Whew! What a ride! I cant believe that I have only been here two weeks. It seems like a lifetime ago that I wrote my first blog. Sorry that I didn't update last week.
So when I arrived I was pretty nervous. But everything seemed to iron out smoothly. My roommates are pretty amazing. They are such Godly girls! I am so blessed. Our apartment is really nice. We have two bedrooms and two bathrooms. I admit I was a little worried about four girls sharing one bathroom but thank Heaven we have two. My house mates are Sarah Harris, Michelle Marricini and Kristen Smith. Kristen and I share a room. She is so so amazing. We already have a lifetime bond as friends. We joke that we were twins that were separated at birth. HAHA and in our room we have a whiteboard that is dedicated to Cally/Kristen-isms for whenever we say something funny... like last night Kristen was talking about how she was going to finish her homework in the morning. She said "a whole can of worms is gonna be unleashed all over that". We laughed for long time about that mixed metaphor :P
my classes are AMAZING! And by amazing I mean exhausting. I have five classes this term, Christian Evidences with Ed Wharton, Old Testament Message with Bill Tracy, Life of Christ with Pat Shaeffer, New Testament Message with Gibby Gilbert, and Missionary Mindset with AIM director Kris Smith. Each of our teachers are calling us out spiritually and mentally. The homework is life changing and attitude altering. We had our first "Ed Test", as they have been daubed by past AIMers, this week. We were asked to memorise a propositional statement for the class and the two step methodology for proving the proposition verbatim from Ed. Also the names of some Jewish and pagan sources that substantiate historicity of Christ and the Crucifixion. IE Josephus and Pliny the Younger. We had to know dates and reasons( also verbatim) why these sources are important to us as Christians. Even after only two weeks in this class I feel better equipped to practice my Christian apologetics to reason the historic reliability of the Bible. On the first day of class we started out in Gibby Gilbert's class. As we arrived we were given a card with a number on it.Instead of having a normal introduction, he had us stand in two concentric circles and get to know the person across from us. After we had chatted for a while we all sat down and he told us that we were going to play a game called "auction block" he called a number and we were instructed to speak encouraging and uplifting things to the person who was on the "auction block" a few went through the process and then the number 7 was called. No one stood up. Then up on the screen a film started playing. It was Jesus on the "auction block" being whipped beaten and crucified. The first to stand up was Dustin Horn, a young man from here in TX. We all followed suite and with tears in our eyes we praised and lifted up our Lord. It was an emotional beginning to our time together but I felt as if I had truly worshiped God for the first time.
this is just a taste of the things that We have been experiencing in our classes. In Bill Tracy's class our first test was a spelling bee on the Old Testament books. If you think that sounds easy, I challenge you to get out a sheet of paper and try. You will be astonished how many you thought you knew how to spell but didn't. In Kris Smith's class we are learning about how our attitudes can affect our message. I thought that I had a pretty good grasp on this but I was astonished to hear his story about Eastern Europe and how the AIMers there had to live with and minister to people in filth, disease, and poverty. In Pat Sheaffer's class I got to see Jesus born. Pat is going through Luke with us. The way that Pat presents the gospel is so real and emotional that it feels as if you could reach out and touch Jesus. Which is exactly what we should be able to do. We rediscovered the miracle of John's conception and the real tough faith of his parents.We saw the beauty, grace and Godly submission of Mary as she gave up her dreams to do her Father's will and how she treasured all those things in her heart. We traveled with Mary and Joseph up to Bethlehem and struggled along the road with them. We saw His birth and how absolutely divinely human it was. We were reminded not to miss the fact that Jesus had a bellybutton and that when he was born he didn't pop out with a little halo on his head preaching and healing people, but he was a baby, a crying, poopy, beautiful baby. And that is the beauty of it because he was fully human and yet he was fully God at the same time.

At the beginning of our classes one of the teachers refered to what we would be experiencing in AIM as "trying to drink out of a fire hydrant". I think that this is the best way to explain how I feel at the moment. My prayer is to be a sponge. I want to just soak up the knowledge that is raining down from these spiritual giants.