HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 37 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

There are 20 Clint Archers, so he has me beat. This website has come in handy to see how rare our "top picks" for baby Archer are. They've all made it under 10!

Mark Dever and D.A. Carson are in South Africa and we get to hear them preach this week! When we were in DC we went to Mark Dever's church and loved it. They are preaching at the "Grace Ministers Conference" which is kinda like a Shepherds Conference, so we are both way excited to hear a boost of awesome preaching!

Dog Dodge

The Archer's new sport on Sunday morning:

Dog Dodge

The object: With your best suit, or dress on, avoid all muddy doggie tails and noses and feet on a 1-2 minute walk to church, in the rain.

Tactic: To fake what door you open (front or back) and then find the opposite escape route quickly.

Your only weapon: an umbrella. They are scared spitless of it.

These photos aren't even that bad. Last week they broke into the property next door where they are building, (a muddy doggie paradise!) but the mud was RED! So we knew exactly what they were up to when they came back looking more like Irish Terriers.

O Christmas Tree

This Saturday I went looking for a real Christmas tree. I stopped off at the local "Home Depot" kinda store, no Christmas trees. I stopped by a tree nursery. No Christmas trees! I went home feeling rather dejected and un-merry. You'd think people would just want to make money off the season would sell trees??!?! But no lot was to be found.


So at I start asking around church on Sunday where you get trees? The first lady I asked (also named Kim) said that her husband was given 3 trees from a local department store that was no longer decorating for Christmas cause "not everyone celebrates Christmas." It came with lights and bulbs and pinecones and everything! So we got this absolutely amazing tree for Christmas! So cool. It's not real, but its the closest to real I've seen.
And one of the coolest Christmas presents we got was that because we are not taking time off for Christmas, we can "apply" that for our trip to the States! So we will be there for a week longer than we thought. So cool!

My dad was a trooper to try and send my Christmas cards from overseas with all the addresses and stamps etc! This was the "family photo" we took this year with all SIX of us!!

This was one of the unsuccessful ones :) Getting Geneva and Spurgeon to sit still when their favorite cat was around was absolutely hillarious

I've been listening to the Indelible Grace Christmas CD called "Your King has Come" and have just been struck by how Israel was waiting and waiting and looking for a Messiah, and how in awe and joyful those must have been who realized that this baby was the King that was prophesized about. "O come O come Immanuel" speaks of the rejoicing, and it just struck me that now that we live on THIS side of the incarnation, we don't often think about the sheer joy of the moment of Christ's birth, and what it meant to Israel.

Summertime

"I will sing of the lovingkindness of the Lord forever. To all generations I will make known Your faithfulness with my mouth." Psalm 89:1

So its now officially Summer, which means all the students are on school holidays. I'm still getting used to the fact that Christmas is in summer, but its pretty cool cause everyone breaks for holiday (its like Summer vacation and Christmas vacation combined!) So we've been spending alot of time with the Cornerstone group cause they are all off school and work. This was at Lisa's goodbye party. She was an exchange student from Sweden who just returned home after spending 6 months in our church. She always had great questions about the Bible. It was sad to see her go!

Vicki, Kyle, Brian, Arthur & Lisa

Kerry will be joining our church this month! She flew down this week for a job meeting, and we got to go to the beach with a bunch of girls from church. The beach is like 5 minutes from downtown, so while Clint was standing in line at the US Embassy for his passport for 5 hours, I enjoyed the most gorgeous day at the beach! Poor thing. Durban beach has shark nets all along it, and rumor has it that they just found a Great White caught in one of them, YIKES!

Oh! and I've just started to feel "quickening" where the baby moves! It feels like butterflys, its pretty amazing. I'm 19 weeks, almost half way there!

Its a....

For those who haven’t heard:

It’s a Boy!

So we go in on Dec 5th to my doctors apt. and were so excited to find out what it is. I mean who wouldn’t right? To our dismay the doctor was like…. “well, I don’t like telling” (We were like…what the heck?) He said that “Studies show (what are these studies anyway?) that the father doesn’t bond with the child once he knows beforehand what it is.” We were like… whatever psycho-babble you throw our way isn’t gonna stop us from finding out!! Really? You think Clint isn’t gonna love our son cause he found out in Dec instead of May? Crazyness. We saw the baby suck its thumb, and jump around! And then the doctor was like….uh…that’s a boy! But he said that the next ultrasound would confirm it in a month....So exciting!

So now if you have any name suggestions, please comment! (All the name suggestions last time were for girls!!!)

And good news: Clint got a 10 year multiple entry visa for the States, which is the best news possible cause it’s the best visa you can get! And we found out that our boy will be American cause I am (he even comes with an American birth certificate and passport, crazy huh?)

This last week marked our 1 year anniversary in South Africa (Dec 1st). I expected to be sad, but I just couldn't help but think about the Lord's amazing plan for me, and for all of us. I read a devo in Piper's "Taste and See" from one of my fav passages, Hebrews 11:

"These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city."

Piper then spoke about how God is proud (not ashamed) to be called our God because we desire a better country (heaven) that HE created for us in the first place. It made me think alot about heaven, and if my desire is really for that "better country" all the time. Or am I "thinking of the land from which I had gone out?" Desiring God and His greatness seems to put any of our lame earthly desires to shame, doesn't it?