Content at Home

So I've been wanting to blog for the last week or so but every time I thought about it, I didn't feel like I had a whole lot to write about. Everything is going well and life is finally steady... at least until school starts this week. haha!

The beginning of the new year brought some great changes to our family. Kyle and I are both enjoying our new jobs. We both love getting off work around 4:30 in the afternoons so that gives us a nice evening together,unlike our previous jobs. With school starting back this week at the Seminary, we have enjoyed spending more time up on campus this past weekend. On Friday night we enjoyed watching a Boyce Bulldogs basketball game where we got to see friends. The Bulldogs put up a good fight against the Tennessee Freewill Baptist College team. Last night I brought super up to campus and met Kyle after work and we enjoyed eating together in Founders Cafe. I love the hubbub of a new semester starting!

On Saturday night we enjoyed going to a benefit concert hosted by Sojourn and the 930 room for a ministry team in Haiti. Go Ministries International is a mission that already serves the people of Haiti and the people of the Dominican Republic. Interestingly, we found out at the concert that they had already been planning this night for four months and in God's providence, the concert fell right after the earthquake, when funds would be needed the most.

Sunday we enjoyed fellowship with our friends and family at Crossing Church. Our pastor, Dustin, started a series through the book of Nehemiah yesterday and we are excited to see this study pan out. I love that our church preaches expositionally through various old and new testament books of the bible! Our women's ministry, Bloom, that meets together once a month will be starting a new book this year. We will be going through "How People Change" by Paul David Tripp. I have heard from numerous sources that this book is great so I am very excited to work through it with the women at my church.

On the school front, Kyle is signed up to take Introduction to Biblical Counseling with Dr. Stewart Scott, New Testament Survey 1 (online) with Dr. Cook, and he is attending the Adopting for Life conference with Dr. Russell Moore and taking it as a class. All three of these classes will be great! I'm excited for him and hope to glean from his knowledge this semester! :-)

I will be taking two classes this semester through the Seminary Wives Institute (SWI). The first will be Marriage and Family taught by Mrs. Tonya York. Mrs. York is wife to Dr. Hershael York who is a Preaching Professor and Associate Dean of Ministry and Proclamation at Southern Seminary. They also serve as pastor and wife at Buck Run Baptist Church. Dr. and Mrs. York speak at the yearly Family Life Conference held on Southerns campus for SWI students and their husbands. Although I haven't attended it officially yet, I did get to sit in the sound booth one year for part of the conference when Kyle ran sound for it (back when we were dating) and they did a fabulous job addressing issues for husbands and wives. (Little did I know back then that I would be actually participating one day as a seminary WIFE!)

The book we will be using in this class is Creative Counterpart by Linda Dillow. From what I've seen of this book it looks like it will be well worth the read!

My second class will be on Hospitality taught by Mrs. Mary Mohler, wife to Dr. Al Mohler, President of Southern Seminary. After hearing Mrs. Mohler teach in my Essentials class from last semester on hospitality one evening, I am very excited to learn from her for six weeks straight on how to open our homes to serve others. She truly has had many opportunities to use her home to minister to others given the wonderful position that God has placed her family in. With hospitality being one of my favorite topics to learn about and grow in, I'm really looking forward to this class!

I believe the book we will be using in this class is Open Heart, Open Home: The Hospitable Way to Make Others Feel Welcomed and Wanted by Karen Mains.

Well, I guess I had more to say than I thought! ha! Well, I'm off to go enjoy Aedan, the baby I nanny, now that he is up from his nap.