SCV

One of the coolest parts about going back to LA was attending our old Bible Study SCV. It was awesome to worship together again, and meet all the new SCV'ers!

Our SCV retreat at Shaver Lake. The day after everyone went snowboarding it dumped snow! I didn't get to go boarding cause of baby on board, but the view was still fantastic.

Clint and Secor catching snowflakes

Us in falling snow!
Naomi...she's gotten so big! :)

The last weekend that Sara was a Borntrager, now a Mallon!

The girls threw me the most amazing shower...it was so overwhelming that I could be with everyone from SCV and my old roomates for my shower, it was such a blessing and a gift from the Lord! Blue and brown was the theme, so cute!

Michelle and Jill....two of the girls that came on the missions trip last year to see us in Durbs!

Roomies and friends from UCLA, sooo cool that they could come. Sheryl got me a little UCLA outfit for baby Archer :)

Me and my mom :)

Austin & Merilly
Baby Archer!

I love Paris in the Winter

After a month's vacation we are finally back in our home in SA! So I've been a total slacker blogger so I'm going to start from the beginning! You know the song "I love Paris in the Springtime?" I can't remember if they have a line that says "I love Paris in the Winter" but...I do. I'd never been to Paris, but we had a 1 day layover to LA (how great is our God?) and it was breathtaking, and breathtakingly FREEZING! It actually snowed while we were there, which was absolutely stunning. After being in Africa, you pretty much forget what snow looks like!

Ok, so this is one of the most memorable moments in Paris. We walked from the Louvre to the Arc de Triumph (a very long walk!) and it was so cold that our faces were frozen. We stopped at a little booth French bakery thing called "Paul" and ordered a hot chocolate. It tasted like a pure melted decadent chocolate bar that was smoking hot. Life changing experience! We quickly learned the phrase "chocolate chaud" Yum.

The Louvre. We were there on a Tuesday, walked to the Louvre only to discover a sign that read: the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays. Nuts!

French cheese shop

Arc de Triumph

Clint as the Hunchback of Notre Dame

In the Notre Dame they had the "Book of Life" that you could write your name in. Pretty sad. This is Clint writing the gospel in the "Livre de Vie." It made me grateful that our names are written in the real book of life, not written with human hands... "He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels." Revelation 3:5

You have to pay 2 Euro to light a candle in Notre Dame, and there were hundreds lit.

Me amore!

Archers in LA

I haven't updated in a while cause we are in LA, and usually we keep in contact with peeps in LA over internet, but now we are here...so we aren't online as much. :) Our time has been so amazing so far, and we are sad that its half done! (nuts!) But the coolest part has just been spending time with people we haven't seen in over a year. The Lord blessed us so richly with such deep freindships in LA, and its been so encouraging for both of us to spend hours talking to everyone, and being able to sleep in after chatting till 1 or 2 in the morning! I can't upload my photos yet, but here are a few that were emailed to me (thanks Eric!)

Clints smooth moves on the slopes:

Our awesome bible study retreat, it snowed awesome HUGE snowflakes that morning:

Photo of the day: Our church sign in the fog


Path that leads up to our church, and the jacaranda tree, found all over in SA

I can't believe we will be in California less than a week from now. It seems unreal! This week has been so hectic trying to wrap up things here, that I keep forgetting to look forward to visiting my "home" away from "home" away from "home" (I have no idea what home is anymore!) I love how in 1st Peter he says that its our "stay here on earth" like we are staying in a hotel for a few days, but our real home is heaven. Clint has had 10 counseling appointments in 3 days, and I have been working like crazy trying to do a months worth of work in 1 week so that everything is set up before we leave!

Some photos from the "Africa Conference" that was hosted at our church this week. 40 Zulu pastors came and learned how to better preach the Word. It was pretty awesome to be apart of. Some free books we were expecting for the pastors arrived the day of the conference from England, so the Lord was gracious!








And this is Tobi, being...well, Tobi. She is so lazy, that if you pile anything on top of her she doesn't even bother to move...just keeps napping. She napped like this for an hour today under our laundry.

Nursery ideas...we want to go with a nautical/beach theme with boats.

We just got back from our trip to Johannesburg where we heard DA Carson and Mark Dever preach. Clint's chuffed about his autographed copy of DA Carsons book, and even more chuffed with being on a first name basis with Mark :) But besides that the preaching was amazing. We were so encouraged and challenged by the Word! DA Carson has a way of taking a familiar passage (like John 1) and making it come so alive it seems like you'd never read it before.



Mark Dever

DA Carson

We also got to see Clint's family! Clint's sis is engaged and is getting married this March

Latest photos of baby Archer! We confirmed this week that it is definately a boy! The 4d scan is amazing. I went in a bit to "early" for the 4d scan, so the photos aren't the best they could be, but they are still awesome. We got to chat to the ultrasound lady, who said she thinks the abortion rate/laws will drop significantly because of how awesome the scans are. Just look at that face, and in many countries you can still get an abortion at this far along. I start crying just thinking about it! Clint can now feel the baby kick super strong, and for Christmas we got a stroller & car seat from Clint's parents who run a 'Baby Buzniz' so we keep saying we can't wait to stroll him around!

New Years

Happy New Year! We welcomed in the new year with our church family. It was awesome. Last year we knew no one so we listened as we half fell asleep to the bar across the street shout "3...2..1....Happy New Year!" It was rather depressing. :) Our church family is awesome, and this year definatley made up for the last!

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?