Today is a wonderful day to honor the women that we have been blessed to have in our lives. Mothers tend to be selfless, loving, nurturing, and intelligent women that often go unrecognized for all they contribute to the family. We are thankful for everything that the mothers in our lives have done to get us to where we are today and are excited to celebrate them on this special day.

The more advances we make in technology, science, health care, etc the less we feel the need to seek out God. For instance, if people do not eat according to biblical standards and thus get overweight they can get plastic surgery. People have the option of life support in the hospital, extensive scientific research to rationalize miracles, and among many other distractions an unending supply of secular music and art.. The more we can fend for ourselves, the less room we make for God in our lives and marriage is no exception.

So much has changed! Now that we live in Miami Beach, we feel as if we were on an extended honeymoon. Every morning we take a long walk with the dog and enjoy the ocean breeze. It has been so great for us to have such amazing scenery to start our day with. We get to talk about the day ahead of us while watching boat after boat pass us by. It’s a dream come true! Whenever we are finally too hungry to hold it in anymore, we go inside to have breakfast. We prepare completely opposite foods. While Matthew has pancakes, eggs, English muffins, etc, I have my Cinch meal replacement shakes. They helped me lose weight for the wedding and now they are helping me lose weight for Miami Beach.

Now that we are in Miami everything has changed. Everyday God shows us more reasons why he opened the doors for us to come to Miami. Seeing God’s plan unveil before our eyes gives us the reassurance we needed to know that we made the right decision. Part of the transition has included attending a new church. We were received with open arms and could not be more excited to get involved with the youth and the activities they have going on. I know I said I would stop being Matthew’s self-proclaimed manager but I could not help myself. The moment I heard the church’s talented praise team I knew Matthew would love participating and volunteered him right away. He (thankfully) did not mind and is ready to attend practice with the praise team soon.

Sabbath is supposed to be a day of rest but sometimes we pack so many church activities into it that we are exhausted after our long day of rest. Personally, no matter how much or how little we have to do on a particular Sabbath, it is still my favorite gift from God! This past Sabbath was of those busy ones. We started off the day early so that Matthew could sing with the praise team. I was so proud of him for volunteering to sing with the group. He has so much talent and is way too humble about it. In my opinion, there is no reason for a man who has toured Europe singing to sit in church and not participate. I believed that so strongly that I used to volunteer him for special music, praise team, etc. You name it, my husband’s name was on it not only in our church but in other local churches. After a while due to our travels he was unable to keep practicing with the groups or attending certain churches.

I grew up in South Africa where we have 11 official national languages (of course there are lot more languages spoken everyday by South Africans, but you get the point). I grew up speaking English, but as I got older I started to really get interested in a few of the languages that my friends spoke; namely, Afrikaans and Xhosa. My mother speaks Afrikaans fluently and so do most of her side of the family, but where I grew up Xhosa was the language of choice.

The truth of the matter is that I suddenly found myself attracted to this young Xhosa girl and I was dying to talk to her.