Missouri Musings

Well, after a whole year of not blogging, we are back at it! It seems a little lame to be writing about our life stateside, when our last posts were about crazy jungle adventures, but hey, life is always an adventure isn’t it?

A quick recap of why we are in Missouri:

After returning from Papua New Guinea last October, we knew we wanted to continue with New Tribes Mission to become career missionaries and be trained in tribal church planting. The next step in this process was to spend two years at the New Tribes Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Roach Missouri. No, you did not read that wrong, it is literally located in a town called Roach. Does anyone NOT think of cockroaches when you hear that?? … Me either. We applied, and were accepted for this fall semester, 2016. Well to add another twist to the story, we also got pregnant this year, and when we realized when the baby was due (the first week of classes at MTC) we were thrown for a loop.

Views as we passed St. Louis

This was what we were looking at for the majority of the 2 day drive

Why oh why does it always seem that when you have the most perfect plan mapped out in your head of how you think your life is going to go, it NEVER works out that way? I swear, we have had so many ideas/plans for how perfectly everything would fall into place in the last few years, and God seems to constantly remind us (through rather dramatic means) that He is the one in charge, and no matter how much we plan and prepare and think things are set in stone, life can change in an instant sending our plans into the wind. I think I might actually be a little grateful for this in our life, though. I can’t even believe I’m saying it, because I have had my fair share of ‘temper tantrums’ with God, but I think I am starting to see the benefit of life being constantly upended for us. I noticed it the most with this move from Connecticut to Missouri…and that is  that I’ve let go a little bit. I’ve loosened my grip (a tiiiiiiiny bit) on trying to control my life because of how many times my plans have been shredded. And trust me, I do NOT have this mastered. But I did experience less “upset-ness” this move. (We have moved 8 times in 2 years of marriage, so I guess maybe that also has something to do with it LOL). But I am thanking God for this minor victory in my life.

Anyways, all that to say, we made the move last week to Missouri (HUGE shout out to Jacob’s parents for helping us get here), and have spent the week exploring our new home. We live on a huge lake, which is VERY exciting. We have gone swimming almost every day since the “real feel” temperature on my weather app has said 100-106 degrees almost every day since we’ve been here. Add onto that me being almost 9 months pregnant and yea….its hot. But we’ve settled into our little apartment, seen the doctor who will deliver our baby, taken some walks, and talked a lot about how excited we are to meet our son!

“beach” front

Nightime walks on the riverbank

And for anyone who is interested, here are some pictures of our new apartment:

(we have a room too, I just didn’t take any pictures of it haha)

It has been so wonderful to settle into a place where we know we will be for the next 2 years. Both Jacob and I have really felt like God is going to teach us some big things here at the training center. We also have some seriously huge decisions to make ourselves over the next two years, like where in the world we will go to church plant, who our partners will be, etc. We feel like we are right at the beginning of many new things, and it’s exciting!

For all of you who have prayed for us, THANK YOU. I really mean it when I say we felt the prayers, and have been really at peace throughout this transition.

Stay tuned for our next post which will most likely be an introduction to our baby boy who is coming in just about 2 weeks!! AH!

For those of you who have asked, here is our new address:

134 Main Dr. Roach, MO 65787

…Roach…it doesn’t get old…