Christmas in July!

WE ARE BLESSED!!!

Joshua 24:14
"Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD.

We have been counting our blessing everyday! THANK YOU to all of our family and friends who have prayed, loved and wished the BEST for us during our seminary days and now through our transition in life! We feel VERY humbled and overwhelmed by the Lord's blessing on us! Please continue to pray for our trust in the Lord and that we don't listen to any worldly views on how we should live our life, but that we continue to keep our focus on the Lord's will for our life!

Let's catch you up: Brett got a job at Hope Community Church in Raleigh, NC as the College Pastor (check out their website: http://www.gethope.net). Such an incredible Church!!!! Can't believe we get to serve here!!!! MaryMayes became a big sister on April 16th (Madelyn "Maddie" Moriah), Brett graduated on May 30th with his Master's in Divinity, we packed up all of our things in Cali and shipped them to Raleigh, NC (where it is currently in a storage unit), sold my Acura Integra (so hard to part from). So we needed another car for our family and a beautiful couple gifted us with a minivan for free in GA. WOW!!! We had a blast with our family in GA for the month of June and now we are currently in temporary housing in Morrisville, NC(for free ~ WOW) until our house closes this Friday (finger's cross everything goes smoothly). We will be living in Cary, NC. We are excited about getting our things out of storage here in NC as well as back in GA that have been stored since after we got married and moved to Cali! It feels like Christmas to our family!!!! We continue to THANK AND PRAISE the Lord for His provisions and His love for us as we continue to faithfully follow Him.

3 John 1:3

It gave me great joy to have some brothers come and tell about your faithfulness to the truth and how you continue to walk in the truth.

Psalm 40:10
I do not hide your righteousness in my heart; I speak of your faithfulness and salvation. I do not conceal your love and your truth from the great assembly.

We are soooo EXCITED about what ALL the Lord has done, is doing, and is going to do! We look forward to sharing our continued adventure! PLEASE COME VISIT US ANYTIME!!! Our home is your home! The Lord has provided it for us and we feel it is a place to share with everyone! You have a FREE place to stay and would love to introduce you to the church.

We will give you our updated information hopefully this weekend! Pictures will be coming soon!
LOVE,
Holly, Brett, MaryMayes and Maddie

Then he said to his disciples,
"The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.
Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."
Matthew 9:37-38

Carolina Dreamin'

Well, first of all, we made it safely across the USA. Holly and the girls flew across country, and I (Brett) drove his car, even though when I got to GA I needed to get the breaks worked on. Praise the Lord I got there safe! We have been living with Holly's grandparents and the girls have enjoyed seeing Nanny, Big Pop, Gammy, Ganpa, mama, papa and all her aunts and uncles. It's been great to see them.

Right now we are here in Raleigh, NC house hunting. We've been here since Monday afternoon and we've been hunting for houses every day for several hours each day. As of right now, we have had no luck. We almost found a place, but we our phenomenal real estate agent did some work and found out some things that saved us a ton of money, and we were able to walk away. We've got one more day we think, and then we will get back to GA (we left MayMae in GA with Nanny and we really miss her). We are hoping to find a place to stay tomorrow (rental), while we continue to look at houses...so we'll see.

We're really trusting the Lord for a lot these days, but our faith is weak. Our prayer right now is, "Lord we believe, but help our unbelief."

Spoiled, or Befriended, rotten

Here are a couple pictures of our daughter who is in the middle of all of her "friends", this after she just got four new ones from her Nanny and Aunt Lin Lin. She loves when we do this, and daddy is a fan as well.

Also, check out the picture of our new angel, we are calling "Maddie Bug." So, here is the the story behind those two names. We have officially confused MaryMayes, who knows her name well, but we have also called her "Nooni" and "Princess." Well, Daddy made the mistake of referring to Maddie as "princess," to which MaryMayes replied, "I princess." Daddy saw the betrayal in her eyes so we had to come up with another sweet name, so we chose "angel." Then, we thought that we needed to even things up and call her "Maddie Bug"...we know...we are ridiculous.

Madelyn Moriah is Here!!!

Madelyn Moriah is here. She was born on April 16 (Daddy's bday too) at 1:07 p.m., weighing 8 pounds and measuring 21 inches long. She is a great eater, sleeper and pooper...pretty awesome so far. MaryMayes loves her baby sister, but she's a bit jealous. We are so blessed and honored by God's little miracle and the blessing to be the parents of two gorgeous and amazing girls. Mommy is healing well from her c-section, but she's got some pain when her drugs wear off. She's moving better and better every day though. Here are some pics for you to enjoy!

The Four of us!


Smile!


Sorry its sideways, its too cute to pass up


The sleeping beauty.


Maddie with her eyes open...not too common of an occurrence.


Some sweet daddy daughter time.


Great pic mommy!


Daddy is worried...Nanny is getting MayMae into toenail polish already.


MaryMayes is making sure Maddie is in perfect health!

#2

Well, our little princess, MaryMayes, turned 2 this past Tuesday. To celebrate we had some of her friends and our friends to help us celebrate MayMae's two years. Our friend and old neighbor Megan made a beautiful (and might I add, delicious) Baby Bop Cake, which MaryMayes just loved. We socialized, let the kids run around like wild indians, sang happy birthday to the birthday girl, had punch, cake and ice cream, then had the birthday girl open up her presents.

It was a real blessing having our friends come over and celebrate with us. God has blessed us with great friends and relationships out here, and we're so thankful.








Uncle Dan and Aunt Jules.


The Birthday Girl with Uncle Dustin and Aunt Heather.


The Nooni with uncle David.

Diving into the presents

The princess opening a present with the help of Jane and aunt Shay Shay

Big D with his mommy, aunt Kiyoko

Look at that beautiful cake! Thank you Megan G!

Look at Holly's belly.

Gammy and Ga-pa

We loved the fact that we were visited by my Mom and Dad, grandma and grandpa Durham, for a few days last week and the week before. What a blessing it was to spend some time with them, though the reason for their visit was sad (one of their best friends has stage 4 liver cancer and was at the City of Hope for several days during their visit).

We had a great time eating Mexican food (Holly is not a fan of Mexican during her pregnancy, which makes me a very sad individual), going to the park, talking about Talbot stories, taking them to our church and going to the LA Zoo. MaryMayes loved the Zoo, and talked about Tigers, Hippos, Monkeys, and 'Raffs for several days afterward. Another thing she kept saying, even to this day, is "Gammy?" and "Ga-pa?", wondering where they are.

If you remember please keep my parents friends, the McClanahan's, in your prayers. Pray specifically for the dad, Bob, who has stage 4 liver cancer, his wife and two adult sons.

Here's some pics of our trip to the zoo.

MaryMayes was very Excited to see the "big monkey."


Mommy, MaryMayes and Gammy posing for pic.


Ga-pa and the Nooni waiting for the ladies.


Someone was very excited about seeing animals.


Gammy, MayMae and Mommy entering the LA Zoo

We have survived the storm of the decade

Well, as we watched the local news last week, you would have thought we were all going to die. One local newscaster even labeled the storm, "the storm of the decade," and taking place in January of 2010, he may be right.

Yes, it did rain. But, we do not know of anything that happened outside the state of California because this storm dominated every news outlet out here. Yes, there was some flooding, thunder, lightning, hail, and even a couple of recorded tornado's, but not around us. Yes, snow fell in lower elevation areas, but none around here...to Brett's dismay. Yes, you can see beautiful snow capped mountains for miles and miles, but you will have to wait in miles and miles of traffic to actually touch the snow. Yes, parents went crazy because they were cooped up indoors with their children who wanted to go to the park and play, and yes, I'm speaking from experience. So, we ended up going to Petsmart three times and another pet store once, for MaryMayes to play with the dogs, cats, fish, birds and other pet store animals. She talked about the dogs, cats and fish all week long. One morning, we even woke up to MayMae saying, "Rain?" "No Park?" "Me Pet Dogs?" It was cute, and made for a fun and interesting week.

Thanks to those who called or emailed to make sure we were safe and sound.