Sunday May 1, 2011

Sunday May 1, 2011 Fowler House, Cairo

The closing session at Beit Elwadi was still well attended although many families left early on their way home. Rodney and Larry taught on the Recycling Pain- the Sharing Choice, where I yield myself to God to be used to bring this Good News to others, both by my example and by my words. Larry did a wonderful job using a coke can as an illustration of how we need to be crushed in order to recycled and useful once again, and of course, his personal testimony speaks directly to that. To one level or another all of us on the team can relate to that message, especially as we share our testimonies in a foreign land. I myself wonder at the awareness God has given me of my own insecurities and penchant to let my mind wander places it need not go and He is still willing and able to use me. Following the lesson there was a time of worship and surrender when conferees would symbolically lay certain issues at the foot of the cross. I have fallen in love with their worship music, most of which is in minor keys with distinctive Middle Easter rhythm patterns. Then our entire team was called to the front where we were each given a metal plate with the Lord’s Prayer in Arabic. The conferees enthusiastically thanked us and we were overwhelmed with their appreciation, love, and requests for photos and email addresses. One young lady came up to me and thanked me for coming, saying “Because of all of you we now have hope.” How humbling; how thankful I am that God can take testimonies of ordinary people and make them into a vehicle for His hope.

After the extended good-byes, Wahid and his son drove us to our hotel for the night, the Fowler House, which was a guest house for the evangelical church in Cairo. It is near downtown and we drove so close to Tahrir Square we could see the burnt out NDP building and the elevated road where clashes took place last January. We were treated to lunch at a fast chicken outlet and then cleaned up before meeting a number of Wahid’s team at the big mall in Cairo called City Lights for an evening of shopping and dining.

I have an old high school/college friend, Erick, who was stationed as a geophysicist in Cairo last June and so I packed my overnight bag since we had talked about me spending the night with them. I had tried sending him a text earlier since I had international text plan, but I did not have the country code right and all efforts were getting no where. As a sign of our times, I ended up sending my wife in Arkansas a text, who in turn, was chatting with Erick’s wife Alicia via Facebook and so we arranged to meet at Fuddruckers at the mall. After dinner I left the team with Erick and Alicia for a cab ride to their home in the suburb of Mida. Erick had us bale out of the first cab because the driver refused to listen to him, insisting on running up the mileage going to long way, and we flagged down a second cab whose driver was honest. But it was a precursor to some of the shenanigans I would experience the next day at the pyramids.

Erick’s birthday was in the morning, and they had taken an overnight excursion into the countryside southwest of Cairo to an area called the White Desert. At their flat we stayed up for some time, drinking tea, visiting and looking at the surreal photos from the White Desert as the Starbucks coffee I had drank earlier in the evening. Today was one of the first warm days of the year, well into the 80’s F, and since it would cool off at night and I was used to sleeping with open windows and they had yet to turn on their AC, I thought I would be have no trouble sleeping. Little did I know my morning was to have a very early start.