You are all sons of God through faith in
Christ Jesus… If you belong to Christ, then
you are… heirs according to the promise.
(Galatians 3:26, 29)

Greetings from Amsterdam!  It is with great pride and joy that we write to you this month with exciting news, announcing the arrival of the newest member of the Asp family… Yes, ladies and gentlemen, on September 2, 2007, at 2:07 in the morning (Amsterdam time) Cor William Asp was born at Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis (our neighborhood hospital) in Amsterdam!

That’s right -- we are now officially a family of five!  To fill you in on some of the specifics, when he was born he weighed in at 3090 grams (6 pounds, 13 ounces), and his overall health has been excellent.  Of course, he looks a lot like other newborn babies:  cute little nose and mouth, dark slivers of eyes, soft pink skin... He came out of the womb with extremely long fingernails, but not with a lot of hair.  In fact, he's mostly bald (more so than either of our other kids), with just a bit of very short, very fine blond hair mostly clustered on the back of his head.  Marci and I both found it quite a shock to hold him -- marveling at how light-weight he is (compared to the five-and-a-half-year-old and almost-three-year-old that we're used to) and how tiny his hands and feet are... Babies truly are miraculous.  Already, we are enamored by our beautiful little boy.

Even though I’ve already been privileged to witness the birth of my first two children, it’s still an indescribable miracle to witness the birth of a brand-new human being!  It all happened so quickly.  Right around the time that we were putting Elliot and Olivia to bed on that Saturday night, the early stages of labor began... And by the time they were just waking up on Sunday morning, we were arriving back home from the hospital with our newest family member in tow!  The labor itself went very fast (Cor was born within about twenty minutes of arriving at the hospital) -- still, we really felt quite calm, controlled, and relieved that we were able to make it to the hospital at all.  Our midwife and the nurse did a good job of handling the whole situation, and it really didn't feel all that frantic.  Marci., too, was a champ throughout the process and is recovering quite well following the delivery.

You might be interested to know that we chose our son’s name for a number of reasons…  Ever since learning that we would be having a boy, we felt that we wanted to choose a name that would reflect our family's feeling of establishment on Dutch soil, a sense of masculine strength, and an affirmation of identity and purpose.  Thus, the name Cor -- a classic Dutch name (something like the American equivalent of naming a kid "Jack" or "Harry") -- appealed to us purely on the basis of its national associations.  Furthermore, we thought that this kind of old-school (though not necessarily unfashionable) name fits well with the sense of masculine strength that we desire our son to develop over time.  Finally, we liked the name Cor because of a rather obscure allusion to identity and purpose, drawn from the fictional work of C.S. Lewis.  One of my favorite books growing up (and indeed, to this day) was Lewis's fifth installment of the Chronicles of Narnia:  "The Horse and His Boy."  In this story, the protagonist is a young slave boy named Shasta, who escapes with a talking horse to the "free lands of the North" -- and (though the plot is much more interesting and complex than this crude summary) there discovers that his true identity is not "Shasta," the poor, dirty, smelly, fisherman's slave in the oppressive land of Calormene... but rather "Cor," a noble, courageous, royal, long-lost prince, heir to the throne of Archenland.  So, in naming our son Cor, we hope to endow him with a similar sense of meaning and purpose -- as well as just having a cool name... His middle name is William, in honor of his great-grandfather, Bill Hettinger (a godly man who's had an enormous influence on Marci's life, and on mine).  And, of course, his last name is Asp -- hearkening to another solid heritage from which we hope he will draw strength and develop.

It’s exciting to imagine what God may have in store for Cor, and for the rest of our family.  We're grateful that God has brought us through the labor and delivery -- and onto the next challenge:  life as a family of five.  So far, we’ve been surprised with how smoothly things have gone.  Please keep praying for us, though, as it comes to mind.

If you’d like to see more pictures (lots more pictures!) and hear more of the story surrounding Cor’s first week of life, you can visit our website at www.ericasp.com (specifically looking to entries from September 2-8, 2007, and to the Family Pictures section).  At any rate, I hope you enjoy the attached images of our newest family member and rejoice with us for the gift which God has given to us in the form of a healthy baby boy.  Thanks so much for your support of our family, on so many levels...

Eric