a vision-casting summer.

In my last post, I mentioned that we had a couple of major goals in mind for our summer in Indiana.  As I said, our first goal was totally met--investing and enjoying relationships!  For us and for our kids.  I know I say it alllll the time, but wow.  We have the greatest friends and family.  Thank you, Lord.

I want to share another goal with you all.  This was a MAJOR focus of our summer.  Here it is:

Goal #2 for the Mueller's summer:  To cast a vision for missions, and to invite friends to be involved in what God is doing around the world!  

Specifically, for people to be involved with our family as we go to an unreached people group in Papua New Guinea (PNG).  Some people call this support-raising, some call it partnership development (or PD), but we like to call it vision-casting!  

As the summer approached, we prayed that God would bring people into our lives.  Friends who would be interested and excited about what God is doing through His Church.  We said we would do partnership development (PD) part-time this summer, just to "get a start on it".  I was a bit nervous, as we had never done this before.  We had decided on the small group format, like 3 couples or so.  We prepared a presentation to show what we are doing with New Tribes Mission, and of course we lined up snacks :)  

Well, God answered our prayers all right!  Our summer of PD totally. rocked.  We loved it!  We had lots of fun getting together with so many friends, and we found that almost everyone was excited to be involved.

So get this.  After just one summer of PD, we are at 60% support!  Sixty percent!  Wow.  To God be the glory for that.  He totally exceeded our expectations.

Here are a few highlights of our meetings this summer (and so sad that I didn't take more pictures...oh well, next summer I will!!)

• We invited kids to come along, and at a few of the meetings we had around 16-18 kiddos!  Wow, that was fun.  Our kids loved "presentation nights", as there would be new friends to play with during each meeting :)  We loved having the kids there!

• We would always invite all the kids to join us at the end of the presentation for a missions video:

• We did a few of our meetings without our kids, too...and a HUGE shout out to our parents for helping us out by watching our kids!  We couldn't have done it without you guys, so thank you to both sets of our parents!!

• The award for "most faithful attendees" goes to... Mark and Barb!  (I am so sad I didn't get a picture of us with Mark and Barb).  They are some wonderful friends of ours, and they offered to host FOUR of our presentations at their house.  It was so amazing.  All we had to do was show up, and Barb had this amazing snack prepared and their living room was set up like a mini-theater for 2 weeks :)  And the best part?  We got to have some fantastic conversations with them on all four evenings!  What a blessing.  And it was awesome...they sat in on each one of our presentations!  They are some of our biggest cheerleaders...or should I say God's cheerleaders :)  Thanks Mark and Barb!  You guys are the best and we love you.  

• Here, our farthest-away presentation:  North Carolina!  It was so great to visit Uncle Steve and the fam, to share with them what we are doing.  Uncle Steve has been supporting us for quite awhile now, so it was great to sit down with him to finally explain the ins and outs.  What a great guy :)

• I had so much fun at each meeting, connecting with ladies...love my sisters in Christ!!  

• We did a few meetings in Detroit, over two separate weekends.  We were so well taken care of those two weekends by some very hospitable families!  (I did a blogpost about our first weekend in Detroit...read it here).  And here is a picture of our second Detroit weekend.  We stayed with the Rauhe's, who had seven kids!  (I said "had" because they now have eight!  Congrats, guys!!)  Our kids LOVED staying at their house...and so did we.  Thanks so much, Jason and Carrie!!

What a great summer of casting a vision.  To God be all the glory.

Two more things:

1.  Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who took time out to come to our presentations this summer!  We were beyond blessed by each one of you.  Thank you!!

2.  Also, next summer we will be picking up where we left off!  So for those of you who would like to hear, or just want to hang out with us ;)...just give us a call, text or email!  We would LOVE to get together with you next summer!

Thanks guys!  We love each one of you.