During the final week of 2015, Girelle Montagner, Julia Moore, Kati Juhlin and I (Liz Juhlin) traveled to St. Louis for the Urbana15 missions conference sponsored by Intervarsity. It's not quite right to say that the week was a crazy whirlwind of events because even though we packed in 14 hours of Urbana-ing every day, the sessions we attended addressed serious issues in our hearts and around the world.

  

The theme of this year's conference was "What Story Will You Tell?" 16,000 college students were challenged to use the rest of our lives to tell God's story rather than our own, and an important part of being able to tell God's bigger story is by knowing His story around the world. The worship team really did this in a practical way by bringing us songs from different cultures and generations around the world. In preparation for Urbana15, they looked at their own cultural backgrounds and sent members of their team to different countries to learn how Christians worship God in their own ways, honoring their cultural heritage. We sang in at least 8 different languages or styles, including French, Korean, Arabic, and native Hawaiian! This worship was sometimes uncomfortable and definitely unfamiliar to us, but always glorifying to God.

  

Because Urbana is a missions conference, we also heard a lot about the persecuted church around the world. Quite a few main session and seminar speakers were from restricted countries and brought very challenging testimonies to us. We heard from speakers who couldn't tell us their name or what country they were from. The Urbana15 social media accounts, which were very active and generally awesome through the week, would be silent during these messages as well. Through all of this, I think we as listeners gained a sense of gravity in the gospel message. The same message we sing so loudly and joyfully about causes our brothers and sisters to be imprisoned, beaten, and killed. Even so, every single one of these speakers clung to the power over and freedom from this world that faith in Jesus Christ offers.

  

Urbana impacted us individually as God revealed to each of us how we could fit "missions" and "the rest of our lives" together. Every day there were more seminars than we knew what to do with, so we went to the ones relating to our fields of study or interests. It was inspiring to see people who were top notch and passionate about their topic showing us another part of God's redemptive work in the world.

  

I'm so thankful for the potentially once-in-a-lifetime chance to attend Urbana15, and I know it's because of the Missions Team here at Hope that we were all able to go. Thank you so much, Hope family, for being generous and investing in Urbana15.

  

Liz Juhlin

  

Urbana was fab. Thanks for the money. Love, Liz, Kati, Girelle, and Julia