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. 

Here's the sweet care package that they put together for us: 

Below is the river that separates Kentucky from Indiana, which we crossed every time we went to the seminary. I caught the sunset on the first night of the conference. The curved building in the foreground is the KFC Yum! Center, where Steve and I went for the T4G conference when I was a freshman and he was a sophmore. We had met before that conference, but it was there that we first became friends.

The sunset provided perfect lighting to snap some pictures of the beautiful buildings at Southern.

Matt refused to turn around for this picture:

Here's the chapel on campus, which is where the conference took place. 

Albert Mohler, president of SBTS, was one of the speakers at the conference, along with John Piper and Russell Moore. The conference got both of us fired up for missions and excited about living overseas in the future. 

I got to go to a breakout session taught by Catherine Pratt, the wife of the dean of Southern's Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism. When we did our campus visit last summer, we got to sit down with Zane Pratt and learn about his family's 20 years on the mission field in Central Asia. 

It was really neat getting to meet his wife and listen to her wisdom and experience about about women's roles on the mission field and the unique opportunities that women have in Muslim homes. One of her encouragements was to read biographies of women who were on the mission field. I just ordered a book of missionary biographies that she recommended (From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya by Ruth Tucker) and I'm excited to start reading it! She also had a lot of insightful things to say about what to expect on the mission field and the importance of learning and enjoying the culture that you're in and not complaining about difficulties and differences. 

There was a Q&A time between John Piper and Al Mohler. It was interesting and beneficial listening to these godly men answer questions about missions. The biggest takeaway for me was that knowing the Word of God is the most important thing for a missionary, more than experience and theological training. 

Charlie Hall led worship for us, which Steve and I both really enjoyed. 

I took lots of pictures of Cara, because she likes to pose...

...then she seemed like she'd had enough, so I stopped. Sorry, Cara!

They even had these special SBTS water bottles:

Anyway, the trip was amazing and it made Steve and I even more excited about moving there next summer (2014), which is our plan right now. I can't wait until the next time that we're able to visit Matt and Cara, and I'm looking forward to living close to them again once we move there!