Hi, friends, welcome to a special episode of That Sounds Fun, spiritually stronger.

Happy Thursday.

I'm your host, Andy F. Downs, and I'm really happy to be here with you today for part

two of our episodes with Lauren and Thomas Rhett Aitkins. If you haven't had a chance to listen to

part one, you really want to go back and do that first before you listen to this episode. We are

literally picking up right where we left off. And I want you to get the full story of what God's been doing

in their lives over the last year and their journey of faith and prayer. You are going to want to

hear that part first. As we continue our exclusive conversation with Thomas Wrette and

Lauren Aiken's today, I hope you'll listen for this thread of God's nearness through it all. You may not be sent to

Africa for six weeks, maybe you will, but where do you see God continuing to speak to you in your

prayer life as you trust him even when it doesn't make sense? Where have you experienced his

nearness when everything around you felt really challenging.

Don't miss the conversation on prayer and perseverance and processing all that with us that we are doing over on Substack this week.

I think the questions we're asking each day will really help you look for the places where

God is maybe inviting you to listen in your prayer life and what obedience might look like

for you. You can find all of that at spiritually stronger.com. And now here is part two of my

conversation with my friends, Lauren and Thomas Red Aikins.

So we get there and this is so funny, but I think Lauren got her days wrong.

Because like her birthday, Willa Gray's birthday, and Lily's birthday were all while we were over there.

Oh, wow. 50% of your family birthdays.

I remember asking Lauren. I was like, what do you want for your birthday? And she was like, all I want for my birthday is I want to go spend the night in the bush. Oh, wow. And I was like. In a mud hut. That's like number 89 on my list of things I want for my birthday. Totally. And so I kind of thought, I was like, okay, cool. Like, you can do that.

As long as, like, people that we know are going, whatever. I went with Jen, who is our director. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I felt decent about it. Yeah. But I kind of thought we would have a few days to acclimate. This was, like, day one. Oh, you left as soon as. Well, because our trip got pushed.

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