A few days ago, I was browsing through my Timehop (the app that
shows things that you posted on social media in past years) and I saw our blog
post from January last year. The title? “Month of Mayhem.” That has seemed to
sum up this year’s January for us as well. I don’t know if it’s because
everything starts to run in full gear again after taking breaks for the holiday
season, or just because of the particular schedule at my school, but whatever
the reason, the result is insanity.
After having two weeks off and visiting Mark in Michigan, we
started back at school. Nick was stepping back into a quarter that started just
after Thanksgiving, which means the quarter was already at full speed. On top
of that, he is taking a very full load of classes this quarter, with five
regular classes and a once-a-week lectionary class. This means he is spending a
lot of time on readings and papers, and a lot of time in classes. The upside,
however, is that he is absolutely loving his classes this quarter, because he
is learning practical and applicable information. He is also now registered for
his final quarter of seminary before our ever-approaching vicarage year!
For myself, jumping into January means trying to corral and
retrain my students after two weeks off as well as working on extra projects. January
is packed full of events – an open house, a basketball tournament, the
Spaghetti Dinner (one of our school’s biggest fundraisers), Lutheran Schools
Week, and of course the faculty meetings and PTL meetings that were cancelled
in December because of the holidays. The biggest project I have been working on
is accreditation for the school. This is a huge process for our whole staff and
I have been having to hold committee meetings and do a lot of research, typing,
collecting evidences, and editing. It’s a project that puts a lot of extra work
on top of the normal work required of a teacher. On top of that, we had a snow
day thrown into the mix – my first snow day as a teacher! It was nice to enjoy
a bit of time to relax at home, but it actually is deceptively more difficult
for a teacher to have a snow day, because it totally threw off all my lesson
plans. However, it was really nice to actually have snow to work with this year
during our snow science unit, as opposed to last year when it was sunny and 55
degrees that week!
On top of all the homework, we have had meetings weekly, sometimes
feeling like it was nightly whether they were meetings for accreditation,
meetings with the Parent-Teacher League, or meetings about vicarage. In
resuming our running as we train for the half marathon in April, we have to be
consistent about our workouts, and of course all these meetings have been
problematic, since evenings are our training time. So instead of trying to work
around our evening schedules, we have made our early mornings even earlier,
with a 4:45 wake up time in order to get up and get in a workout before school.
While this is a challenge (and let’s be honest, we don’t always wake up in
time), we find that we are more productive on our free evenings because we aren’t
having to work around our training schedule after school. Our half marathon
training is well underway now, with our long runs increasing a mile each week,
but we are having a lot of fun and we’re getting really excited as we train and
learn more about running. We had a lot of fun taking our Christmas money
shopping for much needed winter running gear as well – some new gloves, more
pairs of long running pants (because on the really cold mornings we have to
wear more than one pair!), and jackets.
Since this post has so far been a lot of groaning and
complaining, we have some exciting news to share! We are ecstatic because, due
to extremely amazingly generous support, we were able pay off two more of
Mikaela's loans (the ones with the highest interest) last week! This brings us
to a total of six loans paid off, five of Mikaela's and one of Nick's (he had
one loan that was accruing interest, so we paid it off, so now Nick's loans are
not accruing any interest). Our hope is that, so long as Mikaela has a job over
vicarage, we will be able to completely pay off all of her student loans and
begin to pay off Nick's – a huge success considering we are given 10 years to
pay off these loans! We have been amazingly blessed in our time here, and
because of the generous support we have received, both financial and in prayer,
we have one less thing to worry about. Thank you so much!
On another positive note, we are looking forward to some very fun
events coming up this month as the work obligations lighten (a bit) and the
weather warms up (hopefully). We are excited to spend time with our friends for
the Superbowl today, go to a dinner dance at our church next week, and have
some family time as Nick’s sister comes to visit us and then I head out to
South Carolina to see my sister! The anticipation of Call Day also continues to
grow as we wait to find out where we will be on vicarage next year! We look forward to the adventures God brings
and the blessings He provides.
In the name of Christ our Savior,
Nicholas and Mikaela Duerr
