The Crazy Cat Lady

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

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

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!)

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

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!

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

ONE WEEK!

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.