making our way home...

Our second semester at New Tribes missionary training center has ended!  We are home again for the summer...it feels great to be back in our beloved Indiana :)

We decided to break up our trip home with a stop in St. Louis. We always drive right by St. Louis when we go to and from our hometown from the MTC, and we always say "we should stop on one of these drives and just hang out in St. Louis for a day!"  So we decided to just do it.

We are so glad we did!  St. Louis is a really cool city, and it is really the first big city our kids have ever experienced.  Plus it broke up our drive time, and that is always a blessing :)

Our first stop was the St. Louis zoo (which is a free zoo, by the way!  Except for the $15 parking.  But no admission fee.)  We thought it was a really neat zoo.. 

This was how Daisy felt about the Sea Lions...

We rented a double stroller, but it turned into a quadruple stroller :)

Nathan booked us a hotel on Expedia.com.  We were hoping for something near the Arch--and the one he ended up booking was called the Hyatt Regency at the Arch!  It was only a 5 minute walk to the Arch--not to mention it was a super nice hotel and Nathan got it for like $65.  What a good deal.  Our kids loved staying in a fancy hotel (pretty sure the front desk people didn't appreciate the fact that our kids wanted to go up and down the escalators like a hundred times!  Ha) :)

The view from our room was amazing...

And then we walked to the Arch!  We have been wanting to see it since last August, when we first moved to MO.  It is bigger than it looks from the highway!

Our kids had so much fun running around the huge grassy area...

and walking in the Mississippi River...

And touching the Arch...

Our good friends from MO recommended an amazing pizza place.  We decided to try it out--it was such good Chicago-style pizza.  Thanks, Jarod and Tara!!  The place was called Pi.  I liked the glasses :)

This is what Halle thought about the crushed red pepper :)

That night, we looked out of our hotel room and we each prayed for the city of St. Louis.  It was such a neat time with our kids!

The next morning, we headed home!  Home for the summer, anyway.  More to come soon :)

beauty.

Beauty is a very accurate description of springtime here in the Ozarks.  It really is so beautiful.  God is amazing!

A couple of weeks ago, we had a chilly night--perfect for a bonfire!  The sky was gorgeous.

(Haha...side note.  I looked over and saw Halle standing over in the distance, belting out "Let It Go".  She is so funny!)

And now, summer weather has hit.  We are absolutely LOVING it!  We have had quite a few 90 degree days, and we are making the most of this summertime weather!

And speaking of beauty, just look at this little beautiful thing!  I just love her :)

recent developments

Two things:

#1.  We have begun an great class called "CLA Methodology".  "CLA" is a very very very important acronym in the Tribal church planting world.  It stands for Culture and Language Acquisition...which is what we will be doing for the first few years upon arriving overseas.  Learning a new culture and language is so much work (not that I would know from experience!) and honestly?  It kind of seems impossible that I, Rachel Mueller, will be doing that some day.  However, I serve a big God and I am confident that He is able--so I will rest in that!

So...that being said, our class that I mentioned is really great.  We are being equipped so well here at the MTC!  Right now in our CLA class, we are broken up into small groups and working with a "language helper" (ours is named Claudio--a guy on staff here at the MTC.  He is from Brazil, so we are going to put our CLA skills into practice with him in learning some Portuguese language and culture).

We went to a "culture event" at Claudio and his wife Edna's house--they served us a Portuguese meal.  It was some delicious food, and a good culture experience :)  Our small group took some pictures of Claudio and other things that night, and we will be using the pictures in our mock language sessions with Claudio starting this week as we start learning Portuguese.

Some of our classmates--I love that our kids are involved in this, right along with us.

Claudio and Edna--great hosts and some mighty good cooks :)

It wouldn't be a true Portuguese culture event without a soccer game!  Kaine was thrilled that Claudio turned the tv on to watch Brazil play soccer!

Our classmates are so amazing with our kids!

And, our second recent development:

#2.  Throughout our training, we have not known for sure what country we will be going to someday.  However, now...we are very excited to announce that we have chosen to serve in Papua New Guinea!  We have always felt drawn to Papua New Guinea (PNG), and we also still want to talk it over with our pastors from our home church, but...we are feeling confident that God is indeed leading us there.  Praise Him--we are very excited about this!

How did we decide on this?  Last week the MTC hosted this thing called the "Field Fair" (my sis Jill did a longer blogpost on the Field Fair...so feel free to check that out!)  But basically, NTM representatives from all over the world came to share about their field, what their needs are, etc.  This picture is of the rep from PNG.  We had lots of opportunities last week to talk with this guy, see videos, hear stories, hear about the vast amount of work still to be done in PNG... and talk with Aaron and Jill about it.  We are all on the same page, so PNG, here we come!