A Rich Journey: Thinking of You Sunday (and making a tour for you)

Well, it’s Sunday. We woke up this morning and thought “I want to go to Salem,” but alas, Salam was 10 hours away. It was sad. But we put our girls in the car and drove to a new church, and listened to a pastor whose name I don’t know preach about how Daniel lived with firm, unwavering conviction but spoke to unbelieving authorities with wisdom and tact. It was good. And good to worship with God’s saints…to sing praise songs to the same Lord with complete strangers…

…very good, but we sure do miss you all.

Some of you wanted pictures of our apartment, and the campus…well this is not a complete virtual tour but we did get enough pictures tonight to at least give you an idea of where we are living. Sorry if some of them are a little fuzzy; our battery was dying. There are even some video clips. Each video clip had to be 30 seconds or less because that is all our camera does. (that’s why there are so many separate ones). Well, enjoy.

Some video clips of our apartment, outside and inside:

And here are a few still shots of various places on campus:

Those are the shops and the garage…carpentry, plumbing, car repair, etc.

Um, and that’s where we take our trash (in case you were wondering…)

This a picture of the old apartments taken from below the bottom row (we are at the top row of the old apartments, on the other side).

Now, continuing down the gravel road, we come to

The childcare building, where Cali will be during morning classes.

The toddler room. (She thinks its really neat and has been talking about it constantly).

And this is the row of pagers…we get to take one with us so they can page us if Cali needs us. See, Jevon is pointing at ours.

The nifty playground where Cali gets to play while we are in class.

Looking across from the childcare building, you can see more housing and this open field, and some signs.

Next, the Administration building (seen below), with a lot of offices and places of importance. Our classroom is also in the upper level of this building. Chapel will be held twice a week there, too.

Up that flight of stairs is the library, and at ground level is the bookstore.

This building by the lakeside is called the Lakeside Center (who’d have guessed that name?) The upper level is used as a classroom, and doubles as a dining hall for “Refresher Course” for missionaries on furlough. The lower level is the Tech Center, where solar equipment is built for missionaries and where missionaries-in-training (like us) take classes on missionary technology.

In the picture below, you can sort of see across on other side of the lake, where more staff housing, the guest house, and the MK education center are located. The MK education center is a base for ministry to missionary children and their parents, offering them nurture, support, consultations, resources, etc. They also offer elective classes to missionaries in training (that’s us) to help prepare us for the unique challenges of homeschooling in an isolated, tribal setting.

The guest facility (which is very nice, by the way) is where you might stay if you come visit us. :) Unless you prefer to crash in our apartment. There are also RV hook-ups.

It is beautiful here, on the Lake of the Ozarks.

We like to go walking, and invariably we end up stopping to talk to staff or fellow students along the way. Tonight, we bumped into some friends who went to boarding school with Jevon in Brazil, way back in the day.

And then we couldn’t resist letting the kids go in the water…it WAS really hot and sticky, and the water looked so inviting.

Staff and students enjoy picnics on “the Point”…a mini peninsula that sticks out into the lake by the swimming beach.

Well you know, missionary life can be hard sometimes…but THIS is a picnic. :)

Oh, and one more stop as we are on our way home…we’ll show you the Food Pantry…just for fun. Panera Bread donates their day-old bread on Sunday nights, for staff and students to use. There is also a garden here at MTC, and the gardeners share the produce with everyone. Right now we are eating as much cantelope as our hearts desire.