Amos is here!

Well, I promised my next blog would be "African." What is more African than my new nephew who was born Monday in Johannesburg, South Africa!! His name is Amos Jude and he weighed 8 pounds and was 22 inches long. He joins big sisters Isabel, Abigail, and big brother Isaac!! Welcome Amos! I can't wait to hold you one day!

Just some catching up...

Jessica OH so politely pointed out to me yesterday that I am a blog slacker. So I'll give you a quick update on our lives.

Last week was Youth Camp. Our church went to Falls Creek in Oklahoma for the first time ever--the largest youth camp in the nation! It was incredible!! To watch 7,200students praising God was amazing. To see our church take 29 kids to camp, many brand-new Christians, was amazing. To see students clapping and yelling when people walked down the aisle to be saved was amazing. To see 3 of our students accept Christ was amazing. To see Jessica get to be on the invitation team and lead 3 people to Christ was amazing! It was an awesome week.

Me and Jessica at Camp



Caedmon had his echocardiogram yesterday, and our doctor told us if we didn't hear back from her immediately then we can assume that nothing is wrong, and we haven't heard anything yet, so we're assuming all is well. Thanks for praying!! My pregnancy is going well, but I'm measuring much bigger than I should be...so we may do another ultrasound to check the due date again.

My kids are hilarious....as usual. I was awakened this morning to Caedmon screaming. He had climbed into the dryer and Cambree had shut the door. She was standing at the door looking very innocent while he was yelling "Cambwee!!!!! Let me out Cambwee!!!!" It was amusing. Cambree, meanwhile, has these huge, gorgeous blue eyes that get noticed everywhere we go. Plus, she likes to say "Hi!!" to everyone we see. So a trip to Walmart is very interesting with her. Yesterday a lady stopped us and said "Oh! You're hair is so pretty and look at those big blue eyes! You're so pretty!!" Cambree (20 months old) responded with "yeah...."

Cambree in attack mode


That should catch you up on our news for awhile! I promise my next blog will be "African." :)

Cow Appreciation Day

We do really weird things in our family...

Did you know that today was Cow Appreciation Day?? If you dressed from head to hoof like a cow, then you received a Free Combo Meal at Chick-Fil-A!!! (I guess I should have posted about this sooner so you would have known!!) So we loaded up some of our youth and our family and headed to Chick-Fil-A where our family of 4 ate for FREE!!!! :)

The early days in Zambia...

I've been looking through those 3 ring binders I told you about, the ones that have every email we wrote while in Zambia as missionaries! I found this entry, dated November 20, 2003, 9 days after we arrived in Zambia (after having never left the USA):

"Today we began ministry! We headed off at 3pm with a soccer ball, a Frisbee, and water. We walked a long ways down to the school and saw lots of people on teh way. When we got to the big field there were about 4 kids. blu kicked the soccer ball back and forth to me and then we kicked it to the kids. Within about 3 minutes there were about 100 kids on the field. Most of the boys played soccer but the girls hung around me. A man came over and Blu started sharing the Gospel with him and trying to find out what he believed. All the girls were looking at me so I threw the frisbee at them. They all screamed SO loud! That little game whnt on for about 2.5 hours!! It was fun. They spoke VERY little English. I couldn't understand any of their names but 2 (out of about 50!) Precious and Caroline. Meanwhile, after Blu's conversation with that one man, who is supposed to be at church this Sunday, he began to talk with some youth guys, about age 19. They all wanted to know about America and wanted to marry American women! They wanted to know how Zambia compares to America. Blu just preached to them about how many Americans are rich but not happy. They said "WHY??" He said "my friend, they do not have Jesus!" One of those guys may come to church Sunday too.

It was neat to look over some of those first experiences, when everything is so exciting and new and you look straight into the hearts of the kids and just see their innocence, and their hopelessness. Makes me want to go back!