It has been a while since I participated in a thousand gifts, but I am still a ways off from reaching a thousand, so I should probably get on it!

#66 X games outreach.

Last weekend out church hosted an outreach with an X-games theme. The church we are attending has quite outreach focused. They had short term trip to Angola earlier this year, and they are planning a trip to Europe! The church feels called to reaching out the youth here in the city. Namibia has a lot of young people, but not much for them to do outside of school. So this leaves a great need and opportunity for the church to fill. The church has a skate park on the premises and I believe they do skating lessons throughout the week. They also run a school.
So David has two kids in his discipleship class who have shown interest in wanting to become Christians. He has been taking time with them to further disciple them, we thought the outreach at church would be a fun opportunity and the boys loved it! They got to try and skate, and the speaker for the weekend was a old-Sprinkbok rugby player. It was a great weekend for us to get to know the people at our church better and for the David to get some more discipleship time with the boys.

Pray for the kids in his discipleship class, one of the boys who is ready is being held back by a hesitant parent. This is giving us the chance to reach out to his parent too!!

#67 People.
As I mentioned above we got to know some amazing people at church. Now that we are having a baby we seem to fit in more with some of the older couples, although I guess David is thirty and I am 28 so maybe we are one of the older couples! Ha! They are a wonderful group of people. They were so excited for us when hearing about our pregnancy and then praying for us on the spot. One lady said we could have her baby seat as she is done with it, and then prayed for us too! It was great to get out of the CHS circle and meet some other people. I also look forward to having the support and input from ladies who have already had babies.

#70 Second trimester
I made it to the second trimester and thought that everything was int he clear! Ha! After the weekend at church I woke up in the middle of the night with severe cramps. The next day I could not straighten up, it felt horrible. I called my dr. and his receptionist just told me to lay down until I felt better. (quality care!)
 Well the cramps continued for a few days and I was terrified that something was wrong. On Thursday they began to subside, probably thanks to the bed rest, and because of David who has been taking the best care of me! On Friday I had an appointment with my dr. he barely even looked up when I mentioned the cramps to him, and he said “maybe it was constipated.”
When he put the wand on my tummy for the ultrasound I was terrified that something would be horribly wrong, but nothing was! In fact baby Echols was jumping around like a springbokkie. The dr. was struggling to get a clear shot of the baby. He did print us a 3d picture but it is just a blurry mess as our baby was doing Zumba. We received our genetic screening results back too. Initially we were told we have a 1:300 chance of Down Syndrome, but after adding the blood results our chance is now 1:13000. He may have said 30 000 but I was smiling too hard to hear properly. The rest of the results were good too!
The best part of the appointment was that my due date was moved up to the 21st of Jan, which was my original due date. This means that I am now 16 weeks along! Since finding out about the pregnancy I have been waiting for week 16. I am not sure what made it the magic number, but now I feel more relaxed and confident. I am ready to shout from the rooftops that I am having a baby! I keep crying thinking about what it will be like to hold our baby for the first time. David is also been getting excited about the nursery. We are quite excited about the nursery theme we have picked!!

After this last appointment we have also decided to switch doctors, we will now be going to one who is in network (this should save us about $7000), and who has time to see patients and talk to them. Dr. V who helped us to get pregnant is a very busy man and will only talk to patients during scheduled appointments. Please pray that we find the right dr. who will know how to deal with the fertility issues that we had, and who is just awesome.

#71 Friends.
We had a birthday party for Marye at our house a few weeks ago. A bunch of people came over, I got to make this peanut butter cake. There was almost a stampede when people all tried to get a piece! A fun day!
And no, there are no peanut butter cups here. I made them from scratch. So if you are thinking about sending a care package make sure to add some peanut butter cups. And a Big mac.

#72 Linda Spilman
Linda Spilman has been sending us letters for months now. It has gotten to the point where I can count of finding a letter from her whenever I go to the mailbox. She tells us of things going on back home and even includes the church bulletin and sometimes newspaper articles. She encourages us with words and with love. I cannot tell you how much it means to us, and missionaries all over the world, to receive things from home. Linda has made us feel loved and remembered, prayed for and cared for! Thank you Linda, we are truly grateful for you, for the time you take to write to us, and for the blessing that you are to us!!