If your levels and sound is already good without a mixer, I'm not sure why you guys are incorporating one, but for the sake of information, your mixer is going to be the last stage prior to the PA.
Basically, here's a theoretical setup (and one that is quite common in practice):
Guitar to guitar amp, dynamic microphone on guitar amp, microphone feeding into a mixer channel, mixer main output feeding into PA system.
The bass and all guitars will have this same configuration, with the amps themselves serving as monitors for each individual person, and the mixer feeding all instruments into the PA system for the house volume.
Singer will simply use a microphone plugged into a mixer channel which will feed into the PA system as well. (If the singer has a preamp or something, then that preamp will feed into a mixer channel instead of plugging the microphone directly into the mixer)
With this setup, you can have a high degree of control for the main PA system, as each instrument will have it's own channel and panning and EQ, which will allow you to mix everything to sound good on the main PA speakers for the venue you're in. In this scenario, the PA creates your soundstage and the amplifiers themselves serve as monitors for each band member, and also support the main soundstage. When panning each instrument's channel, you'll pan to the location of that instrument's amplifier with respect to left/right, so that the physical location of the instruments is preserved on the soundstage.
Individual EQing will allow you to take out any harsh frequencies for that instrument and mix all instrument levels and EQ so that everything sounds even and good.
Obviously, you'll want the mixer to be situated in front of the main listening position so you can hear everything correctly when making adjustments.
Anyway, I digress.
So again, the setup should be Guitars/bass > amplifier(s) > microphone > mixer channel > mixer main outputs > PA system (just a single R/L pair of inputs on the PA mixer, as you already have your separation and control on your Yamaha)
Obviously, this will mean you will have to acquire a dynamic microphone for each amplifier. Another consideration is if you have a guitarist with stereo effects, it's going to be treated as mono when using one microphone on his amplifier. If it's a stereo amplifier, you can use two microphones, each on their respective speakers, and give them two channels on the mixer with each channel panned away from each other, and this will be preserved all the way through to the PA and R/L speakers.
As far as recording rehearsals, if you guys use your PA during practice, you can set it up exactly like you would at your shows, except you can hook up a recording device to the Yamaha's Monitor output, and you will still have the main outputs feeding to your speakers, and the recorder will be fed the same signal but through the monitor output, which you can control the level of with the monitor level.
Hope that helps.
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