ellen's in the field

In January, one of my best friends left to do mission work in a remote jungle area in Suriname. A few weeks ago, she flew from there to Oaxaca, Mexico, where she will continue serving as a missionary with Hands On for the rest of the semester. I'm so proud of her for taking this leap of faith and boldly going out with the gospel. 

You can find her blog, titled "Significantly Insignificant", on my "Blogs I Love" feed on the side of this page, which will update every time she posts. I encourage you to read about what God is teaching her and the ways she is being used to bless the people she's serving. Please join me in praying for God to continue to keep her safe and grow her relationships with her team mates as they settle into life in Oaxaca. 

me and ellen on my wedding day

resolute conference {louisville, ky}

Two weeks ago (I know, I'm so behind on blogging!) Steve and I drove up to Louisville, KY for the Resolute missions conference at SBTS. This was our second trip to Louisville together and we definitely fell more in love with it than ever. We stayed with our friends Matt and Cara Kramp (Cara is my old roommate and we were each other's bridesmaids, so we're really close friends). They moved to the area in November, and they live over the border in New Albany, IN. Since Steve is the interim college pastor at UBC, we don't have a lot of time to spend with other married couples, so it was really nice getting to spend a few days with Matt and Cara. 

swiffer duster refills

I'm in the middle of making a slipcover for our couch. I've been working all week just to get one couch cushion done, so I needed a little break. I decided to sew something easy and confidence-boosting this morning before getting back to the slipcover. I found these a while ago on Pinterest, and I had some fleece leftover from making something this fall, so I made one! These duster refills are really easy to make and always useful, so I figured I'd put my tutorial on here in case anyone else is interested. 

gluten free cheesecake filled cake balls

I was asked to bring food to the college ministry's Super Bowl party last week. I knew that there wouldn't really be any desserts there that I could eat, so I decided to bring one. I found this recipe online for cheesecake filled cake balls, so naturally I had to make some (with gluten free cake mix)!

passion conference 2013 {atlanta, ga}

This post is about a month late, sorry! I haven't had as much time to blog as I would have liked. At the beginning of January, Steve and I went to Atlanta, GA with about 35 college students for the Passion Conference. Every year, Louie Giglio heads up this conference that brings tens of thousands of college students together to worship and learn from amazing teachers like Beth Moore and John Piper. When I was a freshman, I went to Passion 2010, and there were about 20,000 college students in Atlanta. Neither of us went the next year because we were on a mission trip to Africa, but Steve and I went to Passion 2012 with the church last year right after we got married. There were about 40,000 students. This year we managed to almost fill up the Georgia Dome with over 60,000 students.