Quick update from Tim, since I let Sarah do too much of the blogging:

The spiritual training has been excellent. I have felt very spiritually challenged the first three weeks, more so then I have in a while. The teaching style is open ended enough not to kill my passion. The leaders do not provide air tight doctrines so much as study the Bible and talk about what it means and then we discuss application. For example, last week we talked about the various doctrines within the church body on who exactly can go to heaven and which ones we may find in the mainstream of Christianity and also which ones seem to have very little scriptural backing.

We have a different theme every week. The first week was the Biblical basis for missions, the second was death to self, and now we are on intercessory prayer. We spend much of the time on the practical, but the philosophy and theory its given its due. I have read a couple great books on hot-climate, cold climate culture differences that are very specific on how not to misunderstand other cultures.

I have had good ministry opportunities with international students, lots of refugees, and Hispanics which are 95% of our apartment complex. There a lot of ministry opportunities in this city because of extremely high refugee populations. Today I spent the afternoon drinking tea with some folks from Myramar and some others from Nepaul.