Week 2 is officially complete and felt way way faster than week 1! We focused more of cultural differences in all the countries we are headed to soon and had some super fun announces this week! (Listed at the end of this blog)

   We had just about the same schedule as last week, but not as much crammed into such a short period of time. We started Monday morning with some previous week debrief/ processing questions. It was good to think through a mental recap of the week before and write down some thoughts and things we wanted to remember before starting a new week! Our first session, we got to hear from the AIM founder and how hard times lead to some of the most fruitful things. Followed by effective ways to blog/ story tell in and outside of those blogs, why we do that, and what should/shouldn’t be shared.
Throughout the rest of the week we got to learn different cultural lenses we may be using without even realizing it, priorities of different cultures, personality vs. groupality, how to share the Gospel and our personal testimony, apologetics, effective questions to ask, evangelism, emotional stewardship, the Kingdom of Heaven, fundraising, deep dive into spiritual realms, and finally all about our hosts in each country/ how to respect them. Definitely another full week, but it was broken down very well in a way it’s easier to remember. (And my many notes come in handy too :) )

   A huge thing God has revealed this week is how many layers there are to Him and the “Spiritual Realm”. It seems, in a lot of these cultures we are leaning about, they have to “earn” things and love from their gods (which we learned ends up tying into the spiritual realm) while the one true God freely offers His perfect love to anyone who comes before Him. (Matt. 7:7) Personally, I never dove too deep into learning about other gods, but getting to hear about it in our sessions and see so many impossible things happen over the course of these last 2 weeks has been so eye opening. Because so many good things are happening though, there has been so much spiritual ware fare and overall prayers needed. If you’re reading this and are wondering how you can be praying I would ask mainly for protection over our campus, spiritual warefare, and healing over our bodies. There has been lots of sicknesses and injures.

Some cool and exciting things that happened this week are….
- First off, our squad officially added an extra country to our route, which is Vietnam, and we will be spending Christmas there!! Yay!!
- Second, there are a few roles on each teams/ squad which include treasurer, storyteller, and party planner. I was asked to be the treasurer of the team which means I am responsible for most of our team budgets (food, supplies, local transportation, etc.) and will be keeping track of those/ forwarding all purchases through receipts to AIM staff. I’m excited to learn more about that process and have those responsibilities!
- Everyone is so much closer already, I officially know everyone on my squads name haha and the reality of living with 39 “ siblings” for close to a year is getting so much more exciting and finally sinking in!

   Overall, this week was really great and I feel so much more comfortable here already! We are headed into our last week of training before doing some local ministry next week, which I’m super excited about!