Jet lag remains a problem for some of us though we are all seemingly improving. I was awake at 3:30am again this morning but managed to get back to sleep until 5am. Helen woke just before 6am. At least one person was awake upstairs again because I could hear the floors creaking but no one has made an appearance yet. I had a teleconference call today at 6am so I needed to be up early anyway.

Yesterday morning we went to downtown Louisville in the morning and walked around the Louisville Waterfront park. It is privately operated park that runs alongside the Ohio river and has numerous features including an Abraham Lincoln memorial (Abe was born in Kentucky), a water play area and series of walkways and paths running alongside the river. We parked at the one end and basically walked to the other end and back.

It was well into the 30 degrees C yesterday and relatively humid as well. When we got to the water play area some of the children (including H!) took the opportunity to run through the water sprayers. M got so wet he had to take his shirt off to ring it out. All of the other adults were sitting watching their kids play and were clearly amused by this bunch of adults playing in the water as well.

Louisville also has some famous bridges that cross the Ohio River. One of them (Big Four Bridge) was completed in 1895 already. It was originally a rail bridge but now is open only to walk or cycle over. It is 770m long (2500 feet). It has a ramp from the Waterfront park. We didn’t take it over but elected to rather drive across one of the other road bridges (they are also named including, yes you guessed it, the Abraham Lincoln bridge). The other side is Indiana so we have now been to Tennessee, Indiana and Kentucky on this trip so far. We needed to do some shopping so we found a Walmart in Indiana. It was massive. K described it as a mall not a shop. It has everything you could need so that is a pretty accurate description.

We headed back to our house for lunch and then after lunch we headed to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. You might wonder why we would go there but actually we had two good reasons. Firstly, K was taking some SA goods to people they know who are studying there. Secondly, the President of SBTS is pretty famous in Evangelical circles – a guy called Al Mohler and both H & S regularly listen to his podcasts. Al Mohler has transformed the seminary since he was appointed in 1993. His story is worth watching if you haven’t already. You can find it here: https://youtu.be/b5vS3dgyams

The people who K had gifts for had agreed to show us around the seminary. It was a great experience and one that S described as a highlight of the trip so far. The facilities are fantastic and include their own hotel even. If we had known about the hotel we probably would have stayed there rather than in the AirBnB that we booked. They have a gym, an indoor pool, an indoor running track and obviously everything they need to run a seminary including an impressive library. The library covers 4 floors and included displays of a mummy (not kidding), coins from Biblical times, a Talmud scroll, CH Spurgeon’s Bible he used up until his death and numerous other artifacts. It was like walking around a museum and not really a library! They also have an incredible faculty including numerous well known scholarly authors (Schreiner, Ware, Whitney, Mohler, Jones, Hamilton, Blount, Bosch, Haykin, Gentry) to name just a few.

It might seem strange to y’all that it was a highlight so far of our trip that we visited a seminary but I guess it shows that seeing things that have meaning to you personally are more valuable than visiting places without any personal significance. It really was an enjoyable afternoon. The people who showed us around were really lovely and they are sacrificing significantly to be at the college. To give you an idea how much they are sacrificing, they don’t use their air-conditioning in their apartment as they can’t afford the electricity cost. In the current heat I am not sure how they are possibly coping. He also has to work 20 hours per week to supplement their savings so that they have sufficient cash to live on during their visit. It was a privilege to meet them.

We spent the rest of the day at the house and cooked our own dinner of steak and ratatouille (both of which were excellent).

Until tomorrow …

P, K (for organizing the visit to SBTS), S (because he cooked the steaks), H, C, M & O