In October I had the amazing opportunity to travel to Cairo, Egypt with a team from Times Square Church (the Church that we will be working for this next year in New York). There were two distinct purposes of the trip: to send a medical team into areas that needed medical attention and to send an evangelism team to work with and support the local church.

I spent the first part of my time in Egypt with the Evangelism team documenting the work that they were doing, which varied from teaching kids clubs, to leading worship services with local churches, and much more. We spent a day working in an area of town where the Sudanese Refugees have been living for the past ten years. It was a really incredible experience, to get to go visit families from the local church in their homes and to pray for them.

We spent the majority of that week doing a wide variety of things, all aimed at sharing the gospel and supporting and encouraging the local church. It was beautiful to see a group of people give up their money and time to fly across the world and invest into the lives of others, not knowing day to day what they’d be doing, only that whatever it was, they were going to do it well and do it with the love of Christ.

After my time with the evangelism team I ventured across town to meet up with the “On Call” (medical) team. When I arrived they were doing free medical clinics for a Sudanese Refugee Primary school. It was a really awesome thing, working all day long to give the kids the same sort of medical screenings that we would’ve gotten going into a new year of school. These kids may not have seen a doctor in a long time and it was obvious that the parents and teachers were very grateful for the blessing.

Later in the week the two teams joined together at the school and while the On Call team was doing the medical clinics the Evangelism team performed skits, gave testimonies and sang songs with the kids.

We ended the week by going to the Garbage City, a place where people live in and amongst the garbage, making their living by digging through it and finding anything of value to sell. It was a very dirty and very very poor place…removed from the city and outcasted by society. We provided a full day of games and bible lessons for kids and just spent some time loving them. It was a beautiful way to end the trip…trying to teach these egyptian kids how to play whiffle ball and American football, and just hanging out and loving people who so seldom are even acknowledged.

Times Square Church sends missions trips all over the world, and it was a blessing and a privilege to get to be a part of this one to Egypt. They are doing some really great work and are reaching out and touching lives in a tangible way through their efforts there.

As I got into my taxi and left my hotel for the airport, headed for Kenya alone, I was really sad to leave my time with the team there in Egypt. It was an amazing period and a wonderful story to be a part of. I’m so excited about joining up with them this next year and can’t wait to see what stories come from our new partnership!

- S

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The entire trip was a blitz…from the moment we stepped off of the airplane we were going.  The first night, after checking into our hotel, we headed out to a church known as “the Foundation”, where we would return several times throughout our trip.  Within moments of arriving our team leader was asked to preach a service and that was the beginning of a beautiful and exhausting trip.

As I’ve begun sorting through and editing photos for the project it’s been fun to stop and think back to some of the adventures that took place during my time in Egypt.  This will be the first post of many telling the stories of the trip and I hope them all to be as inspiring and captivating as the trip itself was.

That first night, sitting there in a tiny church listening to our leader preach, literally as we arrived, was a beautiful experience.  It set the pace and the tone for what was to be an amazing trip.  From that moment on we didn’t stop.  I, for one, am glad of this.  More soon.

-S

Today the film came back from my time in Egypt and I began to reflect back on some of the adventures that we had there.  Next week I will begin my “story telling” of that trip and will start to share some of the wonderful things with you that I was able to participate in  during my time there.

Some of these photos may show up again later as part of a story, but I wanted to go ahead and post a few from the film that I just got back.  I’m so excited to see what happens in the future with TSC and Egypt.  I hope you enjoy a few “teaser” images from Cairo and I’ll be back soon.

-Stephen

The original plan was for me to take a taxi across town alone, and although I was a bit apprehensive about my inability to speak or understand Arabic, I have to admit I was a little excited about a few moments of solitude that a taxi ride through a foreign city who’s language I don’t speak was sure to bring.

But with the change of plans I ended up riding with Yassir, a welcomed companion to my traffic clogged journey.

We ended up talking the entire time about many things and I got to really hear his heart and learn a little more about him as a person and not just my driver.

Listening to him talk about what it’s like to be a Christian living in a Muslim world, hearing about how difficult that makes it for him to visit other countries and to travel at all…how hard he has to work and how his long and constantly changing hours don’t allow him the time that he’d like with his family…made me think…

I have it good.  We have it good.

Just wanted to get that out of my head.  Yassir spoke of times when Muslim extremists have killed christians, started riots and fights, and broken into churches to persecute them.  He wears the Christian mark, a small cross tattooed on his hand, that is typical of christians in Egypt.  A mark that he says has caused him much discrimination in his life.<

Just keep that in mind when you whine about something.  I whine a lot.

Here are some shots from today…much love as always.

-S

Some shots of our trip to the wadi out in the desert:

One of the conference rooms at a prayer school we visited:

The desert through the van window:

We stopped at a McDonald’s right out of the desert…I had a Kit-Kat mcflurry…so so good:

This is Yassir:

This is the traffic here:

Shot of our hotel from the street below:

And the street below:

-S

I’m sitting on a balcony overlooking a beautiful and very un-crowded (very very very rare to find here) street in the heart of downtown Cairo right now at about half-past midnight trying to reflect on the past week that’s disappeared somehow without a trace.

Somehow sitting here in the dry warm air of Cairo, thousands of miles from home and almost a week since I last slept in my bed I feel somewhat disconnected from the “real world”.

Maybe it’s the trip, perhaps the team. It could be the fact that I really had just settled back in to Central time before jetting out again; whatever the reason, I’m just sort of in a daze. It’s hard to look back at the last few days here in Egypt, a part of Africa that couldn’t be any more different that my experiences in Kenya earlier this year, and even remember where I’ve been or what I’ve done.

To give you a little “solid background” on the trip, the team that I came with split into 2 parts upon landing in Cairo. The 1st and smaller of the two groups has been dubbed the “Evangelistic Team” and is who I’ve been spending the last several days with. Their purpose here, in a nutshell, is to support the local church for a couple of weeks in the various outreaches that are going on here in the City. So far we’ve had ministries and kids groups, played games, made crafts and met a lot of amazing Egyptian Christians. The pictures below are from the first 2 days of our work here.

In a few more days I’ll be heading across town to join up with the second and larger group, “The On Call” group (or the medical team) to document the work that they’re doing on the outskirts of the city. More on that once I’ve been there.

The next week and a half will be a maze of traveling around Cairo, visiting, praying, working, playing, attending medical clinics, taxis, crowded roads, dust and sand, pyramids, the Nile, and great fellowship. Surely enough to wear one out.

I’ll be back again with more from the trip, but I just wanted to let the world in on what Bedouins has been blessed to be a part of right now. Thanks for checking in…Love you guys!

-Stephen