This evening I left my team for the first time since departing from JFK to head across Cairo and rendezvous with the second team, the medical team.  The plans have shifted back and forth several times (as is typical of a mission trip) and resulted in our faithful travel guide, Yassir, taking me across town to a coffee shop where I was to meet Sandra (the medical team host) and find my way to the home I was to stay at.

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:

Sleepy.  Loving Cairo.  TSC is doing some awesome work.  God is doing some Awesome work.  Here are some shots…more soon.

-S

I’m sorry for the lack of any information regarding my trip to Cairo with Times Square Church that I am currently in the middle of. Between helping with TSC’s On Call Blog(please keep up with that if you want to know more details about the trip!), working on my blog, my e-mails and attempting to be here in Cairo all at once I’ve just been a little overwhelmed.

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