Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! Gobble, gobble

So this was my first Thanksgiving away from "home" and I must admit.....I wasn't very thankful. In fact, I complained.....alot. But throughout the day the Lord changed my heart. Clint kept reminding me of all the Lord has given us, and what a joy it is to serve in such an amazing church, and that He has blessed us with a child on the way, and a beautiful home to live in, and so many other wonderful blessings here. Things to be TRULY thankful for. And to top it all off, at the end of the day, we were having Thanksgiving dinner with some members in our congregation, and a couple of American missionaries, and I was just rejoicing at the fact that we had Christians to enjoy fellowship with. A guy in our congregation, Chris, brought up a point in one of Clints sermons this week....that in Luke 10 Jesus says that we should rejoice that our names are written in heaven. How cool is that promise? Something to definately ponder, and truly be thankful for, that our names are written in the Lamb's book of life, and that WE are His precious children. Amazing.



Too much stuffing and pumpkin pie? Nope. Just over 4 months pregnant! :) We find out in 2 short weeks if its a boy or a girl. I can still wear "normal" clothes, praise the Lord! Ha ha

Beach Ball for Christmas Anyone?

In the Christmas isles in the stores, right next to the stockings and snowflake twinkle lights and snowmen are now hanging....... beach towels, flip flops, suntan lotion, and beach balls! You know how we would give one another a scarf and a hat and mittens for Christmas? Here you get a beach towel and flip flops! Its really surreal. Summer is here! And so is the holiday season! Its been almost a year that we've been in South Africa now, I can't believe it. The Lord has done so much in our own lives, and in the ministry here, it feels like its actually been longer!



The Sunday School children are putting on a Christmas play, and they are handing out ornaments with "gifts that God has given" on them to everyone in the congregation. So I've been making 150 ornaments all week (cutting, ribbon, the works!) And I'm finally done, phew! Its been great being involved in the Christmas play, watching the kids memorize their lines....the story really presents the gospel well, and as each child says his verse or her line, I am reminded again of the gift of God's son, and how the world longed for Him to come. "O come O come Immanuel."



It's "baby Avocado" this week...and I'm kinda starting to show (only a little!) I'm four months already, but the "afternoon" sickness has finally left, yipee! We find out on Dec 5th if its a boy or a girl. :)

Congrats!

So my friends Sara and Scott got engaged this weekend, Congratulations!! And we are going to be in LA for the wedding! Woo hoo! It's just so cool cause we miss so many important times and days in peoples lives back in the states, that we get to be apart of this one! Clint will be doing the wedding (Don't worry Sara, I've seen him do one before, and he didn't mess up!)

Congratulations guys, marriage is the best!

Spurgeon

Spurgeon. The dog that rips up all my flowers, tore down all my clothes off the line this week, ripped them to shreads (I'm still finding peices of clothing in random parts of my yard!) ATE my in-laws back bumper (literally) but can still look at you with this face, and you just think....awwwww. But he's adorable! We are taking him to doggie training, but I think if this dog were a kid, the only thing that would change him is the gospel. He definately needs a new heart. But he's a puppy. Maybe he'll grow out of it?!? Repent Spurgeon! :)

Houses...

So yesterday the doorbell rang at 10:30am. We NEVER answer the doors, phones, cell phones, emails etc. on a Monday cause its Clint and my day off, and our house is the church office. But THIS time it was Kerry Drew, with two HUGE bags FULL of BAGELS & cream cheese!!!! Yippeee!! I couldn't believe my eyes cause I had been to like every major bakery and grocery store this week cause I've been craving bagels. She found them at some bakery in downtown Durban! Ahh, what a good friend!

After chowing on bagels, Clint and I spent the whole day yesterday looking at houses! Now our church is in a really up-market area (no houses under a million rand) so we've been looking, but everything has been absolutely unaffordable. Currently we live in a house that's on the church's property. Its like a 5 bedroom house sitting on a huge piece of land, and if we were to move out, whatever they rent it out for, we would get to spend per month on a house of our own. (And 5 bedroom houses in Hillcrest get rented out for a ton!)

We saw an add in the home guide for a brand new house that was a private sale (no estate agent fees!!) that looked pretty affordable about a 10 minute drive away, and went and looked at it. And we fell in love. A bright, airy, 3 bedroom (us, "baby lemon", and a study) home and it was brand new! AND it has a view of the ocean! (It's a tiny view, but you can still see it from the living room!) Problem was...after several phone calls, we realized there were tons of "transfer duty" fees that pushed it way out of our price range. Nuts. SO we went down to look at it again, thinking maybe we could offer her a lower price, and see if she would take it. But....we ran straight into the developer, who said he was building 6 more houses just like it, AND if he built us one from scratch he would be able to customize it for us to put it in our price range AND we would have the benefit of being able to pick out all the fun goodies like the color of the tiles, and the paint etc. etc.! If you buy a house straight from the developer, there are no extra fees. And he said he had 3 plots left, and one of them was a smaller peice of property that would push the price down as well. I couldn't believe the Lord's timing in running straight into the developer!

(Developer and our friend Duncan standing in the kitchen. It's not quite finished yet)

Front door, part of living room

house from the street

So who knows? We might be building a house?!? Yikes!

Medical mystery

Musings.....

Clint was so cute, he went grocery shopping for me (and he HATES grocery shopping!) cause I was feeling super "preggy" sick! I love it when you give guys a grocery list, they usually come back with like 3-5 items missing, and 1 or 2 that are not QUITE right (like he got regular milk instead of whipping cream, and the green pepper "just wasn't quite available" at the grocery store today...hmm, REALLY?!?) But I love him to bits for at least trying. I'm still mystified as to why this seems to happen with ALL men though.

So I was reading online that "morning sickness" is a medical mystery. Doctors still have NO IDEA what causes it. I thought maybe if I could find the cause, I could somehow find a better cure, but no such luck! They tell you it subsides at week 12, but I think they just tell you that to give you false hope. Week 13 going on 14, and its funny how I know where the drains in the mall are, or where most sinks are located in any given house or store. :) Clint says its a medical mystery cause its caused by the curse in Genesis! I wholeheartedly agree. I wonder what pregnancy would have been like before the curse?!?!? So morning sickness causes me to think alot about my sinfulness. It would be soo cool that if when you became a Christian, the curse just POOF! left you!! nuts. Or even cooler. That "poof!" all your sin would just VANISH!! nuts. But we learn about the Lord in our confession to Him, and in our becoming more like Him!!

I've been craving bagels with cream cheese like crazy, and I've never seen a bagel here. I think I might try to make one from scratch (did you know you BOIL them? I had no idea!!)