October: A race, a birthday, and student loans

Hello friends and family!

Mikaela here to tell you about our October! I know it’s only been a few weeks since our September post (we’ve been getting behind on our blog posts), but I’m going to try and get this one posted on time! October has been a wonderful month, filled with wonderful time with friends, wonderful weather, and some awesome accomplishments in our lives!

October is a wonderful month in St. Louis – the humidity goes away, the air is crisp, and the sunshine is pleasant rather than oppressive. October is also the season for Oktoberfests, sausage suppers, and races! One of the benefits of a semi-local vicarage is that we are able to attend some seminary events, so early in the month, we drove into St. Louis on a Friday evening and spent the evening at Oktoberfest eating brats, listening to polka music, and catching up with lots of friends who have returned from vicarage.  That same weekend, I got to spend time doing just about the same thing at Our Savior’s Fall Festival/Sausage Supper. We had the opportunity to spend time with some new friends from Immanuel, which is fun because we are getting to know the people of the congregation and making new friendships! This weekend, we drove into St. Louis again to go to a Halloween party at the house of some friends who are here on a local vicarage as well, and it was so wonderful and refreshing to spend time with them!

Halloween Party

Early morning trail run

We have loved taking advantage of the beautiful weather and the beneficial impact it has on our running! We spent one of our Saturday morning runs on the Katy Trail, running through farmland and enjoying the crisp air and sunshine. We also had fun running in a 5K that Immanuel’s 8^th graders put on as a fundraiser for their class trip. Being a small race, I placed first for overall women and Nick placed first in his age group for men (but that was by default since he was the only 20-29 year-old male to run the race). One of our big accomplishments this month was running our second half marathon! One of the fun parts about this race was that as a Halloween race, we of course had to dress up in costumes! This was also one of the challenging parts of the race, as finding a costume that is comfortable to run 13.1 miles in is not easy. We finally decided on costumes….three days before the race…and Nick spent all day Friday shopping for all the pieces of our costumes. In the end, it worked out great, and we were a comfortable Han Solo and Princess Leia for our second half marathon! The other important part of the race was our goal time – after running our last race in about 2 hours and 5 minutes, our goal was to complete this race in under 2 hours. As the weather got cooler, our times got faster, and we knew we were on track to meet our goal. On race day at the starting line, we made sure to move up closer to our pace group (the people running to meet close to our same goal time), since at our last race, we started so far back that we spent several miles weaving through and passing people. It was a beautiful day, not too cold and nice and sunny, and it ended up being a beautiful 13 miles to run. We got to run past the newly-renovated area around the Gateway Arch and other beautiful St. Louis landmarks. In the end, even after Nick battled an awful side cramp in mile 8, we crossed the finish line at 1 hour and 52 minutes! We were very happy and celebrated by eating a big breakfast and taking naps on the couch.

Immanuel's Dash to DC 5K

After our half marathon

Halloween half marathon costumes - Han Solo and Princess Leia

Another major accomplishment in our lives this month is that WE PAID OFF MY STUDENT LOANS!!!!! Yes, this deserves all caps! We made the first payment on my loans back in November 2014. These federal loans are on a 10 year repayment plan, and through budgeting, extra payments, and extreme generosity from churches and individual donors, we were able to make the final payment on my loans two weeks ago. This means that we paid off about $30,000 in loans in less than 2 years! We are so incredibly amazed at God’s blessings and provision in our lives and thankful for all the people who have given to us so generously. We are so excited to be free from this debt and we are excited for what it means in our lives. Now, we move on to paying off the loan we have on our car, and after that, to Nick’s student loans from his undergraduate degree. However, we did take a little bit of money to celebrate with a nice dinner out that night.

Our "We paid off my student loans" celebration dinner

On the work front, I am enjoying my time with my students. I got a new student in my class a few weeks ago, bringing my count up to 15 students, and we are constantly busy! Although it brings about the stress involved with teaching, working with Kindergarteners is a constant lesson in grace, and their love and willingness to forgive is such an amazing blessing to me. This month brought parent-teacher conferences, which, while they take extra time and writing report cards consumed me for a week, are also an amazing blessing. I love hearing what the students convey to parents and how the parents are seeing their learning and growth at home, and sometimes we just have lots of laughs at what their children say and do.

Nick has been enjoying life as Vicar. He got another chance to preach this month, and continues to assist in Sunday services, teach confirmation and Bible study, and go on visits to homebound members. He had to spend a week walking to work this month after a little trouble getting his car started, but thankfully after a few trips to the mechanic, it was a quick and inexpensive fix and he is back to driving to work again.

We have finished off October by celebrating my birthday today. We got to participate in a beautiful church service for Reformation Sunday this morning, with Nick leading liturgy and me singing in the choir. After church, we ate a delicious lunch on a rooftop patio right next to the river and picked up some local wine and homemade pie from local shops. The afternoon consisted of long naps with the fire going and lots of birthday wishes from friends and family! It was a perfect day and I am blessed and excited for what this next year of life will bring! 

Thank you again for all your love, support, and prayers. We are so blessed to be in this place with so much support and we constantly feel God’s blessings being showered upon us.

In the name of Christ our Savior,

Nick and Mikaela Duerr

Busy Schedules and Cool Weather

Hello!

Stirring apple butter

Our last update left off with Karina's wedding, but honestly, that was only the start of a long few weeks. After returning from the wedding, I had one day in the office to take care of business before I left with Immanuel's 7th grade class for their annual retreat. It was a fun but exhausting couple of days playing games, being very active, and most importantly understanding what it means to be claimed by Christ. Before we returned Pastor Bangert had left on a much needed week-and-a-half long vacation with his family, leaving me in charge of many more things than I am used to, including a hospital visit, as well as running Sunday services solo... two weeks in a row. During that time adult bible classes started, which meant I had to begin planning my 9-10 week study of the book of Revelation. And add to that doing devotions at several special events, confirmation, and calls throughout the week, it was rather tiring. But as exhausting as it was, it was also very rewarding to spend time doing what I enjoy, and having many opportunities to lead people in worship. After that things began to quiet down a bit, until Apple Butter, a school fundraiser, began. Apple Butter is a four-day endeavor in which 110 bushels of apples were turned into 204 gallons of apple butter that were then sold. The church was bustling with activity during those four days, and smelled delicious for quite a while after.

Throughout this time, Mikaela patiently put up with me, and continued teaching her large class of kindergartners. She really began to feel comfortable with the two big adjustments of the year, first having fourteen students rather than six was extremely challenging just because it was quite the growth in class size for her. The second change was having an aide who could help out with the students. Mikaela figured out how to divide the labor between the two of them so that they were being most efficient with their time and therefore best able to help their students. Not to mention that having an aide has afforded her more breaks, and has allowed one-on-one time with students, for things like assessments, to be handled in a better way. Now with a couple months under her belt, Mikaela has seen a lot of improvement in her class, not just with her own adjustments, but also with the student's adjustments to being in class full time. Overall, September has been a much better month than August.

One other exciting event in September was my mom flying out to visit us. She arrived shortly before the second weekend of preaching I had, and so was able to hear me preach and attend my Bible study. While she was here we were also able to go wine tasting at one of the local wineries, she was able to go with Mikaela to school one day, and she came in to work with me on another and helped core apples for Apple Butter. And on the Friday before she left Mikaela had a professional development event in Saint Louis, so we went in with her and spent the day around the city, going to chapel at the seminary with Mark, visiting the zoo, and, after picking up Mikaela, visiting a little specialty shop called Hot Box Cookies. It was an extremely fun week, and great to spend time with family.

Sunday afternoon date at a local winery

Mikaela and I have really been having a great time in Washington, living in a house, and enjoying the small town atmosphere. All of the little shops and restaurants give it a fun feel, and the people are always very friendly. We have been fortunate to have time to socialize with new friends at the church as well as old friends from the seminary. We have also been spending our time running and preparing for a second half marathon. We are enjoying the coming of cooler weather which allows us to enjoy our time outside.
But mostly we are enjoying having each other, and getting to continue our adventure together. 

One practical note to conclude, if you are interested in listening to any of my sermons, they are all posted online on Immanuel's web site. If you go to imlutheran.org, on the left side of the page it says, "Sermons Online." That link will pull up a good number of sermons, and mine are all the ones labeled "Vicar Nick."

In the name of Christ our Savior,

Nicholas and Mikaela Duerr