Stuff

Sorry for the lack of updates, we have been starved of internet access, so i am writing from an internet cafe at the largest shopping mall in the southern hemisphere.

Christmas was lonely without all of you guys, but people in the church took care of us and invited us for Christmas dinner. We even had a christmas tree that our kitten climbed about every half an hour. Oh yeah, we have a kitten that we called Starbucks cause it looks like a latte. Black with tan spots. I will upload photos as soon as I can. We also moved into our new home. Its so fun to have someone greet us when we come home. :) THe Lord has blessed us by providing all the essencials (bed, fridge etc) so we've been slowly getting settled.

If you think of us please pray as our stuff that we shipped from LA has gone missing. The ports dont know what boat its on, or where it is, so please pray that the people in charge of finding it do so quickly so we don't have to pay massive storage fees.

Also be praying for a couple that we are doing premarital with, that the Lord would use us in their life and that the Lord would give us wisdom as we counsel them.

Clint is loving being a pastor, there have already been alot of fun opportunities in the church (a birth, and a funeral, and a upcoming wedding) and conseling pple who want to go into ministry, so Praise HIM!!

WE LOVE YOU GUYS. Sorry its been so long without an update, but we will send a more detailed one soon once we have internet (within the next month)

Please email us and let us know how your doing

Kim & Clint

Clint's ordination

Clint speaking:

Well I was ordained yesterday. Yikes. What a responsibility. The charge was preached by an American pastor Dennis Husted (his book is in the Bookshack). He brought the thunder. I can’t believe I am officially an elder and a pastor. The service was very moving, and felt very much like a wedding. Below is my response to the charge. People received it very well and I sensed a genuine bond formed with this flock after my promise to bury them all! (They all started laughing at that point, and some have told me they are looking forward to being buried by me.)

1 Tim 4:2
Induction service
11 Dec 2005

NOT ON MY WATCH!

The Apostle and Pastor, Paul wrote to the young pastor Timothy:
1 Tim 4:2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.
3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,
4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

The reason the pastor Timothy needed that charge was because is very normal for churches to prefer a diluted diet of God’s Word. They want a diverse menu. Make it funny, make it entertaining. Like a sitcom. Make it relevant and informative, like the news. Convince me I need your product, like an infomercial. People want their ears tickled. Truth offends them, they want fiction.
This is natural. It is normal for churches to drift into liberalism, disbelieving God’s inspired word. They sense the need to be acceptable to modern scholarship and bow the knee to the priests of so-called science.
The poison man-centered consumerism will permeate the congregation until the Word of God seems old-fashioned and out of place in the pulpit.
Surveys, statistics and success stories will drive the sermons. Solid immovable truths of the Bible are being displaced by the fashionable, politically correct, feel-good fluffy sermonettes that have as little substance to them as the plastic lecterns they are delivered from.

Like I say: It is normal for preachers to be lazy and cowardly and thereby bring a diluted gospel into the church. And it is ordinary for congregations to reward this atrocity with hearty approval.
This is the typical course for a church. Like a river flows to the sea a church will drift toward error. And all it takes is one generation of preacher to lead a faithful flock like this astray.

So today I promise you that it will not happen on my watch.

People want unity at the price of sound doctrine. And cowardly preachers deliver the rotten goods with pleasure. But not on my watch.

In fact, if this church wants to turn against the inspired word of God, it will need to run me out of here first.
If the super-trendy, seeker-friendly disease infects this flock, it’s not going to happen on my shift

If you want to highlight self-esteem and downplay God-esteem, if you want to emphasize man’s role in salvation and usurp God’s role, you’ll have to fire me.

If you want to graft the weed of evolutionary theory into Genesis, and import political correctness through a gender-neutral translation, you’ll have to wait until I’m in the grave.
If you want an ecumenical gospel that makes a way for all faiths into the wide gate, and makes a mockery of the Cross, and cheapens atonement, you’ll first have to drag me out of this church and pry my nails off the pulpit. Because Hillcrest Baptist Church will not adulterate the Gospel on my watch.

Now, I will be criticized for this. From the community at large I expect to be called old fashioned when I refuse to marry a believer to unbeliever. I will be called legalistic when I call professing believers to a lifestyle that honors their Savior. I will be called ignorant when I insist that the words of the Bible mean what they say, even when they appear to contradict so called scientific findings. I will be attacked verbally and in writing. In public and in private.
And all I can say to that is, with the Lord’s grace… Bring it on! Bring it on. Do your worst! My life is not important to me.

I endeavour to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We have some work to do. We have a community to win. People around us do not know the Lord. They are dying and going to Hell on our watch.
We need to step it up a notch. We need to take the Gospel into our community in our words of hope and our deeds of mercy.

It’s normal for churches to become complacent “Us four no more close the door.” It’s ordinary for churches to get comfortable with the size of the church, the style of music, the way things are going. Not on my watch!

Now this has to be raising the question: How long is your watch? When can we expect you to move on to greener grass?
I don’t believe in a pastorate with an expiration date.
Kim and I have no plans to move anywhere else.
I know talk is cheap. I know you’ve heard this before. I know every preacher thinks he will grow old die in his first pastorate with his son taking over from him.

But I can only share with you what is on my heart:
I want to bury all of you. I want to be the one who marries your children and baptizes theirs. I want my kids to grow up knowing only one church family. I want to buy a house and plant a tree. An oak tree.

Now I can’t promise anything. Jepthah and James both teach that I cannot make a promise about the future. So I’m not. But I can ask you to take a chance on me.

When a young police officer graduates from the academy, he is assigned to a partner. They don’t know each other at all. But from the very first day, both men are called to put their lives in each others hands. Before getting to know each other, they must trust each other.
You and I have been assigned to one another, in a partnership arranged by the sweet and wise providence of God.
From this day forward my life and the life of my family is in your hands. You need to take care of us. We have no plan B. And likewise I know that your lives and hearts are in my hands. Take a chance.

There is a community out there that needs the Lord. Let’s get to work.

Hillcrest

A typical day for us in Hillcrest at the moment begins with a mile walk to the bank to try and open a bank account, since we don’t have a car yet. You’d think one walk would suffice, but there is always some reason that we need to come back, and after about a week, I think we are walking there again today! But we should be getting a car by the end of the week. I think I'll miss our daily walk....
On our walk back from the bank yesterday we pass by an area of really beautiful homes and gardens. So we ask the guard if we can walk around for fun to see them. He is unconvinced, especially since we are on foot, and calls one of the houses that is for sale and asks them if we can take a look at their house. This isn’t what we intended, but we went anyway, and meet this couple in their fifties who informs us that their house is on sale for 2.5 million rand. Yikes. They recognize our accents and ask us if we are vacationing, and Clint says he is the new pastor of Hillcrest Baptist, and they exclaim “oh, were Baptists, come and have lunch with us!” So we end up out on their patio, having an amazing lunch with these complete strangers, and the gentleman shows us this sound proof room where he reads his bible for 4 hours a day. He’s trying to finish the bible in one month, and is creating his own reading plan so that each day is around 4 hours. Amazing. I was sitting there completely dumfounded at how serendipitous this moment was, and the Lord’s sovereignty in having us meet this couple. Our accents (yeah, Clint’s too) have been an amazing tool for the gospel. Whenever you meet anyone they ask you if your American, and why you are here. It’s an instant doorway into conversations about the Lord. He is soo good.
Last night we played the RESOLVED dvd with MacArthur for our host family. They had never seen MacArthur, just heard him on the radio, and didn’t know how old he was, or even what he looked like. So we are listening to MacArthur preach on the conscience, you know the “shut up Gringo” sermon, and Veon turns and says “you sat under this guy your whole life? Amazing” So to all of you out there seeing MacArthur weekly preach, know that the people out here get excited about even getting a tape of his, much less a dvd, much less sitting weekly underneath his weekly preaching. So when you’re contemplating if you really need to go to evening service, think of all the people who can’t. J I was convicted again listening to that sermon about J.Edwards and how he knew his heart would be quick to be lazy regarding the spiritual disciplines, so he informed his conscience every week with his resolutions towards godliness. Days have been crazy here, and I need to get back into a regular routine of prayer and daily reading scripture. Its been here and there this week.

We're finally here!

We are finally actually in S.Africa! :)

We arrived yesterday to Durban S.A. at 10:00am after being 30 hours in the air. A few members of the church met us at the airport, then Kim and Veon drove us to their home, where we are spending the first 4 weeks here in Hillcrest. It’s a beautiful home, Tuscan style, with an awesome garden. I am looking out the window at it now. J I must say, the Lord placed us in one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. I’m really serious.

So, after being here a total of 24 hours, these are Kim and Clint’s top 10 things that wouldn’t happen in LA. These are totally superficial things, but I thought it might be fun for you to experience the first “little differences” that you notice when you first go to a different country, so here it goes…

1. In the airport, standing in a mob (not a line) to get through to the passport check station, there were two Brits standing behind me talking about the differences between California wine, and South African wine, saying that SA wine was better cause “those Americans are severely lacking brain cells” I don’t know what that has to do with our wine, but I did not give my opinion as I slowly hid my American passport.
2. The sun rises at 4am here. No joke. It looks like its about 10am at 5 in the morning, and the sun sets at like 7. I asked why they don’t do daylight savings, and someone told me that there is no way the whole country would be able to switch the time back and forth like that. People would just arrive to work late an hour until the time switched back to normal.
3. The door handles are on the opposite side. So in LA you the door handle is on the right side of the door, but here its on the left. I found that out at 2 am groping for the bathroom door handle. J
4. Yes, the toilets do flush the other way.
5. Everyone here is into indigenous plants. So if you complement them on their garden, they will often say that “yes, it grows so well cause its indigenous…. grass, flowers, trees” or whatever. I would have no clue what is indigenous in LA, besides maybe orange and palm trees?
6. There is no need for alarm clocks cause these birds called “Haw-dee-daas” (literal translation) say “HaawwdeeDAAHHH” in the morning to wake you up. J
7. People here drink fruit juice that is amazing. It tastes like your actually eating the fruit. And food here is generally healthier.
8. Yes, people put up Christmas trees for Christmas. And the stores and malls are all decorated for Christmas, but like Jesse said, there is no cheesy Christmas music, a definite advantage, especially after last Sunday’s Sharky’s cheesy music experience.
9. The hot and cold faucets on the sinks are separate. So one faucet pours out hot water, and one pours out cold, so they don’t mix. I haven’t quite figured out how to wash my face without burning it, or freezing it yet. I just move my hands back and forth real quick between the two.
10. This is totally “only in Africa”…. We walked around our neighbourhood this morning, and opened a bank account, (which I found out I can’t open until a year from now until I have permanent residency) and anyways, right outside the bank there are pay phones. Pretty normal, right? But… right next to the pay phones, there is a card table, with a person sitting behind it, and on that table sits a regular land line phone. People are selling phone calls from their land line for a few cents cheaper than the payphones. And there are like 4 tables of these phones with people manning it, and there is a line to use these phones, but the pay phones stand empty. So funny.

Anyways, sorry no photos yet, but on dial up it just takes too long. Soon though.

Please be praying for us as we have to make a lot of financial decisions (i.e. we need to start buying things like a bed, a fridge, etc.) and they seem to be rather pricey, so we want to make the wisest decision that we can with what the Lord has given us. The Lord has abundantly blessed us with where we are staying, we’ve already had awesome conversations with our host family, about the Lord and his work on their lives, and in the lives of the church. Praise Him! Please email us to let us know how you are doing. –K&C