Overwhelmed

Yesterday afternoon, Nick and I sat in the Chapel of Saint Timothy and Saint Titus at Concordia Seminary along with hundreds of others: students, family, and friends, awaiting our fate for the upcoming year.

We were overwhelmingly blessed to hear the words….”Nicholas Duerr…Missouri District….Immanuel Lutheran Church in Washington, Missouri.”

For those of you who don’t know, Washington is just about an hour outside of St. Louis, in the same direction and on the same highway as Fenton, where I currently teach. This means that, although I will have a longer commute than I currently do, I get to keep my current job at Our Savior.

Needless to say, we are overwhelmed at God’s loving faithfulness and grace toward us.

We are overwhelmed at my opportunity to continue in ministry at Our Savior, teaching Kindergarten, loving those kids, working with a team I have grown to know and love to grow and develop the school.

We are overwhelmed at the fact that not only do I get to keep my current job, but that God chose to provide a wonderful church for Nick to serve as a vicar…a church that fits many of the things we were hoping for, a church that has been praised by many people around us, even including a former vicar of that church.

We are overwhelmed at the financial blessings of this local vicarage…vicarage means an income for Nick to match mine, as well as housing provided by the church (a 2-bedroom house WITH a washer and dryer!). We cannot wait for the opportunity to decimate our student loans.

We are overwhelmed at the perfect match of this community to our tastes…a beautiful riverfront town, a medium-sized town with small-town community and feel (plus an ALDI!), with tourist fun, running and biking trails along the river, and right in the heart of wine country (yeah, you’re all ready to come visit us now, aren’t you?).

We are overwhelmed at the love and support that we received from friends and family yesterday. The prayers, the text messages, the time spent watching the service, whether in St. Louis or away…all that love has been felt so deeply.

We are overwhelmed at the excitement of the teachers and staff, parents and students that I work with at the fact that I will be staying at Our Savior. I am so blessed to work with such loving people who care so much about me. They cheered when they heard I will be staying next year and greeted me this morning with hugs and excitement.

We are overwhelmed that we get to stay around next year, allowing us to spend precious time with friends and family who will be back in St. Louis after vicarage, moving to St. Louis to begin seminary, or staying around for a local vicarage like we are. In the seminary life, you often only get one year with any other class, and so the opportunity to stay local extends that time before everyone moves off to different parts of the country again.

We are overwhelmed at the gift of each other…even with the potential of moving anywhere in the country, we knew that no matter what, we would be together, our constant support and favorite person always by our side.

We are overwhelmed at God’s amazing faithfulness, and how He has been planning and setting this up from the days before seminary life, before we were St. Louis residents, before we even knew what vicarage really entailed. With generous gifts, we bought a new car before getting married, one that will be able to handle the long commute that I will be making with good gas mileage. Through God’s amazing planning, I got a job two years ago in a location perfectly placed to allow us to be placed at this vicarage, at a school and in a grade level that really benefits from my staying there.  

God’s love and faithfulness is evident throughout our lives, and we give Him thanks, especially in times like this. We put our vicarage placement into His hands back in December when we prayerfully submitted our application and attended our interview. He saw fit to place us at Immanuel Lutheran in Washington, and we are, again, overwhelmed at His love and blessings. We look forward to this upcoming year with anticipation and excitement. Your prayers are appreciated as we begin vicarage in August, and we work to join the congregation, get involved, build relationships, and most importantly, to serve others in Christ.

--Mikaela

March News

Greetings from St. Louis!

We are posting about both February and March today! We wrote our blog post about February several weeks back, but in all the craziness we never posted it! (So just read our first blog post as if it’s the beginning of March)

March was a fun and adventurous month for the both of us. In the first weekend of March, Nick got the opportunity to preach at Our Savior. This is always an exciting opportunity for him, and it’s fun to watch him grow in his abilities and gain experience through this. That same weekend included both Grandparent’s Day at Our Savior and a full-day Early Childhood conference, which is a fantastic professional development opportunity for me that teaches me a lot!

High tea with my sister

This month included my spring break from school. I took my spring break to fly to South Carolina to visit my little sister, Karina, who attends college there. It had been about a year and a half since we’d seen each other last, so we had a lot of fun! It was also my first experience flying by myself, but thankfully everything went smoothly. My mom was also able to fly out to visit, so we had a fantastic girls’ week! We helped Karina and her fiancé Hunter with some wedding planning details, ate out at some delicious restaurants, went to high tea at a tea room, and overall just got to relax and spend some time together. It was a very relaxing vacation for me, since getting out of our apartment allows me to leave chores and responsibilities behind. The weather was warm and sunny, and I spent a lot of time sitting outside in the sunshine reading. As much as it was an enjoyable vacation, it was even more wonderful to return home to Nick after that time apart!

Dinner in South Carolina with family

Nick has been enjoying his classes this quarter. His full load of six classes keeps him very busy with a lot of reading and homework. So far, his favorite class is The Crusades, a history course with some very fun reading assignments. He is also taking Pastor as Educator, which has been fun for me, as he learns about writing lesson plans and various teaching methods. I helped him put together a presentation on classroom management methods, so this class has been a fun way for me to get involved in his seminary education. However, as I said, the load is very heavy, so he can definitely use your prayers this quarter, especially as the anticipation of vicarage causes a “senioritis” of sorts, leading to lower motivation to get homework done!

Easter Sunday

March also brought Holy Week and the celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection, which for a church worker, causes a lot of extra busyness. Nick helped lead four church services over the weekend (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter sunrise, and the early Easter service), and I was recruited into the choir to sing for those services as well. Although busy, it was a fun weekend for the two of us, as we were able to enjoy being involved in the church services and the fellowship with the church members we had by being at church before, after, and in between services. We are also blessed with days off of school for this weekend, so overall, it allowed for a relaxing weekend since we had time to recover from the extra services. We celebrated Easter with our friends who stayed in town for the holiday by hosting an Easter brunch at our apartment on Saturday morning. We also got the opportunity to Facetime with our families – modern technology is an amazing way to keep us connected even from so far away!

As we move into April, we have a lot of excitement, because April holds some of the big days that we have been anticipating all year long! We have just one week until our half-marathon, which we will be running next Sunday morning. Our goal is just to finish the race, but we are definitely hoping for a time under 2 hours and 10 minutes – if we’re feeling really good, we hope to finish close to 2 hours! And of course the big event of the year is now just 23 days away – Call Day! Call Day is the day that we find out our vicarage placement for next year. If you are interested, you can watch the service on Live Stream in real time through the seminary’s website. It’s on April 26^th at 3:00 p.m. Central time (so that’s 1:00 p.m. California time). April is packed full of other events, both for fun and for work, but we will update you on how it goes in next month’s post!

We appreciate your prayers in this anxious time, as we await our placement for next year. We can use prayers for peace, comfort, and wisdom as we wait for information and then make some big decisions. We again thank you for all your support and prayers. They make a huge difference in our lives!

In the name of Christ our Savior,

Nick and Mikaela Duerr

February News...A Month Late

Hello friends and family!

These two California natives are excited for the beginning of March, signaling the coming of spring! The weather has steadily warmed up, and even though we were blessed with a mild winter, we appreciate the changing of the seasons even more now that we live through snow and below-freezing temperatures. There are some small blessings to living outside of California after all!

February…such a unique month. Not only does it have fewer days than any other month, but once every four years, we add a day to this weird month. Thankfully for us, February wasn’t too weird. Instead, it brought some fun and relaxation back into our lives!

Nick worked through the last few difficult weeks of his winter quarter, completing papers and exams with only a few late nights staying up doing homework. In addition to school responsibilities, he has been helping out in church services on a regular basis and attending pre-vicarage workshops in preparation for his duties next year. However, his hard work paid off and he was rewarded with a two-week long break, which will finish up this weekend. On Monday, it’s back to school will another full load of classes, including Pastor as Educator, which includes a practicum in an area school, Systematics III, and some fun history classes.

February brought a fantastic lightening of my workload as well, as I turned in my completed accreditation document the last week of January. Not having this huge project on my plate anymore allowed me to go back to focusing on new lessons and games for my kids, as well as getting our students ready for our school musical coming up in April. Although teaching is still never easy, and this month wasn’t perfect, it is wonderful to be able to go back to what I really love to do, rather than spending all my time on accreditation work. February in Kindergarten is a very loaded month, including the 100^th Day of School (an all day party!), Groundhog Day, Valentine’s Day, President’s Day, and this year, Leap Day and a field trip to the symphony. It’s a lot of work but so much fun!

February also marked the return of our social lives after a very, very busy and stressful January. Nick took me on a fun date to an arcade where we played glow in the dark mini golf and arcade games. We got to spend some fun times with friends for the Superbowl and another weekend going out to a fancy dinner to celebrate the end of the quarter. We went to a Valentine’s Dinner Dance at our church with some friends, which not only gave us some quality time with wonderful friends, but also a fun night of dancing which is always a lot of fun! We got to enjoy a second snow day of the school year, although the snow did melt away by the end of the day. We took the free day to watch the full Lord of the Rings Trilogy (extended edition). This totals over 12 hours of movie time, but it is totally worth it! Nick had been itching to do that all winter, so it was fun to take advantage of our unexpected free day. We also were blessed with a visit from Angela, Nick’s sister, on her spring break. We had a lot of fun taking her around St. Louis, playing board games with her (well, Nick played board games), and eating some delicious food at local restaurants together. February was a full and fun month, much-needed for us! We are feeling blessed and loved after all the fun we got to have and the people we got to spend time with this month.

Enjoying fondue at The Melting Pot with Angela

Valentine's Dinner Dance at our church

Having fun mini golfing!

Our half-marathon training is progressing well, I am happy to say! We had a small hiccup in our training this month. Early in the month, I tripped and fell while on a morning run. The next week, my knee was still bothering me and causing a lot of pain, so I went to the urgent care, where they x-rayed it and diagnosed me with a suspected fracture in my kneecap. I spent a long five days in a full-length leg brace, hobbling around and having to be creative in my teaching methods. However, praise God, I went to an orthopedist and he told me that there was no break at all, and the pain in my knee was likely just normal running pain. So after about a week and a half off running, we were back at it, just with more ice and Advil. We’re now up to 9 miles in our training runs and we’re still enjoying it! We spend many evenings passing the ice pack back and forth for our aches and pains, but we are excited to be moving on and we are excited for our race coming up April 10^th!

Our first run back after my leg injury kept us out of the game for a few weeks.

God’s blessings on you and your loved ones! We thank you so much for all the support, prayers, and love you send us.

In the name of Christ our Savior,

Nick and Mikaela Duerr