We never had a break that went this fast!

Just before we ended our 1st Semester here at the MTC for Christmas Break we had some cool experiences and another huge blessing and praise to share with you. God continues to blow us away and amaze us with His love and blessings. Even when He has nothing left to prove to us or anyone for that matter, He keeps showing His goodness time and time again...and just when we need it!
We are excited to share that we have been blessed having received our "elinc advisors." In Lehman's terms that is MTC speak for mentors. Many of you have prayed or have been praying for us in this area as we have been in prayer and searching for just the right people to pour into our lives while here at the MTC. Words cannot express our gratitude and thanks for our prayer warriors out there!

We gratefully introduce to you Grant and Alana Mayer! Grant and Alana served as missionaries in Boliva. We are rapidly becoming good friends as we get to know them more and more. They are such a blast to be with and they will be helping us with Christian life, marriage and parenting as we meet on a regular basis. It is such a blessing to have such awesome godly people to be friends and grow with! Thanks again for praying!

We had two opportunities to see our children perform in Christmas performances and they were both great! We were so proud of them!

This is Grace's class just before their Christmas program. Grace is in the middle with a gray top on. This class is very busy and a handful, but Miss Sandi (on the left) and Miss Anna (on the right) do a fantastic job with them!

Here is our Grady moments before he performed in his school Christmas play the "Gingerbread Cowboy." He was the "Coyote" and did a fantastic job! We were able to enjoy some goodies together before we all left together and headed back to the MTC for one more class. As soon as class let out we started our trek back to Bluffton for Christmas break.

Thanks to Tim and Julie Eicher's family ministry "Eicher House Ministries" we were able to have a beautiful home to lay our heads at night and celebrate our very own Christmas together. What a blessing and encouragement! Thanks Tim and Julie!

After a great Christmas with extended family we traveled to Michigan to visit our friends at Litchfield First Baptist. We stayed overnight with some of our awesome friends Jason and Michelle Boulis and went to First Baptist the next day to worship. First Baptist is an incredible group of believers that took us in as family while we lived in Michigan. We love them dearly and it was so nice to be able to worship with them once again!

On the way from Litchfield we stopped when we saw this great sight in Auburn. "Bigfoot!" The kids couldn't resist and it was awesome to see their faces when seeing the massiveness of this vehicle.

A few days later after bringing in the New Year with some good friends Rob and Joy Martz, we went out to visit New Tribes Mission Aviation in Arizona. From this 600 plus acre facility New Tribes Mission services the world of New Tribes by training, retraining and equipping pilots and airplane mechanics. These pilots and mechanics keep our New Tribes missionaries alive and working well in the tribe by flying missions of food and support to our missionaries in the tribe. Something new about New Tribes Mission Aviation, it is now subsidizing flights to other missionary agencies and even nationals who need to get to certain areas to spread God's word but don't have the money to do so. Through generous supporters NTMA is now able to pick up the remaining balance of a flight so missionaries can get where they need to get.  

One of the beautiful settings around NTMA in Arizona. The great weather helps to make this facility a hopping place constantly training pilots throughout the year. Another attraction is the tricky landscape of the mountains which have runways supplied by generous neighbors or NTMA that try the skills of pilots in a simulated, close to real life scenario they will face in places like Papua New Guinea when landing and taking off.

NTMA has asked us to consider serving with them in Arizona because of the skill sets Kent has that are greatly needed there. We will keep you posted as the Lord reveals more to us about this possible option in ministry to complete the task of reaching those who have never heard. NTMA's slogan is "MILLIONS UNREACHED...NONE UNREACHABLE."

After returning to Indiana we hopped in a vehicle with this group and headed out to Pennsylvania to "Wayumi." "Wayumi" is an NTM ran facility that helps people understand what our role is in God's Great Commission and what tribal missions looks like. This is just part of the group. I couldn't find a picture of our people from Litchfield First Baptist. An incredible group of people!

This was a little look into our break in which nearly 7,000 miles in travel accumulated. God is good as He always is and now we are back settling in to the MTC in Missouri. Thank you all for your continued prayers of support! We love you all.

Sincerely,

Kent, Brenda, Grady, Grace and ?

Busy Fall, New Knowledge and New Surroundings

Hello again friends! It has been a long while since our last post! August in fact! A lot has happened this fall as we transitioned to life here in Missouri at the Missionary Training Center with New Tribes Mission.

Same Rockwell Clan just a different locale

As New Tribes Mission prepares us for the situations of missionary life and in foreign contexts we spent plenty of time in the classroom this past semester.

Our classroom setting looked like this for the most part throughout our 1st semester.

Some things we covered that we're learning about are: our personalities and the personalities of others and how that affects accomplishing tasks day to day with our teammates, growing in our marriage, growing in parenting, understanding why New Tribes uses "Building on Firm Foundations" to teach the gospel to the unreached, and understanding the task is not finished simply because we have shared the gospel and a person becomes a Christian....we learned what is needed

to help these young Christians to mature in their walk so we can leave a mature church behind in the end.

Many beautiful evenings were able to be spent like this...fishing on the lake for supper.

A rare opportunity presented itself to us all at the MTC (Missionary Training Center) when New Tribes Mission Aviation came for a visit in one of their helicopters. They offered free rides to students at the MTC and Grady and Kent got the chance of a lifetime to fly in it!

It was a priceless moment as Grady could hardly contain his excitement and amazement.

Grady and Kent enjoyed the little flight that took them high above the Lake of the Ozarks. It was so fun for Grady he wanted to get back in line and go again, but we had to give our friends a chance to ride too.

October was a busy month. This month included a neighborhood party with ribs and other fixins', Halloween, Grady's Birthday, a visit from Grammy and Pa and another surprise!

Fun, food and fellowship here at the MTC. What we are so used too in Bluffton!

Even the kids got in on the action!

Grady celebrating his 7th Birthday with some of his Missouri buds.

Grammy and Pa came to visit us to help us celebrate and make Grady's 7th Birthday a hit. Grammy and Pa were a huge blessing, they treated us to some great times of hanging out and showing us how to have fun. We missed seeing them go.

At Halloween we all dressed up and went door to door here at the MTC facility. It was a blast had by all who participated. The line Kent wrote was "Three of these people are pretending to be something or someone but one person is not can you guess who?"

This is how the crazy month of October ended for the Rockwell family...Blessing number 3 due in June of 2016! We are very excited!! Thank you Lord!

November was a fun time that we were able to have reuniting with family for shenanigans like this!

In between Thanksgiving and Christmas we were invited to meet up with our close friends from Bible School in Jackson, the Casey family in Springfield. One place they treated us to upon arrival was an awesome restaurant titled Lambert's Café, which had HUGE portions and hot rolls that were literally thrown at you by waiters and staff. So much fun was had as we renewed acquaintances on this super fun weekend. The Casey family will be leaving us soon to head for Belgium to "Shine the Light" there in a heavily Muslim influenced country. Please remember them in your prayers if you think of it!

Missionary life can be so sad at times when you have to say goodbye so many times to such good friends and people. It is one of the hardest parts of this lifestyle. Fortunately our hope isn't in this world or life for that matter. Our hope and trust is in the Lord who saves. One day we will never again have to leave one another when we are gathered around His Throne. It is the hope we put our faith and full trust in.