Along the Way to the Bay

Thanksgiving

2009-11-22T20:33:00.004-05:00

We are getting pretty excited for Thanksgiving this year! Of course, those who know me (Rebekah) know that the fall is my FAVORITE time of year, so Thanksgiving coinciding with that just makes it even more fun. For the first time in four years, I am not in charge of the turkey, so I'm taking it as a welcome break! We are headed to Fulsom, near Sacramento, to spend Thanksgiving weekend with some great friends from church and their family. We're planning on eating a lot of course (all P90x approved of course!), playing a lot of Wii, I'm sure some football watching will go on, taking walks in the woods around their house, and on Friday we're headed to a cool place up their named Apple Hill. It's an apple orchard where you can pick/buy apples and apple juice/cider. I've never been but heard it's beautiful, especially this time of year with the leaves changing. As we head home on Friday, we are also stopping in Modesto to see some great friends who recently moved back to Charleston, but are visiting for the holiday. I can't WAIT to see them! South Bay is hosting a Thanksgiving event of their own this year at one of the clubhouses here. We invited everyone who wants to come and celebrate Thanksgiving together. A lot of the staff families will be there, and I have to say I'm a little sad we will be missing out on that part, and being with our new church family. Man what a difference a year makes. Last year this time, it was just the 6 staff families, and we didn't hardly know a soul. We had just had our first preview service for the church, and we celebrated in a very small mostly Southern way :). This year, we're renting out a clubhouse, having tons of people come to eat together, and it will definitely be multi-cultural. Everyone will be bringing food to eat that is from their own country. Here is a picture of last Thanksgiving. We'll be sure to post some after this Thanksgiving.

What are your Thanksgiving plans?

It's about time...So,

2009-08-25T20:01:00.006-04:00

I received a friendly reminder that we haven't updated in a while... If you notice the last time we updated, it was in May - the beginning of summer. The beginning of PURE craziness! I know it's like this for almost everyone, longer days, working more, vacations, visitors/guests, weekends packed to the brim - but for some reason, starting a church fitting in the middle of all that makes it seem busier! :) If you couldn't already tell, life has been very hectic. We have had an absolute blast this summer. Here are just a few things that have been going on -

1. We've had about 8 different people come and visit. What a blast! We have become expert tour guides in San Francisco and surrounding areas, and really have felt like we're getting somewhere in tackling how to get around in this giant place. There are still more places we want to see, but we'll get to it eventually. We've felt so blessed to have everyone come, and so many people have been a huge part of our support. It's been awesome for all of them to see South Bay first hand, experience what it's like on Sunday morning (or a typical weekend for that matter), set up church with us, and meet some of our new friends! Here are a few pictures!

2. We went on vacation home to South Carolina. Man was it hot! That's all I could say all week!! The humidity was almost more than I could take - I could feel it as soon as I walked off the plane. You wouldn't have thought I grew up there. :) But it is funny how easily you forget what it really feels like. We've been so spoiled by this amazing weather out here. We had a great time visiting family and friends, jam packing every second of every day with something. We had a fun time out on the water with Rebekah's parent's new jet skis and visiting some of our favorite Charleston haunts. We definitely hit up the REAL barbecue at Sticky Fingers, had some sweet tea, cupcakes at Sugar Bakeshop, and a lot more that we probably shouldn't have! :) we had such a great time seeing our friends, and meeting new ones. It was like we never left!

3. For the past five weeks, South Bay Church has been having it's services outside! The school we meet in was doing some pretty hefty cleaning over the summer and using the gym (where we meet) as it's storage facility. It's the only place in the country that we can get away with this in the middle of the summer, and still be ok. We set up a very large tent, toned down our music to acoustic style, and just worshiped together in the great outdoors! It has been an incredible time of challenge and growth for our church, and we are so excited about the fall! Last week was our last week meeting outside, and we had 217 people attend!! Lots of new guests. We feel so blessed. We have talked about possibly doing a few outside services every summer because it has been so much fun.

We hope you are all doing well! We want to hear from you! What has been the most exciting part of your summer?

Beyond Words

2009-05-03T22:47:00.003-04:00

I'm speechless today as I write this. Today was South Bay's first baptism service. What an incredible thing to witness. We had people sign up for a few weeks before the service stating their interest to be baptized, and had 9 people signed up. During the service, Andy spoke about the importance of baptism, the reason we do it, and the things that hold us back from taking the step. At the end, he challenged everyone to take the amazing first step in their walk with Christ to become baptized. We had 18 people come forward to be baptized today!!! It was amazing. The excitement in the place was overwhelming. People were clapping, hooting and hollering like a true celebration! We were in awe as some of the people who we have been praying for came forward to get baptized. Four people from our small group decided to take the step of faith, and we were in tears as all 18 of them were baptized. It's amazing to hear the stories, the different walks of life that each person has come from. Anything from growing up Catholic and now choosing to become baptized as a Christian, those who were once Buddhists and only in the last few weeks have made decisions for Christ, to a child of a Hindu priest and their son who will now no longer be considered part of the family because they were baptized as Christians. What an amazing thing to witness. Archie and I feel so blessed to be a part of this church and to be in service to our Jesus! We'll have some pictures soon, but for now, here's a video that Archie put together for today with some of the amazing stories of a few of the people who were baptized today!

Baptism 09 from South Bay Church on Vimeo.

Please be in prayer for those who were baptized today. Pray for protection and continued commitment! Thank you all for your prayers, support and encouragement!

2009-04-17T00:37:00.005-04:00

Hey Blog fans. I know its been a little while but we wanted to catch you up on what's been going on with us out here in California. For the past couple months we have been making California more our home. We have had a lot of visitors from back home to help us out during big weekends for the church. We even had a visit from Bekah's parents last month which was great. The church has been going really well. This past weekend for easter we hosted an easter egg hunt for our community and had 2000 people attend!! It was incredible! We had some mission teams come in and help us stuff 6000 plastic eggs by hand with candy. We even did a few Willy Wonka style golden tickets that kids could turn in for really cool prizes. Things like tickets to a Giants game, build a bear gift cards and various other fun toys. It was a blast to be able to show our community the love of Christ and ask nothing in return. We had all walks of people there- Hindu's, Muslims, all receiving a touch of kindness from Christ. We had planned this for months but it worked out to be good timing because the week prior that same community experienced a major blow. 5 people, including 2 children had been shot in this community of million+ dollar homes. Things like this just don''t happen here. So it was nice to get people back out of their homes to laugh and enjoy the sun and of course, get some candy. :) Here are some pics:

Our church is now about 10 weeks old and we have been running about 130-170 every sunday. We have been so blessed by all the volunteers and people willing to give of their time to make South Bay Church happen. We held 2 Easter services this past sunday and had 285 people! We had 9 first time decisions for Christ, and 35 first time guests! It was an incredible weekend for us as a team!

Coming up this next week, our pastoral team will be heading to LA for the first time since we've been here to attend a Christian Leadership Conference called Catalyst http://www.catalystwestcoast.com/ We are really excited to get out of town for a bit and get inspired and renewed. I will try to post some pics from my phone this week, it should be pretty incredible.

On a personal level, Bekah is still enjoying her job and traveling around to homes to work with kids birth to 3yrs old. It takes a special person to do what she does. I joke with her that I'm going to have to live in her mansion in heaven (because she's such a good person). Right now she has a new OT shadowing her as she's driving around and will soon be in a new office space during the week. I have been continuing to take guitar lesson from a friend and improving my skills. I have been playing more lead guitar on Sunday mornings which has been a goal of mine, instead of playing acoustic. Also, we needed to buy a car because Bekah uses ours for work and I have been borrowing a car from our Pastor, Andy since Sept. We recently got church offices and I now have a need for my own transportation since we are no longer working out of our homes. We have been saving since Sept to buy a second car in cash. So this past week I found a car that I have always wanted and it was at a great price and since I only drive around town... I got it. A 67 Ford Mustang. I've only had it a few days but already have met many people who want to talk about the car. Rebekah and I were praying yesterday and we were saying that Jesus wants to use anything we will give Him to reach people, including a Mustang. Already it has been a great in-roads to build relationships with people.

Thanks so much for all your prayers. We are excited about what God is doing here among us. We are seeing many people come to Christ and lives being radically changed for His sake. We are so thankful to be giving our lives to His calling.

South Bay Launch!

2009-02-14T20:17:00.007-05:00

We are so excited to share with you about the launch of South Bay Church! First of all, I have to apologize that it's the Saturday after the launch and we are just now updating, but we really do have a valid excuse! :) Besides the fact that our life will now be crazy since we are starting weekly services, my parent's, Cal and Tina were in town for the week, so we have been spending time with them. It was so great to have them here in order to witness this amazing event with us and celebrate the launch of South Bay!

So, our launch started at 7am Pacific time. The launch team arrived to help unload the truck as well as the two mission's teams we had in town to help (one from Lake Point church in Texas and another from Pleasant Valley church in Kansas City, MO). Everyone helped unload the truck, which we have already gotten down to a science. We are now able to unload the entire thing in only 20 minutes. Everyone is assigned a specific job, and knows exactly what they are supposed to do. Things are pushed and moved all around the room in what appears to be chaos, but really everyone knows their exact purpose! We joke about literally working while stepping on top of each other! By about 8:20, all the instruments and stage, chairs, and most of the room was completely set up. The lighting and stage design stuff was finished a little later. At 8:30 we started practicing with the band, and we were able to practice for about an hour! This is a blessing, because in the preview services, we have felt rushed and haven't had enough time to practice. We ran tech rehearsals in order to make sure everyone knew what they were supposed to be doing and video's were started on time! All the volunteers were amazing, knowing exactly what needed to be done and doing it as well as stepping up and filling in any position they could!

Archie opening the truck - it's still dark!

the team arriving!

People began arriving around 10, and the place started to fill up. We had a lot of new people, and all of the team was able to talk to a bunch of new faces and help them feel welcome. It was a very exciting service, and the crowd could feel the excitement too, often times clapping and shouting with us in the celebration of starting this new church!

-All in all we had 279 people in attendance last Sunday morning, including over 30 children!
-We had over 65 first time guests, and a lot of returning visitors from our preview services.
-There were 17 people who recommitted their life to Christ as well as 9 people who made first time commitments to Christ.
-There were 20 people who indicated they wanted to be a part of a volunteer team
-and 40 people who indicated wanting to be a part of a small group!

We are so excited for this opportunity! And what a blessing it was to have my parents here for this event! They were here for over a week, and we loved every minute of it! We were able to spend some downtime just at the house, they went and visited a few placed while we had to work, and then on Thursday and Friday, Archie and I took off work and traveled with them around the area some. We really enjoyed them being able to visit out here, see where we live, and allow them to meet some of our new friends. It's hard to believe it had been 6 months since we had seen them. They left this morning, and we miss them already!

So, tomorrow is Sunday again, and we have church again! We are definitely looking forward to it, but already tired thinking about it - but a good tired! Please pray for us as we begin this weekly adventure. All of this is possible only with the grace and blessing of God on us and our church! We greatly appreciate your support, encouragement and prayers.

As a last request, We could really use some prayers for band members. Because we are so new, we don't have a band really. Right now, we are just using a lot of band members from neighboring churches who are willing to help us out occasionally. We are so blessed to have them help, but we really need something more permanent, and something we can rely on every week. Please be in prayer with us, that God would send people to our church with musical abilities to help us out in this area! Thanks so much!

We love all of you, and look forward to updating you on the progress of our church!

Prayer

2009-02-04T20:43:00.002-05:00

If you have time, we would love if you would consider partnering with us in prayer for our GRAND OPENING!!! South Bay Church is having it's official launch service this Sunday, February 8th. We are once again participating in 48 hours of prayer leading up to the event and would love it if you could be a part of this. Here are the directions:

Enter our google calendar here: https://www.google.com/calendar/render
Login with: southbayprayer
Password: prayforsouthbay
Find a 30-minute slot that is not taken and write your name and location in it.

Just remember if you are in South Carolina or not on the West Coast, the time listed is Pacific time, so if you sign up at 6:30, you would actually be praying at 9:30.

Here are some of the things we are in need of prayer for:

1. That the mailers we have sent out would be received with open hearts and that people would respond - we have already been getting a lot of phone calls and emails in response to these mailers.

2. That the staff of South Bay Church would be able to accomplish what God has called us here to do. This is such a critical time, and the enemy is here to steal, kill, and destroy! Please keep us in your prayers!

3. The attacks of the enemy would not be able to harm what we are doing this weekend. In the past, at preview services, we have had people sick, printers and computers jam/crash, and all sorts of attacks. Already this week, one of the members on our launch team was playing basketball with the group and tore his ACL, and they just lost their insurance due to a job loss! Please keep all of our launch team families in your prayers as well as that nothing would get in the way of God's Word being spread to His people.

4. We have 2 mission's teams and several visitors in from all over the country that will be arriving for the launch. Pray for their safety in traveling, as well as while they are here.

5. Pray for the hearts of the people at the launch. We desire to see God's hand move in a mighty way! We are so excited about the number of people who will be in attendance who may have never heard the Gospel of Christ!

Thank you everyone for your prayers and encouragement! We love each of you guys and can't wait to share what God is going to do this weekend!!!

The Crazy Cat Lady

2009-01-15T00:36:00.003-05:00

Just wanted to let you all know that we had an amazing service this past Sunday! Thank you for your time, dedication, prayers, and support. We could not be taking this amazing step of faith without you guys. We had 188 people attend the service, 1 person make a commitment to Christ and 10 people recommit their lives to Christ. What exciting and amazing news to see how God is moving mightily in this area. Everything went smoothly, and we really did a lot of hard work! We can't believe that the launch of South Bay church is only one month away.... where did time go??? :) We are so excited, but already tired thinking about going to weekly services. It will be so amazing. We have been super busy here in the prep and working. Again, thank you for all your support.

On a side note, just wanted to let you know that we have officially become the crazy cat lady! On our back porch about 3 weeks ago, we noticed this:

Archie put out the blanket that you see because he felt bad for him. We have never fed him though. but he kept coming back.... then a week later, we now have this one and a black cat taking up residence on our back porch.... cats, cats, go away, before you bring ten more!!! ;)

Pray for South Bay

2009-01-07T14:15:00.004-05:00

Hey everyone, we're doing a 48 hour prayer chain again leading up to our 3rd and FINAL preview service. If you want to sign up, follow the directions below on how to sign up for a time. We really covet all your prayers for this weekend, and we are waiting in expectation of good things from God! If you are on the East Coast, when you sign up on the calendar, be aware that the time is West Coast time - 3 hours behind. So, for example - if you sign up for the 3am time slot - it's really 6am your time!!! So that would help us out alot :) ....

Go to: www.google.com/calendar/render

Sign in: southbayprayer@gmail.com
Password: prayforsouthbay

Thanks guys, and we'll update soon

Merry Christmas

2008-12-26T14:29:00.005-05:00

Merry Christmas from Sunny California! :) It's been awhile since our last post, so I'll try to give a quick and simple update that you won't still be reading till the new year! :)

2nd Preview:
The second preview was amazing! Everything went so much smoother this time around. Our set up was quicker, our volunteers were on top of it! We could not ask to be more blessed with such amazing volunteers and launch team! And we had a wonderful missions team from Pleasant Valley church in Kansas City, MO. They were amazing as well! What a wonderful team of people with such great servants hearts willing to jump in and do whatever needed to be done. We made some great friends that weekend! Overall, we had 154 people attend the service and 2 people make commitments to follow Christ. I feel like I have to explain the attendance numbers a little! :) Last preview we had 175 people come, but about 40 of those people were volunteers from a local supporting church of ours. This time, that church was hosting their own annual Christmas production, so most of those people were involved up there. So, we had less overall numbers, but a greater number of people from the community and the city of Santa Clara! Praise God! Here is a picture from the morning (sorry it's not very good)
Anniversary - On December 14th, (the same day as our second preview, ha) we celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary! we could not think of a better way to celebrate than to be serving the Lord together! We made this decision together to follow Christ and move to the Silicon Valley, so it was the perfect way to spend the day - serving Christ and living out His calling on our life! We did decide we were going to go to dinner as well, but haven't been able to do so yet! :)

Christmas - well, this is our first Christmas away from our parents, and to think it's completely on the opposite side of the coast as them. We went to a church about 30 minutes away for Christmas eve service with Andy and Stacie and then went to dinner. On Christmas morning, we celebrated with each other, doing our normal traditions of reading the story together, eating orange danish rolls, and opening gifts. It was quite different this year, because on top of opening our gifts to each other, we opened gifts from friends and family all right then. It felt weird, but we still had a really special Christmas morning. We spent the rest of the day with the Wood family, eating meals together, playing Wii, and just really enjoying each other's company and making wonderful memories of our first Christmas in California. Of course we miss our family and friends this time of year, but it truly was a very special Christmas. Here are a few pictures from Christmas Eve, Christmas day, and a few of Capo (cause we haven't put him on here in a while! :) )

Christmas Eve - all dressed up

The church we went to for Christmas Eve - Westgate church
Archie showing off his yoga moves on the Wii fit
Believe it or not, it's been cold in California the last week or so, so we decided to bundle Capo up!
He looks thrilled!

Merry Christmas everyone. We pray blessings on you all, and miss you dearly!

Christmas is here (and the second preview!)

2008-12-10T22:11:00.006-05:00

Christmas, quite possibly one of my favorite times of year, is here again! Of course, this year it's quite different since we are in California. This will be my first Christmas away from my family. I've never not been with my parents, sister, and her family on Christmas - or the week after. We normally go on a vacation the week after to the beach. So, I'll definitely be missing it this year, but we are also excited about starting some new family traditions here, and continuing with some of our old ones that we have always done - just in a new state! :) We went and got our first Californian Noble Fir Christmas tree. It smells incredible, and I quite like it! Now, decorating the tree has always been a huge family tradition on the Woods side - eggnog, Christmas music, appetizers, the whole family, turn off the lights accept for the Christmas tree lights, maybe have a movie on in the background. I always remember it as such a fun time growing up - I especially liked to dance to the Christmas music! :) Archie and I have continued this tradition, and always made it a really fun event. Even though we just go to Lowe's to pick out the tree (we went to a tree farm with a real horse drawn carriage in the snow in Omaha growing up), it is still so much fun!!! This year was no exception - We went, picked out the tree, took pictures, decorated, sang and danced to Christmas music (I recommend Christmas remixed: Holiday classics re-grooved for something fun to dance to, and Frank Sinatra: A Jolly Christmas - Great stuff) The two workers at Lowe's asked us if this was our first Christmas - HA! I said, no, we'll actually be celebrating FIVE in a few weeks.... Archie said, I hope they'll always say that!

We celebrated Thanksgiving here, and Archie just celebrated his 31st b-day on December 1st. We celebrated by all of us and some new friends going to Cheesecake Factory for his birthday, and all of the families cooked and we went to the Santos' house for Thanksgiving. It was a lot of fun, and overall had a great day! Speaking of celebrations, we will be celebrating our FIVE year anniversary on December 14th! I can't believe we've been married for five years already. It is amazing, and we were saying the other day how each of us have changed so much since we got married, but it is so much a result of the other. I feel so blessed to have married such an amazing man! And to know that we are following in God's direction together makes me feel so great!
Thanksgiving at the Santos'
The yummy cheesecake - they even put his name on the plate
Archie Blowing out the candle
We found the perfect one! :)
The Lowe's man cutting off the end
Christmas tree - sorry it's a little blurry!
Christmas table decorations!

So, our second preview is this coming Sunday, December 14th. We are so excited! We want to encourage you guys to really help us in this effort and pray for the meeting this Sunday! We need your help in as many prayers as we can get! We are hosting another 48 hours of prayer leading up to this event. We have a team of people here, hoping to have a lot of you, and other people throughout the nation sign up in increments of 30 minutes for the 48 hours preceding our service, to cover the service in prayer. Here is what our pastor, Andy, had to say about it:

"Won't it be awesome this Sunday to realize that there are some people whose eternal destiny will change and we get to be a part of that! There is nothing like it! I look forward to watching this vision continue to unfold as we serve together as a team. Please join me in believing God for incredible things this weekend. He is capable of so much more than we can imagine. I can see that so many of you have already signed up for 30 minutes slots on the prayer chain. If you have yet to do so please find a slot and pray for 30 minutes between Friday morning and Sunday morning. I will be praying for you as you invite your friends and get the word out about Sunday. I believe we are going to continue to build momentum and see God do even greater things in our midst."

You can be a part of this vision also, by helping us pray... here's what you do:

Go to http://www.google.com/calendar
Sign in- username: southbayprayer password: prayforsouthbay
Click on calendar link at the top of the screen.
Find one of the 30 minute time slots and put your name there! (remember that all times are pst)

Love you guys and can't wait to share the amazing things God has done here this weekend! We'll update with any other news this week also!

The Big Day

2008-11-26T12:53:00.008-05:00

Wow we have been pretty slack in quite possibly the most exciting time of journey here, sorry! Last week we had our very first public worship service for our new church. We sent out 32 thousand mail pieces to homes in the area. We had a mission team come into town from Texas and they spent 2 days going around the community putting door hangers on doors to invite people to our service. We all put countless hours into our preparation. We flew most of our band and sound guy in from South Carolina. We had a local church give us almost 50 volunteers to come and help us serve and it was amazing! We had 175 people show up! And 5 people give their lives to Christ for the first time! That is really amazing for Northern California. I (Archie) was so proud to have been used by God in such an exciting way. We are meeting at an Elementary school in the area so we have to set up and tear down every time we meet. That morning we started loading in everything at 7am for our 10:30 service and we still ran out of time for a few things, but nothing major. It is just one of those things that will get better and faster every time we do it. When I got up on stage to lead worship I and I said "Welcome to South Bay Church!" a cheer went up from the whole place, it was very exciting. Worship went well and people connected to the songs but for me it didn't feel like home yet. I felt like I was just leading worship at someone else's church. That morning from 7 right up till 10:30 I was busy unloading and directing people to plug things in and move this here and that there, I really didn't have time to process it all because I had been so busy making sure that this whole thing was going to come off :) I was in charge of buying all the equipment! So I was looking at this thing from a very different way than everyone else. Like did I buy enough extension cords (by the way, I didn't) It wasn't until I sat down after worship to listen to Andy speak that it hit me. A great sense of accomplishment and joy came over me as I looked around the room at all the people that had come that we didn't know, we've only been here 10 weeks, and curtains surrounding the room, and the cool stage, and Andy up there speaking and my guitars on stage, and all the sacrifice that we had made to come here- It hit me- this is our church! This is what we came here for! This is our church! It was amazing to be in that room and to feel God and all the potential that He has for this place. The thought even hit me on sunday, "we are going to quickly outgrow this place!

Because our first church service went so well we have been getting calls and emails from all over the country from other church planters wanting to know how we did it and what steps we took to get there. We have taken a statement from a popular author and made it our own. "Work like it depends on you and pray like it depends on God." We followed some strategies, read books, worked very hard, and asked a lot of questions to a lot of wise men but at the end of the day God is the one who blessed us. If I can quote another book we're reading called Go Big, it's kind of the christian version of From Good to Great, It says that "God will give you all you need and more if make it about His kingdom and not about you." I can honestly say that this is the heart of our team. To make it about His kingdom. Don't get me wrong, we were really jazzed about having 125 people from the community come, but there are 7 million people in the bay area and 95% of them don't know Christ. We still have a lot of work to do. I pray that we never allow it to be about us or about our comfort as a church.

One really cool thing that we did as a new church that I was really proud of was that we received about $2000 in our first offering and we as a church decided to give it all away. We are giving half to serve those that serve our community like, the police, fire fighters etc. and the other half went to some organizations that help the needy in our community. That felt great to say to the world and to our community and the people who came into our church with a wary eye toward Christianity to say "Christ came to serve and not be served and we are here do to the same."

We will have some professional photos of our first service up soon, we haven't gotten them back yet. But here are a few to give you an idea. These are right before the service started. You can see me up on stage, and Bekah on the keys to the left, Marion from Charleston playing Bass,my brother Sam is hidden behind me on drums and Filipe is bending down tucking something under the carpet at the last minute with 33 secs left before the start of service- see I told you it was close!

On a more personal note, I have lost 12 lbs by running and switching to diet drinks and splenda in my coffee instead of sugar,and I have started recording some original music on my new computer (nothing to show yet but hopefully soon) Bekah is also lookin' skinny these days and liking her new job working with families in their homes. We are missing family and friends a lot. Thank you to those of you who ask about us and pray for us. We love you and cannot thank you enough for believing in us and for your prayers.

Archie

New website!

2008-11-10T22:58:00.001-05:00

Check out the new and improved, updated South Bay website - southbaychurch.org

ONE WEEK!

2008-11-10T00:36:00.004-05:00

Sorry for the break between updates! We'll post a longer one soon - lots of good things to update on! :) Just wanted to post real quickly and ask for your prayers. We are having our first Preview Service exactly one week from today!!!! We are so excited... lots of preparation, prayer, and energy has gone into this event - and it's been something all three families have been envisioning since the beginning stages of this - even before moving to California! Please pray this week during your prayer times. We are praying for the people we have met to come, the time of worship to portray who we are as a church as well as for people to connect with God, and lastly for those who come to have a welcoming experience and see this as their home. We are sending out 30,000 mailers to the community this week, and they are top notch! Very professional looking. We are very excited to see what God is going to do.
If you are interested in becoming a part of our prayer team, this weekend we will be conducting a 48 hour prayer! I will post the link at the bottom of the google calendar, where you can sign up for a 30 minute block of time to commit to pray for this first preview service. How powerful to know that leading up to our event there have been people praying for 48 hours straight! Please consider being a part of this - if nothing else, the East Coasters can take the 6am - 9am times and save us from getting up at three in the morning!!!! ;) We are also having our launch team here pray! Thanks again.
Google Calender -
Login - southbayprayer@gmail.com
password - prayforsouthbay
P.S. the picture is the sermon picture that will be on the mailer and the topic of Andy's message the first meeting.

Feature

2008-10-24T01:28:00.002-04:00

Anybody watch the new show 11th Hour??? It was my first time seeing it, and I only watched it because of the preview, but our new home was featured. San Jose, Cupertino, and Palo Alto were all spotted in the show. The mountains, vineyards, and everything. Thought it was kind of cool! :) The show is sort of like CSI, and it was actually pretty good!

Our Big Backyard

2008-10-19T19:54:00.003-04:00

So, yesterday evening, Archie and Andy (our head pastor) went to Las Vegas to observe a church plant there that is completely mobile. I dropped them off at the airport... the San Francisco airport. it was definitely an adventure. there are so many lanes, and people, and signs are constantly telling you which way to go. But luckily I made it! It took me about thirty minutes or so to get back home from dropping them off, and it was still pretty early, so I felt somewhat adventurous. Many of you who read this know I like to run, and someone here told me that they had this great trail a few miles down the road from where we live. I figured since I already had been very adventurous, why not discover something else new about our city. It was like the car took over and immediately took a left off the interstate instead of a right. I drove for a while, not seeing anything except for tons of buildings as part of a water treatment plant, and thought, maybe I was wrong, and almost turned around, but something inside of me made me keep going. Just when I thought, I was going to turn around, I saw it! I knew it had to be it. It was BEAUTIFUL! In fact, it wasn't just a trail, but it's actually part of a wildlife reserve and a bird sanctuary. I pulled into the parking lot just at sunset! It was amazing. Luckily, I had my camera on me, so I hopped out really quickly and shot a few pictures just before the sun went behind the mountains, but a lot of the birds flew off. I happened to snap a few. I just couldn't believe this was so close to me. It's gorgeous. And to think, I was going to just go home!!! I have to pick them up again tonight, I wonder what other kind of adventures I can find! :)

Beautiful lake and sunset

You can see the birds flocking in the distance. I couldn't get them to come closer, I even called for them. ;)
Little baby birdies! they flew away too.

Happy Birthday Stacie!

2008-10-14T23:09:00.004-04:00

Today is Stacie's birthday! Just wanted to wish her a very happy birthday and a wonderful year full of blessings! This morning, Mandy and I surprised her while she was at Starbucks and took her a giant card. Then we were able to spend some girl time just chatting. It was really nice. Then all the families went to Macaroni Grill to celebrate! We had a wonderful time and it was so great to celebrate her! I made a giant chocolate cake since she likes chocolate, and it was really yummy!

Me with the giant cake!

Stacie cutting her birthday cake

The whole gang celebrating at Macaroni Grill

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STACIE!!! WE wish you many more to come...............

2008-10-13T14:10:00.016-04:00

What a fun week! It has been so busy here. You can tell we have begun a new phase in being here, because we are really beginning to get busy. This week has been filled with meeting new friends and neighbors, continuing to explore our area more, and visiting with good friends! We are continuing to build our launch team and our meetings on Sunday nights have been good. We usually have about 20 adults coming, which is a great start! We are so excited to continue to see that number grow as we continue with launch meetings, meet people who are interested, and begin preview services in FOUR WEEKS! That's so crazy. The launch meetings on Sunday night have consisted of Archie leading the group in a few songs, Andy speaking and ministering to the group, and Filipe praying and sharing from his heart a little as well. We have a time of fellowship before and after, and have children playing together in the other room. We are getting used to the quick set up and tear down since we are renting a clubhouse, and we know it's just preparing us for the day when we will be mobile and have an entire church to prepare.

We have been having neighborhood lunches on Saturdays. On Tuesday and Thursday nights the three families will go around and invite all our neighbors in one of the apartment complex to a grill out on Saturday. It has been such a great way to meet people. Last Saturday, we had 50 people come!!!! It was so exciting. We were just able to talk and meet with them and get to know each of them and their families! And I think the neighbors liked it also as a way to get to know each other. We had a really fun time. We met people from all different countries including Japan, Canada, Mexico, India, South Korea, and I'm sure others. Everyone had different languages and backgrounds, and it's so neat to listen to them all. I love asking all of them where they work as well - Yahoo, Apple, Cisco systems, it's hilarious. I'm still blown away. I don't feel cool enough to talk with a guy who helped create the I-phone and is currently working on the 5th generation I-phone! :) Here are a few pictures from our last event. Some of our current launch team even came to hang out, which was really exciting.

On our day off, all the families went to a town called Half Moon Bay. It's a gorgeous little city about 45 minutes away right on the coast. We went to a pumpkin patch and took the kids. This is really my excuse to go to pumpkin patches. I love fall, corn mazes, hayrides, haunted houses, passing out Halloween candy, pumpkins, fall decorations, leaving the windows open when it's chilly, bonfires - you know, the whole bit. So every year I force Archie to take me to a pumpkin patch so we can go through the corn maze, pick out a pumpkin, and all that fun jazz - but I usually take my nephews so they have fun and I don't look like a giant crazy woman for loving the pumpkin patch as much as I do. Unfortunately, my nephews aren't here :(, but we went with all the families, so their kids were here and I could jump around like a kid. :) we had so much fun. I love watching the kids have so much fun too. They are so cute.

We received a wonderful gift from our friends back in Charleston before we left and it arrived this week! A Nintendo Wii!!!! How cool is that! We are so excited, and we have already scheduled a Wii party with some of our new friends. Thank you so much guys! We created our Wii mii's to look like us, so here they are! I think they are hilarious.

Over the weekend, Archie and I drove to visit some good friends! Tron and Katie live in Modesto about 1 1/2 hours away. We had so much fun! Those two make me laugh more than anyone I know, and a time with them is guaranteed to produce hours of laughter. It was so good to see good friends who know you and understand you! It reminds you of home for a little bit. They are also from Charleston and so understand missing it. On Sunday, they did the nicest thing ever and made us a BBQ lunch with ribs and yes, STICKY FINGERS SAUCE!!!! Talk about delicious. It was so good. Thanks Tron. We played some Wii with them and had so much fun, and even got Nani, Tron's grandma in on the action. You will definitely enjoy the action here.

AND THE WINNER IS....

Lastly, we got to visit with a friend from Charleston who was in town for the weekend. Jason played with us in the band at Crosstowne. We were able to meet up for a few hours and it was good to see him. It was so surreal seeing someone from Charleston here though. It didn't feel right. I mean, we are always going down the road, seeing a car we recognize and saying, "Oh, there's so and so... oh wait, they wouldn't be here!" :) Then, when we really saw someone from Charleston, it was so weird! It was still good to see him.
Hopefully it won't be so long between our next post! We promise we'll update again soon! :) Love you all!

A weather statement

2008-10-02T11:19:00.007-04:00

So some people may or may not know that I (Rebekah) am obsessed with the weather. I love to watch what it is going to do, especially if there is a storm, in order to see why it's being caused. I've even been known to have friends call me to see where a particular storm is moving, because she knew I would know. HA. We've already mentioned how the weather here in Santa Clara, California is different. I just thought this was over the top.
http://www.weather.com/weather/alerts/localalerts/USCA1018?phenomena=TSL&significance=S&areaid=CAZ513&office=KMTR&etn=03386f9f8b0db2eb2e8107089c9aa41abc35505b
It's a warning that basically it's going to rain. I mean, sure it also warns of some wind and stuff. But the major point of this warning was to say that there hasn't been any rain since Spring and so the road may be slick, clear your gutters, etc. HA! Can you imagine in Charleston if they were to post some kind of warning like that. They would have to do it every day with those afternoon showers. I just got a kick out of that.
If you think about it, say a little prayer for me today at 2:30 Pacific time, I have a job interview. Trying not to get my hopes up about anything just yet.
We have had a very busy week full of ministry stuff, but it is feeling very good. Tonight we the three girls are getting together with any girls from our previous Sunday night meeting who wanted to come get coffee at Peete's (it's a local coffee shop comparable to Starbucks - pretty good). It will be nice to get to talk to some of them and get to know them a little more!

We're official

2008-09-29T19:50:00.004-04:00

So, we finally became official residents of California. It took us 4 1/2 hours at the DMV, a vehicle verification and smog test, and taking the California driver's test but we can finally call ourselves Californians. At least that's what the license plates and driver's license say. We had a miracle take place on the way there! We have had a check engine light that has been on for several months, had it fixed several times, and keeps coming back on. We could never figure out what is causing it. We were going to go get it looked at again before going, because in California, you can't pass the vehicle verification and smog test if you have a check engine light on. When we turned the car on to leave - NO LIGHT!!!! It turned off by itself - which it has NEVER done, and has not come back on since. We were amazed! God is good, huh! But, back to the DMV, let's just say that the DMV system in California is no different than in South Carolina. It was a long wait in several lines, and I CAN'T BELIEVE they made us take a written driver's test. It was HARD! I hope none of you ever have to do this... and if you do, make sure you know what the legal blood alcohol level is, how old and how heavy you have to be to ride in the front seat, when you can turn in a bike lane, rail road crossing signs, etc. Just be prepared! whew. It is really weird to see the California license plates on the car, and we had a small ceremony of sorts, because in here you have to have front and back plates (in South Carolina, you only needed back) and I had a fun license plates that said something along the lines of Carolina Girls being the best in the world that had to be removed. Archie was sure glad, but I am going to miss it.

On Saturday, we went on a date to Santa Cruz. It is a small beach town about 30 minutes away that you have to cross through the mountains to get to, but it is really fun. It looks like an old movie. It has an amusement park on a boardwalk right up to the beach, and mountains surrounding it, and boasts to be one of the top 5 places to surf in the world. There were a lot of surfers out that day. The homes in the area were really cute, very cottageish and everyone rode big beach bikes around. We took Capo with us and just went for a walk on the boardwalk. It was a nice change in pace to having things to do and such. Here are a few pictures.

On Sunday, we held our first Launch team meeting. It was here in the apartments, we had it at one of the clubhouses. We prepared for it all week, and were praying for 20 people to attend. We had been inviting people to come for several weeks - some from the church who is supporting us in Fremont, some from meeting them at the Art and Wine festival a few weeks ago, and some just from meeting in the community. As we got ready yesterday, I can't say all of us weren't a little nervous about what kind of turn out, if any, we would have - thinking it might just be us families. :) We were blown away with 29 adults and 8 children!!!! We were so excited. It was a great time of meeting too. We shared dinner together, and were able to talk to everyone, had a time of worship (which Archie led), and then the three guys (Andy, Filipe, and Archie) shared their testimonies of how God had brought them to this place so far. Andy also shared the vision of the church and what we had planned for the next several months, and how each of these people, if they were interested, could become involved in the launch team. What an amazing answer to prayer. It was so exciting to meet people and talk with them and find out how they came and how they want to be a part of what we are doing! Praise God. We are just praying that God would use each of them and speak to them about how they can become involved and that if this is what they are called to, they will join us for such a time as this!

Just wanted to update quickly also, that Andy met with the vice principal from the school that we asked everyone to pray for, and he sounded very positive about us meeting there. He made it sound like if there was nothing on the calendar, than there would be no problem. We are still waiting final approval from the application process, but it sounds very very promising!
Here are a few quick things you can be praying for:
- Our first launch team meeting this Sunday after sharing the vision with everyone and asking them to commit. Pray that everyone who came last night will come back and we would have an even bigger crowd this week.
- Pray for the friendships we are making, that God would be in the midst of them, and allow us to shine His light on every person we come in contact with. We are only human! We want to be God's light to this community.
-October 11, we are having a family day in the park for everyone on our launch team, anyone they invite, and we also invited anyone who signed up showing interest in the church from the Art and Wine Festival (about 90 people, 20 of those expressed interest in being part of the launch team). Pray that we would have a good crowd, that it would be a good time of fellowship and ministry.
We are beginning to finally sort of learn our way around - today, I went to the grocery store and didn't have to use the gps on the way back! :) haha, well in my defense I took a different way to get there (and got lost even with the gps), so it was pretty good that I could remember how to get home from the next city over without any sort of map or anything. This place is huge! There are at least 4 major interstates and several smaller highways and expressways to get through cities. It's hard people!
We love you all and miss you all. Remember, you always have a place to come visit!!! ;)

Prayer Request

2008-09-24T22:40:00.003-04:00

Just a quick update... earlier today I asked for your prayers for a meeting location for South Bay church. Since then, one of our top choices for meeting - a school in the area, has been in contact with Andy, and they have a meeting set up for tomorrow at 8:30 am (Pacific time - so plenty of time in the morning to pray for all you East Coasters) with the Vice Principle of the school. Please be in prayer for this meeting that God would be our guide in this meeting, that He would give Andy the right words to speak, and that He would grant us favor in this meeting! Thanks so much for all of your prayers. We will keep you updated!

orange groves and pizza

2008-09-24T15:02:00.009-04:00

Can't believe it's been another week. Sorry there haven't been as many updates this week. Honestly, there hasn't been a lot to share. I mean, I could put the ramblings of day to day stuff, but how fun would that be. We would lose our readers very quickly! It has been a pretty uneventful week, still just trying to get settled. But I think we are pretty much there. In fact, the other day, Archie and I hung the last picture and got the last shelf put together. It's beginning to feel a little more like home. It at least feels like a place we can come and relax. We did however, have several good things go on over the last week:

On Sunday, Archie and I as well as Stacie and Mandy attended a church called Crossroads (whose pastor's name is Paul ;) ) who is going to be a big support for us. They are helping to plant this church with us and even committing to sending volunteers down to be a part of the launch team and helping us out. The church services were great, and we felt so welcome there. They had three services - one Saturday night and two on Sunday, and we attended all three, and were brought up on stage and introduced for all three. It was a good experience for us, and we'll be visiting there a lot over the next couple months.

Last night, we had dinner with a couple from here that Archie had met when he came back in February. He stayed with them at their house while he was here and got to know them some. They are such a nice couple and it was a pleasure to get to meet them in person. I'm sure we will get to see them more, but it was also nice to actually have someone to meet with and have dinner with. It felt normal!

Archie and I went to this humongous mall in the area the other day. We had no idea quite how large it was until we got there, but it was huge. Let's just say it has all the shops you ever want to go in, some of those specialty shops that you only find when you are like out of town or something, and the best restaurants all in one place. It was amazing! We didn't spend a lot of time there, just sort of walked by all the stores, but it was fun! And we ate at an amazing place! It's one of my favorite places to go, and haven't been to one in years. This is for you mom and dad!

This morning, we had our first launch team meeting. It was just the three families this morning, but we got together and planned for our meeting Sunday night which will include everyone who has showed any interest. We have sent out letters, met people personally and invited them, and will follow up with some phone calls later this week. We are very excited and can't wait for the meeting to have planning, vision casting, and get a little better idea where everything will fall in place. We are going to have dinner and a time of worship, then Andy will speak and we're meeting at the apartment clubhouse, so it will feel like a real meeting!

That's basically all that's been going on here. It really is an amazing place. We love the mountains surrounding us everywhere, and even just looking out our back patio is filled with a great view. We have an orange orchard right outside. Here are some pictures, of the mountains from a parking lot we were in and some pictures from right outside my back door.

Lastly, I promised a video tour of our apartment once it was all put together, it's pretty much there, so here are a few. It's pretty much what the pictures showed the first time, but it does show some more rooms! :) Hope you enjoy.

Please be praying for us this next week if you think of it. As we mentioned, we are having our first launch team meeting this Sunday. Please pray that it would be a beneficial time and that the people who come will feel like this is a vision that they would like to be a part of in reaching the lost. We are praying for 20 people!
Also, we are in the process of trying to nail down our meeting place for our preview services. We are meeting with people and we would appreciate your prayers as our team meets with officials for favor! Update again soon!

General Observations

2008-09-18T01:13:00.002-04:00

So, now that we have been here for a week or so, I have found some general observations about the city and California so far:

1. Every public bathroom in California has those cool seat covers. Back home in Charleston, you might find one or two bathrooms here or there, but not all. I feel so sanitary here, even if you are using more paper than you should.

2. There are SOOO many stop lights here. It can sometimes take you 20 minutes to go 2 miles. One day, as we were coming back from the Central Park where the art and wine festival was held, Stacie counted and there were something like 25 stop lights in less than 4 miles. You definitely have to plan for an outing! :)

3. There is a Montague street here - well actually it's an expressway, but close enough and it makes me think of home when I drive on it.

4. There are NO superwalmarts!! The closest one is 45 minutes away! What am I to do??? :) All of the targets and walmarts are the old kind. Guess I'll have to get used to that too.

5. There are mountains surrounding us on all sides. Everywhere you go you see mountains - except when it's foggy. It's very very pretty.

6. There is such a large international population here. It is really really neat. Even store/business signs have Asian symbols describing what they are. Us, being white are really the minority here. Alot of international people come here for jobs at all the hundreds of technological places surrounding our area - including Canon which we can see from our back porch, Ebay and Cisco systems less than a mile down the road, and Yahoo about 4 miles away.

We'll let you know some more as we discover them!

city slickers

2008-09-16T17:24:00.011-04:00

One week down! It's hard to believe we've been here for a week. It actually has felt like a long week, but I think it's because we have been so busy. We are starting to adjust to the California life, and even beginning to like it! ;) Don't worry, not too much! The weather is probably the easiest yet hardest thing to get used to.. It's great at around 75 to 80 during the day, but in the mornings and starting in mid afternoon it will drop to 45-50 degrees, so if you are wearing shorts, watch out! and when all of you come to visit us, pack accordingly! hint hint.. we now, have a guest bedroom that is almost completely unpacked as well. The house is really starting to come together, thanks to my mom! She came for almost a week visit, and we had a GREAT time. It was so nice to show her where we will be living, the area, and even where our church will potentially be located. She helped out tremendously in getting unpacked and settled in. We dropped her off at the airport this morning and I already miss her. Here are a few pictures of the house, I only put the rooms that look good so far (the others still have piles, or a few boxes still), and notice we still don't have pictures up. I'm telling you, we have been so busy! :)

We had our first mission's team come to help us this past weekend from Lakepoint church in Texas. What a great team. They sure put a big expectation for future teams. We had such a great time meeting them and working with them. We helped out the city
of Santa Clara with an annual festival they do called the Art and Wine festival. It's similar to the Flowertown/azalea festival if you are from Charleston. It was great we had about 25 people to help out and we just volunteered in whatever way we could with helping artists/vendors unload their stuff, face painting, crafts, trash pick up, you name it. We also had our own booth where we passed out balloons and gave away starbucks gift packets. We had 90 people sign up over the course of the weekend saying they wanted more information on the church! Help us pray for those people to have softened hearts as we follow through with them in the coming days and weeks. It was a great weekend for meeting people though and getting our name out with a good reputation in the city. We were even asked to come back and help with a Halloween event and Fourth of July event. We're excited. We met a lot of amazing people also, some artists and some of the people who worked for the city were so friendly and helpful - we can't wait to get to know them even more. Here are a few pictures of the event, and one of the whole lakepoint team.

Our first morning with Lakepoint, Archie led us in a song before we did some work around the city.

Archie helping one of the artists at the festival unload her work, and the Southbay church booth at the festival! Gotta hand it to Filipe, I thought it looked great!

Here are a few shots of us working at the festival: Filipe talking with people and Archie and Chris from Lakepoint playing some music, Andy from Lakepoint face painting.

We had our first worship service on Sunday morning at the Embassy Suites with the Lakepoint team. Archie was able to lead worship for all of us and Andy spoke for a few minutes. Here is a picture of that. We were very excited for this!

We got to take the team (and my mom) to San Francisco city Friday night. We got to see a few of the sights and enjoy some good food and hot chocolate from Ghirardelli chocolate factory. Just stay away from 6th street. It is seriously about a 65-70 degree angle drive up to the top, and we got stopped at a red light at the very top with brakes that are making funny noises!!! my mom and I were sweatin it!

Lastly, Caedmon, Andy and Staci's child, celebrated his 2nd birthday yesterday! They were able to throw him a little party, and it was alot of fun. He's so cute, and Lilly and him had a great time with his new slide! They are fun to be around! Capo was begging for some of Staci's yummy burgers! Caedmon even got a guitar for his b-day so now he can play along with "Awchie's 'tar" :)

We are still trying to learn the city and not rely on GPS so much, and we're even getting a little better. We'll be pros before we know it! Continue to pray for us as we learn our new home and get to meet more and more people.

We made it !!

2008-09-10T20:10:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone. I know some of you were wondering if we had just stayed in Vegas but we did make it here. We had some computer issues to work through once we were here, so I haven't been able to update. It turns out that my charging circuit went out and needed to be replaced. We got in to town about 5:30 local time on Sunday night and had dinner with our new team here and signed the lease on the apartment. We had packed an air mattress in the car to sleep on the first night, which was weird being in our apartment with nothing but an air mattress and the bags we had packed for the trip but at least we had each other. It was a little overwhelming, surreal and emotional. We had just driven across the country to find ourselves in an empty apartment in a strange town. If you have been following us across the country on this blog, you know that we have been taking pictures as we entered each state, well when we got to California, it hit us both. We were no longer on vacation- we were moving here! It was a little sobering. But now after having been here for a few days, it has turned out to be nice. We are getting used to it. Although we exchanged the paper mill smell when the fog hits in the morning for the "sweet" smell of garlic from the largest garlic capitol in the U.S. a few towns over.
We got a nice deal on a 2 bedroom apartment $2270 a month!! What?!!? That is still nuts to me, that's more than double or mortgage back home. It is a nice complex, very clean, nice gym, pool, and a starbucks :) Our original plan was for all three families to separate in the city and go to different apartment complexes to meet more people but we all ended up at the same one- Andy and Filipe are actually in the same building and Bekah and I are only about a 3 min walk away. It has been nice since we have no clue where anything is. Actually right now as I'm typing this Bekah is out by herself for the first time trying to get to the closest Wal-Mart.
For the last 3 days we have been trying to unpack a ton of boxes and find stores to buy things we need. Some of our stuff got broken in the move- you always have nicks here and there as much as you try to avoid it, but 2 of Bekah's favorite plates got shattered, she was really sad. One of them was a wedding gift, a Turkish wedding plate that some friends from Germany had sent. Other than that I was worried about my drums and guitars making it ok. Being that they are obviously made out of wood and I didn't know what kind of heat and moisture conditions they would endure getting here. I was really surprised and amazed to open up my Taylor case and find that not only was there no damage but that little baby was still in tune- that's an awesome guitar! Other than that we have been hard at work trying to set up bank accounts and basically switch our entire lives out here.
Bekah just got back from Wal-mart and has told me that 1) people are very impatient here in the Silicon Valley and 2) they have red lights on the entrance ramps onto the highway. You get on the highway and at the bottom of the entrance ramp they have three lanes where you line up like go-carts at frankies fun park and then one car from each row gets to go on one at a time using 3 separate red lights! My, we have a lot to learn. Her other comment about the trip was that no stores have cart returns in the parking lot, so you have to walk them all the way back up front in a crazy attempt to encourage mobility and exercise. Who needs it! (if you don't walk your cart back up- you will get the stare down from all the other shoppers)
Last night we got our kitchen unpacked and had our first meal here- spaghetti bolognese. Back home, as uncool as it is, we ate in front of the tv more times then not. So, since we don't have cable or anything at this time we ate to a DVD of Shrek 2- it felt a little more like home. Tonight will probably be "how to loose a guy in 10 days." I can't wait to see whats showing tomorrow. Sorry there are no pics this time but we are planning on giving a video tour of our apartment and some pics of our complex soon.
Lastly, Rebekah's mom, Tina is due to fly in tonight. Her Dad kind of surprised them both by sending her here for a long weekend. It'll be nice to have our first guest- so all you back in Charleston need to pay attention :)
Ok, I know I said lastly- but this is for real lastly- We would like to ask you guys to pray for our team but specifically for our place to meet. We have picked out an elementary school that would be perfect. Please join us in prayer that God would grant us favor with the principal of that school to allow us to meet there. We love you guys, pictures coming soon.

Vegas Baby, Vegas

2008-09-06T20:23:00.012-04:00

Today we got up and continued west. Yesterday made our second casualty, we had to replace a tire that we had been nursing for a day or so and the only place we could find was a mostly Spanish speaking tire shop- but we managed. We are now rolling on almost all mismatched tires- awesome! But at least we are still rolling right? The other Causalty was my computer, it just stopped working. Tech support said it was either the mother board or the power cable, but since I bought an extra warranty after I ran my last computer over (like you never made a mistake) it is going to be free. :) I forgot to mention in yesterday's blog two things that I thought were funny. One, the name of a park that I thought was hilarious, I tried to take a picture but the sign came up too quickly. http://www.swl.usace.army.mil/parks/toadsuck/, you might respond like I did, "Uhm... no thanks." Two, the other thing I thought was funny was that Capo has been a great traveler. Mostly sleeping during the trip and generally disinterested in the scenery (I'm mean he's a dog, what do you expect?) Except two days ago when we were passing through Texas he perked up and got very interested in a big pasture of cows, barking and all; it occurred to me that he had never seen a cow before, he must of thought they were giant dogs or something. I told him that everything is bigger in Texas, but not that big :) We drove for a while this morning and hit the Hoover Dam. I guess you'd expect a couple of Dam jokes from me at this point, but why be predictable? Instead here are a few pics of us being silly on the road:
We have continued to have a good time today too. Bekah was saying to her mom on the phone today and it's true: It's been a lot of driving, but we are not sick of driving, not sick of eachother, we are just having a great time. Today we pulled into Vegas and we are going to go see the Cirque De Soleil Show "O" If you've never seen a Cirque show, you need to, it's incredible. We haven't seen Elvis here yet, although I'm told this is now where he lives. On the way here at the Hoover Dam, they had pretty inexpesive helicopter rides and I have never been on a helicopter but always wanted to so... I went for it. Here are some pics. Notice the shot of the "beloved" civic with it's Carolina girl lisence plate. Bekah stayed back- being afraid of heights but I could've stayed up there all day. I would one day like to get my pilots liscence so this was awesome for me! I got to sit up with the pilot! Tomorrow we pull into our new home which should take us about 8 1/2 hours. We are excited and a little nervous because now the vacation is over but we are ready to see the place where we are going to live. We will be updating this blog when we get there so you guys can see where we live and all. I hope you've enjoyed reading these posts as much as we've enjoyed leaving them. Thanks for all your prayers. Here is that video for the Grand Canyon Bekah promised, pictures and video do not do it justice.
We're off to find one of those famous "Vegas $5.99 all you can eat, prime rib buffets. Catch you tomorrow! Archie

The Desert (Day 4)

2008-09-06T18:38:00.010-04:00

So, sorry this is a little late, but we have had some computer issues, and we stayed in a small town that I don't think had a computer in it. It was super cute though - reminded us of Radiator Springs from the movie Cars, and it was even located on Route 66. We left Albuquerque, headed toward the Grand Canyon this morning and have really just been enjoying the scenery. We saw the sign for the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest which was really cool! it was about a 45 minute drive to go through the park but the veiws were breathtaking. We are really enjoying God's creation. here are some pictures.

Then we kept driving to gas up in this ancient city! seriously, I think some of the original buildings were still there. we were just waiting to find the saloon.

After a pretty long, but beatiful drive we made it to the Grand Canyon. I don't know if you have ever been, but talk about witnessing the glory and beauty of God. this was breathtaking. If you have not seen it, you MUST! Okay, I'll show you some pictures instead of talking about it... I have a great little video about it, but this computer I'm using won't let me load it, so I will post it in a futre blog!

Since we're from the South we have found that we have had a lot of "Bless their heart" moments! :) In these small towns, there are alot of country type folks who we just want to say Bless their hearts - or idiots! haha just joking.
We did find another Starbucks to Archie's content, and savored every last sip of it since we have only seen about 4 the entire trip. You would think, hey! It's Starbucks. But thanks Jessica for the yummy starbucks!
So, an update on the bumper stickers! We are currently even - four for McCain, four for Obama. Pretty surprising. but both sides have something going for it. In Albuquerque, we saw a huge McCain rally (gotta count for something), and on the road to the grand Canyon, I saw a highway cleaning sign that said this portion of the road maintained by Grand Canyon democrats - that I guess counts too! :) We have fourty eight states and counting on the license plates - only missing Hawaii (we may not get that one) and Vermont -surely some Vermont people want to come to the West Coast!
We are officially on Pacific time - 3 hours behind our Charleston friends and family. It feels wierd, and the sleeping part is catching up.Last night we were asleep by 9 and up before 7 - so weird.
Archie mentioned in a previous blog (as if you didn't already know) how he felt about the civic...

but over the past few days, I think he's created a slight bond with it (the 33-37 miles to the gallon has helped)

and even made friends with it...

Well, that's about all from today... we'll have more to post in a little while about more fun! Thanks for all the prayers and encouragement you all have sent our way. We love and miss everyone!!

Coffee at 75 MPH

2008-09-04T22:55:00.003-04:00

Hello everyone. We are in the third day of our not so small journey across the US. Late last night we pulled into Oklahoma City- it was late and I felt like I was in one of those Twilight Zone episodes where the further I drove, the further Oklahoma City got and I was stuck for an eternity just driving to Oklahoma City! Ever been there? We stayed at a 70's style HOJO and got up this morning and started what has become a routine for us since day 1. We get up and take Capo for a couple mile run,

have breakfast, and then hit the road listening to the devotionals people had recorded for us. Then we dip into the "cup 'o' memories" that some of our dearest friends made for us- we do 5 memories in the morning and 2 after lunch. They're just little pieces of paper that have a sentence or two about something that we had done with some friends or funny sayings or whatever, but they have brought a welcome smile and some familiarity to a constantly changing landscape. Can I just vent here for a sec- we have passed through i don't know how many states now and you know how many starbucks we have seen? 2!!!! Arkansas and Oklahoma you need to get your junk together!! I got some Mcdonalds coffee and Bekah was driving this morning and just as we were getting on the highway Bekah says "oh look there's a starbucks" drives right by and gets on the ramp. And I was like "what are you doing?!?!" She said "well you just got coffee, I figured you'd want to wait and find another one later." I said " Are you kidding!? You know I would pour this crap out as a drink offering to get some starbucks." The next one was 400 miles away. My computer died today in the car- it just didn't power back on- so I called tech support and they told me it's going to be a mother board a or power cable- lets hope its the power cable!

Today was nice, we spent some time together just talking and just sitting. I think we both really needed this trip. Yes it's a lot of driving but it has been great (except for the trying to get to OK City last night!) I gave Rebekah this necklace that I have been holding on to for about a month. She saw it down at the farmers market downtown Charleston and would never buy it for herself so "I" did. It's from the 30's and she was admiring it for about 2 months. The last time we were down there she went to go look at it again and she thought they had sold but it was just moved and she was really sad. So it was cool to give her one more little piece of Charleston. We stopped at the Famous Cadillac Ranch today and took some pics. It's this ranch where Cadillac's are stuck in the ground and it's dedicated to the fins on the back of a caddy- the first one is real small and then they gradually get bigger. here are a few pics.

Tonight we pulled into Albuqureque and enjoyed a little local place for brick oven pizza. Tomorrow we have to get a tie pixed that we have been nursing for a day or so that keeps losing air and then we will be off to the Grand Canyon. We have changed our plans a little for the end of this trip though- we are going to go through Vegas and catch a show Cirque de Soleil, called "O" it's all done with water- sounds good. We went to a Cirque show on our honeymoon, so it will be a nice revist for that too. We plan to pull into SAn Jose on Sunday.

Here are a few pics from this evening, a weird house that we saw on the way to dinner, a restraunt that both Bekah and I went to as children with our families that we both thought was out of business and an awesome speed limit sign- "that's what I'm talking about!" Tomorrow we should have lots of Grand Canyon shots for you and a story of how I'm getting along with the Civic, I have made no secret of how I feel about it. Until next time- Archie

Blue Suede Shoes

2008-09-03T20:54:00.011-04:00

So we're still on the road and probably will be for about another 3 1/2 hours. It's getting late, and we're tired, but have had a great day! It was filled with alot of fun things. We were talking and realized that this is our first real vacation since our honeymoon - pretty sad huh? Here are a few pictures of the day and some fun things we have done.

Had to have barbecue in Memphis! This was the fun pink pig mobile outside Marlowe's barbecue restaurant. Now this is what you call classy! So fun we had to take a picture.

That's a whole lot of b-b-q! :) Notice the sauce on Archie's face... it was lip smacking good!!!

This is for my dad, he always tells me to clean the bones, suck out the marrow, and get messy, and you're not done till you do all three!

Here are some pics from Graceland... First is the big front living room with the infamous 15 ft white couch. Looks the same as the 70's. Next is Elvis and Priscilla's wedding clothes, a few of Elvis' jumpsuits, the monument to Elvis (kind of creepy), and Graceland itself - not quite as impressive from the front as I originally thought. Just so you know, it's kind of expensive to go to Graceland, and when you get there, they don't let you go upstairs.. something about it's Elvis' private quarters and they are going to maintain his privacy - hey he's dead people. Sorry Elvis fans!

Archie even remembered his blue suede sneaks!

We stopped by the Hotel Lorraine, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

Passing into the next state - Arkansas, and the Mississippi river

Just a few fun facts. So far, we have spent 17 hours driving, and have gone about 1,020 miles. We'll rack in more by the end of the night.
Hurricane Gustav has sent us, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Oklahoma PLENTY of rain. It's rained all day.

We got word that Filipe and Mandy Santos, part of our South Bay team, arrived safely to San Jose airport today!! They are home. They flew from Charleston today and got to California in the same day. whew, how nice! :) just joking, we are having a GREAT time and soaking up all the relaxation.

Tonight we'll land in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and try to get a good night's rest. Tomorrow will probably be a boring day of mostly driving, so we'll try to tap into our creative side to keep you entertained! We're praying for all of you that you will be blessed.

Rain Rain Go Away

2008-09-03T10:41:00.005-04:00

So it's the beginning of day 2. We are on the road as I type. Gotta love the mobile broadband stuff. We are doing good, encouraged, and feeling God's peace as we travel. Archie surprised me by recording a Bible study and having several people read some scriptures for us. This was over the top! It was nice to have some familiar voices hundreds of miles away. My dad did the first one with a great verse for us to cling to, and my mom wrote her part (she "doesn't do microphones ;) ). This morning our good friend Staci Mclain started off our day in the right direction. So encouraging. We really enjoyed staying with Scott and Rachel last night in Nashville. I put a few more pictures of our stay last night and a few other good ones from yesterday, as well as the Nashville sky line. We had breakfast with them this morning before hitting the road again.

It's funny how things like car trips make you spend much needed and desired time with the one you love! :) Doesn't mean that every single second in the car has to be filled with conversation, but sitting next to each other, reflecting on God's grace and provision, enjoying the beautiful landscape and holding hands makes you feel closer to each other. So far we really haven't done anything but sit. Yesterday we even kind of enjoyed the silence. We drove most of the day without music or anything. (Save for the new coldplay and john mayer albums we've been holding out to listen to for the trip). It's been a good trip. I think the time is good for our souls! Pray for us today if you think about it, we will be hitting the remnants of hurricane Gustav, and we've tried to find another route around it, but the thing is huge! so I think we will end up driving through alot of it. Pray against our little engine that could from flooding too! Okay, here are the pictures, we'll update later.

More of dopey Capo

Courtney, Hailey, and Scott and Rachel Parker, and the Nashville skyline

Road Trip Day 1

2008-09-02T22:29:00.005-04:00

Well we are at the end of the first day of traveling to California and we are a mix of so many things: excited, tired, sad to leave friends and family, and optimistic about what our new future holds for us. We left this morning at around 10:30 after having breakfast with our families, and hit the road to Nashville. We passed through South Carolina (obviously), North Carolina, and Tennessee. Capo did a pretty good job sitting in the car for the trip, after getting some meds from the vet, he was a little dopey! :) We were thinking, that this was the first time that Capo had left South Carolina. Since we were going to have so much time on our hands, we decided to have a little fun. So we played the license plate game to see how many states we could find, and we already have 22, hopefully we'll find all of them before we get there. Then we decided to see if we could single-handedly take the political survey of the country (you know how they do the polls and you say, they never asked me what I was thinking), to see how many bumper stickers we could find for each political candidate - we found two stickers for each! :) so far the country is even. Archie decided he needed to have a last fix of Krystal. So, let's just say that the GPS is good, but not great - it found several krystal's that were closed, and then took us to some girl named Krystal's house (ha), it was really a high school. so we wasted a good 45 minutes or so looking for a Krystal, but alas - we did succeed (that's for you Rick). We finally arrived in Nashville and are staying with our good friends Scott and Rachel. Can't believe how big the girls are! It makes you forget how fast time goes by. We have spent the evening having some good conversation and trying a new game for the Wii called Wii fit. It has been fun to watch each other make idiots of ourselves playing these games! (Notice in all the pictures Capo is like Capo-the-drug-dog, except he's the kind that takes them, not finds them) But it has been fun. We made good time, passed through 2 states and amazingly enough got 37 Miles to the gallon today! Tomorrow we head out for Memphis in the morning and Oklahoma City tomorrow night. For your enjoyment, here are some pictures of the day - the states we passed, Capo the drug dog, Archie's krysal obsession, and some Wii fit action.

By Memory

2008-08-21T19:33:00.003-04:00

For a long time now I have been wanting to do our music on Sunday mornings from memory- which means no music stand. I made this decision a year or so ago after visiting a large church in Atlanta. Having no music stands on stage just makes it look cleaner, there is nothing blocking the worship leader from the congregation, and it's a little more professional. This has always been something I've wanted to do but never made the time to do. Well this weekend I will be at my father-in-law's church, Pointe North in Moncks Corner and I will playing with their worship team on backup guitar and then I will be leading on electric guitar and singing on two songs in the morning and leading the whole evening 5:30 service worship. We also will be sharing our vision for the new church. Their church has a rule of no music stands! At first this was kind of a "aw crap" moment but it has provided the challenge that I've needed to make the jump to no music stand. I spent about 2 hours today trying to memorize all the chords and words to about 8 songs. What's funny is that for 4 of these songs, I've been singing them for 5 or 6 years! It just goes to show you if aren't intentional about things you'll never really learn. On the few that I'm playing with the pointe north band, I am just now learning. They have a rule on their stage that you can have one sheet of paper as a reminder. Well my sheet of paper for the songs I'm doing with their band is completely covered in notes one sided. It's kind of like cheating in french class, you write as much information in the smallest area possible (not that "I" would ever do anything like cheating in French class in High school uh-hmm) But for the songs I'm doing by myself- I will have no cheat sheet Yowzers! Anyway, just a thought about the processes that I'm going through.
Archie

Catching Up

2008-08-20T22:08:00.003-04:00

Well we have been pretty slack on the blogging here- But we have a lot to catch you up on. Here are the top 11 highlights (in no particular order:)
1) We got a full price offer on our house, and we close on AUG 29!
2) Our last day at Crosstowne Church was AUG 10
3) Rebekah and I are pregnant due in april, just in time add to the attendance in the new nursery!
4) We have offically moved out of our house and are living with Rebekah's parents in Pinopolis, SC until we pack the moving truck AUG 27-28th.
5) Rebekah's car broke down and cost us $800 (that we didn't have) and by the end of the day God provided a check for $800 out of the blue from a good friend.
6) I am designing South Bay Church's website http:/www.southbaychurch.org (not up yet but look for it soon.
7) Our Faith has been tested in every way possible during this process, we are still trying very hard to raise our own support to do this
8) We have sold most of what we have and are still trying to sell our couch, dining room table, and 98 Chevy Malibu any takers- let me know 224-8114
9) Just kidding about being pregnant- I was trying to make this list exciting
10) Rebekah is scheduled to take the National Board Exam for Occupational Therapy next week on thursday! Please pray for her!
11) We are pulling out of town on Sept 2! We will pass through 9 states to get there, and drive over 2800 miles with our dog in the civic that just cost us $800 and the check engine light just came on again today (did I mention our faith and patience was being tested?) and we will hit touristy spots like Graceland in Memphis (Elvis's home) and the grand canyon along with seeing some good friends on the way out there.

Thanks for keeping up with us. AS we travel out to CA we plan on updating this daily with pics and hopefully video so can know how to pray for and with us. Thank you to everyone who has been so encouraging to us during this, it has been a challenge but one of the best experiences of our lives- I just can't wait to see what God will do with all of this.
Archie

Bill Hybels

2008-07-10T21:45:00.006-04:00

This week I had a once in a lifetime opportunity with our South Bay Church staff to fly to Michigan and meet with Bill Hybels, the pastor of Willow Creek Church in Chicago. It was a great honor to meet with a guy who has served Christ for over 30 years and grown a church from 8 people to over 20k!! And here I was sitting across the table from him asking questions. He was kind enough to meet to with us while he was on his vacation. It was strange to meet someone in person whom you've only seen on tv or heard on a teaching CD. But there he was bare-footed in shorts and a polo shirt- a normal guy. He had a lot to share with us as we are starting this dream together. If I could give our time together a couple themes it would be: 1) That this whole thing is about relationships, 2) Family is hugely important, 3) and Stay fluid. I'd like to share just a bit of our meeting with you:
1) relationships- He just reminded us, as I think that we all in ministry need to be reminded every once in a while, that all of this (starting a church) is about bringing people to Christ (which goes without saying) but past that, as our minds are racing about the logistics of moving out there and finding a place to worship, and raising money to remember that loving on people is what matters and will ultimately grow our church- not strategy.
2) Family- As we were talking to Bill his wife, Lynne came in and talked to us a bit about family. And she summed it up best when she said that "We decided a long time ago that if had to choose to disappoint either our family or the church, then the church would lose every time. Because the bottom line is, if someone gets so mad at us that they leave the church, there's always another church they can go to; But our Kids? We're the only parents they have and when we get to heaven we're not going to be judged on if we made our church 'Happy' but how we raised our kids."
3) Stay Fluid- Lastly he just reminded us to let God do our planning. We have a plan and that is a good thing but he encouraged us not to look too far down the road but look at each step as it came and to enjoy each step. He said not to be in a hurry to have a huge church but enjoy the people God sends us and then grow with them.
It was a time I will never forget, and a time that I look back on and gain from his wisdom.
Archie

Full Circle

2008-06-09T17:22:00.008-04:00

So, I was just cleaning out my computer a little and saw these pictures. Never mind the fact that Archie and I were both in our much skinnier days (we're still working on that :) ), I thought it was so ironic. Archie and I have once visited the San Francisco area. It was June 2004 - exactly four years ago. We actually won a trip through Archie's work and we were able to pick any spot in the continental U.S. Can you believe we picked San Francisco. We had a blast, flew through the city in only 48 hrs., and tried to see every tourist trap we could. Here we are four years later moving our family across country to the very place we chose to visit. Well, about 30 minutes away, but close enough! So, here are a few pics of that trip, and soon we'll have new ones making it full circle of the new call God has for us. Enjoy!

Touring Alcatraz

Crazy silver man down by the pier

Near the amazing redwoods!

Opportunities

2008-05-29T20:56:00.003-04:00

So I started my third and final 8 week clinical rotation this week. It's so weird starting a new setting, where I'm expected to know everything, yet nothing! :) In so many ways, I know that this is where God has called me in my life right now, but everyday I just keep wondering exactly where I'm supposed to be serving. This current rotation is in home health. I love it! It's definitely something I can see myself doing. It's so amazing to be doing something to help someone become just a little more independent. I mean we take so many things for granted such as going to the bathroom, or getting dressed without someone in the room doing it for us - having privacy! But this job helps them do those things again for themselves. It's great. For example, helping an older person come up with a way to become more independent just so he can go out to dinner, or practicing a way to get up off the floor in case he falls when no one else is there. It challenges your creativity, strength, everything. I love it. I'm nervous about finishing school, because then I have to decide exactly what area I want to work in (hospital, home health, schools, etc). It's such an opportunity to help my patients become independent, but it is also an amazing way to reach out to those in this new community for Christ. I'll have interactions with people that no one else will have. I can't wait to interact with them, meet new people, and share life in a whole new way. Who knows, maybe they'll come to church. So, if you think of it, you can pray for the right place for me to work! - Bekah

Here's to new beginings

2008-05-26T20:33:00.002-04:00

So I've been thinking... when you move to a new area you have an opportunity to kinda "start over" on life a little bit. Everything's new ya know? Little things like having to find a new place to get your hair cut or even trying to find new places to eat. And of course, don't get me wrong, I am totally going to miss my great friends, family and church. But my sense of adventure is kicking in as I think about all the things I'd like to change about myself or habits... a new start on life. Not like I'm depressed about my life or anything but isn't it great when God hands you a chance to start over. For instance I've been thinking, I'd like to work out more and make more time for practicing my instruments and writing songs and spending more time with God. But then the thought hit me... If I'm not starting that stuff now, I'm probably not going do it out there; just because I'm in a new place doesn't mean that I change on the inside. BUT on the other hand- why wait to start out there? God tells us in scripture that his mercies are new EVERYDAY. So here's to a new begining on life... today. Archie

No Boundaries

2008-05-14T21:19:00.003-04:00

This morning, I went for a run (last thing I wanted to do!). I usually listen to my ipod while I run to keep my mind off the huffing and puffing I have to do in order to finish, and listen to some kind of music that pumps me up. Today, I picked the new Hillsong United cd - I heart Revolution. It's a great compilation cd that is so inspiring, not great for running. I don't know what made me keep listening to it, but I just did. I got to a song, an old song, that moved me so much. The song was an accapella version of Nothing But the Blood. In the middle of the song the worship leader takes a break and stated something so amazing, "The Lord rewards those who earnestly and diligently seek Him". Not that I didn't know this already, but it was so amazing to me as I was running. I felt like I could keep running forever, the wind blowing in my face as I looked up in the sky and realized that we can use every moment to earnestly and diligently seek after Him. That every time I seek after Him, He chooses to reward me with His presence. That even as I was struggling to fill my lungs with air (ha) I desired to be closer to God. As we make this journey, I know that we can't do it on our own. There are so many unknowns, so many challenges, and things we need faith on, but it is incredible to know that the Lord will reward me for seeking after Him, relying on Him, and choosing to put our faith in Him. It also showed me that there are absolutely no rules to where we choose to seek Him. I was almost drawn to my knees with these realizations and this time of worship. He is such an amazing God!
Rebekah

Selling

2008-05-05T11:19:00.002-04:00

Selling a house is kind of a personal thing. I've never had to do it before, but I can't say it's an experience I like. We bought a sign, put it in the yard for anyone who drives by to see a phone number and call at any hour they please. Often, they call and are in the driveway, wanting to bombard into the house to see it at that moment. We learned quickly, the house must be prepared at all times :). It's such an odd feeling when someone comes in your home, looks around in every nook and cranny - opens doors, in closets, up/down, all around - just to come out and say they didn't like it or it doesn't suit them. It makes you think; well, it was just fine for us - what's wrong with us?? Now, I know I shouldn't take it personal, but it's kind of hard not to. You just want to tell people that this is the home you have loved and made unique for you, this is the place we shared meals with friends, laughs over tables. We played games with family, opened gifts for each other and decorated our tree. We snuggled to watch movies on our couch, and read by the fire sipping hot chocolate on a cold Sunday afternoon. We listened to the rain on a summer afternoon pouring down the windows, and chased our dog around the yard. It holds so many memories and is very important to us! You just want to say please don't say it's not good enough, because it's been a haven for us!

Come Along

2008-04-27T21:26:00.003-04:00

We are so excited about this new venture in life. We can't wait to share it with you. God has called us to assist in planting a church in the Silicon Valley in California, specifically Santa Clara. Of this, we are very excited, but can't say we aren't a little scared. But this is our chance to test our faith in ways we have not yet experienced. We'll try to update this regularly to share our story, things on our hearts, things you can pray for, and pictures of our adventure. But here's our start!! Our start to a brand new future.