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?

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!!)

Reformation day

So last night was the Reformation party at our house...it was a massive success. One of the coolest parts for me was having apple cider (I just love the stuff) and watching everyone carve pumpkins for the FIRST time in their lives. Everyone was like...can we carve pumpkins every week? Clint did an awesome message on the reformation...which lead to an awesome Q&A afterwards. Some people who came who weren't Christians couldn't understand that works don't save you, that its grace by faith ALONE that saves. So Clint got to really talk to them about how it is a FREE gift and no matter if you are the best person on the planet, you still deserve eternal punishment cause you have sinned, and it is by believing and trusting in Christ's work on the cross and repenting of your sin that saves you. I think they understood afterwards. What a blessing to be apart of these students lives!! Afterwards we sang "A mighty fortress is our God"

The pumpkin in front won the carving contest....hey we only had 5 pumpkins....but at least we found some to carve considering its Spring here!! It was actually cold enough to have a fire...so we lit up our house with just candles and paper lanterns and lights. It looked really cool and kinda spooky!

Cornerstone!

Pumpkins

Ok, so our Cornerstone group is gonna have a Reformation Day party tomorrow, and I went looking EVERYWHERE for pumpkins to carve. Considering its spring, and no one really celebrates Halloween, it was a tough search. I finally found 2, but they were 15 dollars each (yikes!!) And then I called around, and it turns out a lady in our congregation had some growing in her backyard!! (They are smaller than normal, and not super orange, but I think it will still work right?) We will find out tomorrow!

I baked 2 pumpkin pies for the occasion...no one here has ever had a pumpkin pie, or apple cider, so it will be fun for them to try (thanks to the team for bringing out those heavy cans of pumpkin!!!) They don't really look perfect, but it is my first attempt, and they smell good :)

And we had our 2nd scan of the baby yesterday, and saw its arms and legs and heartbeat, it looks more and more like a little baby! :) They did a test by measuring a fold in the back of the neck and said that it is low risk for Downs Syndrome. So "baby Lime" is alive and kicking! We saw it jump a couple of times, it was hilarious!

Clint has been preaching through the book of Ruth, and it has just hit me how amazingly sovereign our God is through everything in life. Here Ruth was a widow, a foreigner, with no hope of re-marrying anyone, and as the text says she "just so happened" to cross Boaz's field and glean there...the only person PERFECT for her who could be her redeemer. The Lord's timing is perfect in our every step, and in every decision we make He guides our steps. Our God is the best!!

toes....

So this is what our baby's feet are supposed to look like this week (11th week!) Amazing....so much detail down to each toe! You can pray for me cause I get "afternoon sickness"...and its hard to keep up with everything that needs to get done (especially cooking...its sooo hard to cook meat, the smell of anything cooking kills me!) but I keep thinking about how its soo good that I feel sick cause it is a good sign in the pregnancy....and I have it alot better than other women!! The Lord is truely good, I can't believe He is granting us this little gift! We truely are fearfully and wonderfully made. This week its "baby plum"....last week "baby walnut". I can't believe its the size of a plum already, I'm not even showing yet!

Anyone have any name suggestions for baby Archer?!? :) Please comment!!

Safari

This week Clint's parents took us on a safari game drive to Hluhluwe (pronounced Sha-shlu-ee), about a 3 hour drive from Durban.

Clint and I infront of the "don't get out of the car....you might get eaten!" sign.

Both sets of parents/ in-laws and us! :) The rondovels we stayed in are behind us...they were beautiful!!

One of the "Big Five" animals you wanna see in South Africa...a Rhino!! (the others are Elephant, Buffalo, Lion and Leopard). Check this things horn out, its HUGE! It had just gotten out of a nice mud bath...mmm.

Ok, so can you spot it?!? Its a cheetah with its back to us. (right in the middle) There were like 6 cars all looking at this cheetah...they call it a "cat jam" here :) but it was sooooo far that this is the closest my camera could get. But it was still really awesome... Cheetah sightings are really rare!

Zebra crossing (literally)

This is a good perspective of what its like...your in your car and the animals are...well, right there! These our two rhino crossing the road.

More photos next time! :)

City of Durban

Sunset over the city of Durban...pretty big for "rural Africa" huh? This is the harbor view. Click on the photo for a close up view :) Me and my dad. Its funny that you never really do the "touristy" things...like going to actually look at the city of Durban until you've got people to take around. Like I think I never saw the Hollywood sign until I was 21 when there were some friends from overseas who wanted to see it!

Me and my mom

Our Anniversary...

Our 4 year anniversary

Clint took me to the revolving restaurant in Durban for our anniversary. Its 34 stories tall, and revolves so you can see the city of Durban in an hour, the view was amazing! The food was awesome too, its a family owned Italian restaurant, and the owner comes personally to take your order.

So on the table it says that its one of 37 revolving restaurants in the world. We figured we've been to 3 (L.A., USA. Vancouver, Canada. and Durban, South Africa). We made it our goal to try and hit as many as we can in our lifetime. This was the coolest one I've been to though cause you get to see the harbor, the ships out at sea, and then the city, so the view changed all the time. I can't believe we've been married 4 whole years!! It just doesn't seem real. Next year we will need a babysitter! Its "Baby Strawberry" now! :)

The city

The Harbor

First scan!

So I had my first "baby Archer" scan today. We've been naming it by its size, so this week it was "baby grape" last week it was "baby rasberry." Your first scan is pretty nerve-wracking cause you never know what they are going to tell you (did the heart stop beating? is it ok?) but it was amazing to actually SEE the baby...and the heartbeat (most of the baby was just a heart beating!!) So now I actually feel like my "morning" (afternoon) sickness isn't just a figment of my imagination. (The head is to the right by the way...the first one always just looks like a blob!!)

My parents arrived safe and sound this week...and my mom actually was there to see my scan today! This is them in front of the "valley of a thousand hills" just a few minutes drive from our house. The view was amazing! My dad got sick this week (with the same flu I got when I first came here, and practically the whole missions team caught while they were here!) but he's starting to feel alot better! Clint's parents are coming down too this week, so it will be the first time all of them have met!! We are all going on a game drive to see African animals at the end of this week.

My parents under "African Thatch"

Church Camp

Church Camp Group Photo (we are on the right!)

Clint with some of the young adults

The sunset from our campsite, pretty awesome huh?

Clint's mad soccer skills

Our whole church did a "barn dance".... I don't think I've laughed this hard in a while watching South Africans learn American barn dances. Yee-haaah!

Our speaker this year was Stuart Olyott. He was so awesome! He spoke on Justification, Adoption, Sanctification and Perseverance. It was so great sitting under awesome preaching and then having him in our home afterwards. What a priveledge!