When going to decide what to study for history this year back in May or so, the idea to study the Reformation came to mind. Such a formative and complex, yet important time in history of not only world history, but also church history that the thought of taking a year to study it was quite exciting to me. It also gave me a good excuse to get to read my dad’s new copy of Calvin’s Institutes for class credit. But it was cemented for me to study the Reformation when I received in the mail information of the 2009 Desiring God National Conference: Calvin in the Theater of God. Yeah, that settled the matter once I made sure that I would be able to attend the conference and get it counted for school.
I’m enjoying reading the sometimes confusing and always deep thoughts in the Institutes and it’s given me much to think of, I’ve also enjoyed reading a semi fictional account of John Wycliffe’s life this last month, I look forward to reading biographies of Calvin, Luther, Lady Jane Grey, and many others… but I’m am REALLY excited about this weekend and going to Desiring God.
Not only will it be an amazing time of great preaching on the life of John Calvin and it’s importance, but it will give our family a very welcome opportunity to see my brother again! Sam is going to college in the Minneapolis area and since we registered for 3 people and one of my parents need to be watching the little kids… Sam will be coming with us so we are very excited about that! It’s been a month since I’ve seen him and that’s the longest time going without seeing him in my entire life… so I can’t wait to see him again (and Friday is his birthday so I’m happy we’ll be with him for that).
In addition to all that goodness… our family has a very good pastor friend from Kenya, Luke Tamu (whose books can be found here). He will be coming to the conference then coming back to our house to spend a week or two with us. In the time that he is here with us I’ll have to tell you more about him like I’ve felt I should do many times before. Also my dear, dear friend Hope will also be coming to the conference and we are excited (like always) to hang out and spend the weekend learning, worshipping, and praying together.
Speaking of praying together… that brings me to another going on of this weekend. September 25-27 is the International Weekend for Prayer and Fasting for Victims of Sex Trafficking. Since I’m going to be at a conference with probably not much sleep, long days, and the need of not having hunger distract me from the speakers I decided against doing a “real” fast and instead giving up coffee and sweets. The coffee part will be difficult, but it’ll be a good reminder to pray for these precious girls and women who have had their innocence, freedom, and hope taken away when all I am lacking is coffee and sweet food. Hope is going to be joining me in this and I’m very excited about that as well. I really encourage you all to take a look at the website linked to above and consider being a part of it. If not, just pray as you remember it this weekend.
So all in all, I am pumped for this weekend and I can’t wait to share with y’all about it next week!
{Notice: in a determination to just start posting more in general… there may be some more posts about life, events, ect then I normally post in the near future.}
