are a couple pics of her from November:

Playing with spilled juice

Our beautiful girl

And of course, it’s one of the BEST months of the year because of Thanksgiving, or in the words of Vienna, ‘Thank You Giving’. Instead of having a cafeteria version of this awesome meal they farm all the students out to families on staff (if they aren’t going home) and as one of those host families we receive all the food necessary to cook a roast turkey dinner. As pumpkin pie isn’t our favorite we always make apple pies from scratch too.

Theron’s family pie recipe

Nicola’s pregnancy is going well, we found out we are having a BOY and apart from the usual aches things have been just as smooth as the first time around, praise God!

Nearly half way!

Now the hunt is on for a boy’s name and acquiring some blue baby things!

October

You know that saying (which is totally true, by the way) where you wait for a bus for an hour and then 2 come along at once? Well, get ready for 3 buses!

We are SO sorry to not have posted since September, things really got busy and even now we’re not to the ‘relaxing’ part of the year yet. Here come 3 updates to catch you up (seems the easiest way to do it). Starting with October…

The highlight for October was Theron going to Asia. He accompanied a good friend for 10 days to 2 different regions to teach and encourage ‘friends’ there. For safety reasons we can’t give more details but it was a really good trip starting with the complete airfare provided for which was amazing. If you want to know more please let us know and we can talk to you over the phone.

Theron

Having a meal with new friends

October ended with some Halloween fun on campus for all the kids. Vienna picked out her costume in the store… our little lamb. She LOVED knocking on doors and didn’t want to take her costume off for bed time.

Our 6 students were studying hard this month getting into the rhythm of their new schedule. Although it was snowy for a week it all melted and continued to be a VERY mild start to Winter for this area.

Meet the school

Here are some pictures to introduce the School of Worship this year, and our outreach location for this school is revealed at the end!

The staff

Our 6 staff this year are Dave & Mari (USA) on the left, then Mirjam (Netherlands), Cinthia (Costa Rica), and Theron on the right, and Christel (Canada) at the bottom. Theron is leading the school and we are so blessed to have these dedicated disciplers on our team!

2012 School Of Worship

This picture pays homage to the nickname ‘the iPad school’ as this year they all have iPads to learn how to use an amazing worship-leading app called ‘On Song’ which allows a team to sync the worship set, do all kinds of customization, and means we print no more chord charts! Which is a huge money-saver and saves some trees.

So our 6 students in this picture, L-R, we have Stuart from Australia (although he’s a permanent resident of  Canada now with his wife and son), Theron, Hannah from California, Cinthia, Sarah from Montana, Jiwon from South Korea, Sopheap from Cambodia, Christel, Mirjam, Padam from Nepal (married with 4 children and another on the way), Mari & Dave.

Please keep these 6 students in your prayers as they have an intense schedule and are hit with a lot of information over these 12 weeks! A couple of students also still need money to pay for the school and for outreach…. which will be going to Costa Rica which is very exciting!! More about that later