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Good News from Egypt

1/16/2015

We’ve all heard plenty of bad news coming out of the Middle East/North Africa region the last few years, as some extremist groups have promulgated hatred. And the news out of Egypt has been hard for us in the US to interpret in the last four years. We don’t want to weigh in politically too much here, but we can report that in general Christians are very grateful for the leadership of their new president and there is real hopefulness that greater freedom and interfaith cooperation is coming to this land.
We feel incredibly humbled to have seen and experienced all that we have been able to over the past week. Our caveat as we begin is that we are not journalists, nor are we long-term missionaries who have walked with the church here through its years of struggle and its recent years of revolution(s). We’ve tried to listen well but inevitably our perceptions are limited, and honestly even our internet is weak so we aren’t fact-checking every statistic you’ll see below. So if you are interested in what God is up to in Egypt, do read the links we’ll include here, to Egyptians who can tell the story much better than we can. Here are a few things that have given us cause for hope:

The Synod of the Nile: It has been so encouraging to see the work of the Presbyterian Church in Egypt. The church in Egypt is of course very old—tradition dates it back to the gospel writer Mark preaching the gospel to Alexandria. The Coptic Church has bravely and faithfully transferred the faith through centuries of persecution and resistance. But a fresh wind came with a remarkable band of Presbyterian missionaries in the 19th and 20th centuries. They built hospitals, started schools, strengthened farming, and planted churches. We spent a day at the offices of the Synod of the Nile learning about their work today, and were incredibly impressed by the creativity of those we met. They are advocating and educating people about the dangers of female genital mutilation, which we heard is still occurring for 88% of girls here. They are working hard at both ecumenical and interfaith dialogue. This article by Tharwat Wahba, “From the Elite to the Street,” chronicles insightfully the movement away from high-level teas between imams and bishops and toward, for example, concrete partnership in service projects between ordinary Muslim and Christian teens. It was also deeply moving to meet a pastor whose church and home had been burnt to the ground during the worst of the uprisings a year and a half ago, and to hear of the work he is doing now at the synod level to strategize for church planting and renewal throughout the nation.
The Evangelical Theological Seminary of Cairo (ETSC): How many seminaries can say they began on a boat? (see photo above) When the seminary began in 1864, Christians were not allowed to own land, so in a clever move, they held classes on a boat! This was pedagogically brilliant as well. The students took classes in the morning in their boat, and then went out into villages and towns along the Nile to preach and teach what they’d learned that afternoon. Today they have a lovely campus (if a bit too close for our ear-comfort to the kennels where 140 German Shepherds, government drug-dogs, bed down noisily each night, but that’s not really the main point…), and they are equipping pastors to serve in Egypt and even a few to go to Sudan, Iraq, and elsewhere. It is estimated that there are 12 million Christians in Egypt, yet 11 million of them have no church, Coptic or otherwise. At least 6,000 villages have been identified as having Christians who would like a church but currently have none. The seminary is engaging distance learning tools and innovative research tools to prioritize the most strategic placement of newly minted pastors. The entrepreneurial, collegial, and hopeful spirit around the seminary was incredibly encouraging to us.
The Center of Love for Children with Special Needs: We were so, so blessed to be able to see the work going on here. Children are being extravagantly loved, and the vision and dedication of its founder, Rebecca Atallah, was remarkable to see. We were also pleased to hear how much the staff has appreciated the teams InterVarsity has sent to serve here over many years. (Check out the summer missions opportunity here, especially if you are or know a Physical or Speech Therapy major.) The center is located in Mokattam, a hill just outside (really within) Cairo where 30,000 people live as sorters of Cairo’s garbage. A confluence of streams of NGO, church, and para-church efforts has meant that Mokattam is not the depressing place one might assume it would be when one hears that it is a ‘garbage village.’ Though it doesn’t smell great and its people are certainly poor, the mood in the streets is one of energetic industry. Donkeys and trucks were hustling trash from one sorting area to another, with drivers shouting, “You are welcome!” to us as they passed. Perhaps most remarkably, we met several young adults who had grown up there and chosen to stay, serving as teachers at the Center or as deacons for the many ministries of the Coptic Church. The church’s location in the caves was amazing.
The Bible Society: We were privileged to meet Ramez Atallah, who has served as the president of the International Bible Society’s Egypt division for many years. Under his leadership the organization had expanded its capacity enormously. They have worked within the strictures of the government in creative ways. For example, it is illegal to give away religious literature, so they sell everything, very cheaply. And it really sells! Egyptians love to read and have huge, well-attended book fairs, where the Bible Society sells thousands of Bibles in every conceivable format, from slim single-gospel volumes to attractively illustrated children’s Bibles. We loved visiting their Bible World floor, an impressive hands-on museum where children learn about how the Bible has been preserved and published over centuries.

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A Disaster, of sorts

1/7/2015

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Today felt like kind of a disaster. I (Lisa) should preface that by saying that, in between the more ministry-related endeavors of the past months and the coming ones, we have had two weeks of the kind of vacation many people would envy—time in the beautiful land of Israel with our children and with good friends, then a few more days as a pair seeing some extraordinary sights: Masada, an amazing wild animal reserve (check out the funky Oryxes and Addaxes here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yotvata_Hai-Bar_Nature_Reserve), and the truly stunning wonders of Petra in Jordan. But lest your envy meter reads too high, let me just say that it’s called off-season for a reason: it was freezing at Petra, with winds kicking up so much red dust we had to close our eyes and stop walking at times. We got to our pleasantly off-season-priced hotel grateful for the adventure but exhausted from battling the elements all day.

Then things really got weird. We weren’t primarily in Jordan to sightsee—we’d been looking forward to time with worshipping communities in Amman, so we were disappointed to Skype with our host that evening and hear him say, essentially, “Don’t come!” It was nothing personal; it was just that with the severe (and rare) series of snowstorms heading to Amman, he doubted we’d be able to navigate the city, which is understandably not equipped for clearing snow. He was almost certain all meetings this week would be cancelled.

So, like wandering pilgrims, we headed south to Aqaba instead of north to Amman, worrying that our rental car was due in Amman, and wondering how we’d get to Egypt, our next stop, given that flights out of Amman were predicted to be cancelled for several days. Arriving in Aqaba, we turned down two indoor internet cafes as way too smoky, and resignedly settled for an essentially outdoor one, hunkering down on travel websites in our jackets just before the dusty windstorm really picked up. A long, frustrating search finally yielded reasonably priced tickets for tomorrow from Eilat, Israel, across the border from Aqaba, to Tel Aviv, to Istanbul, to Cairo. If that doesn’t sound like a direct route to you, congrats on your knowledge of geography! We applied some frequent flier miles and booked the flights. We turned in the rental car, grateful for their understanding and lack of penalty, got a Jordanian taxi to the pedestrian border, walked across, had our luggage turned inside out and tediously searched, got an Israeli taxi to our hotel, and are now figuring out housing and transportation in Egypt such that we aren’t too big of a burden to the seminary that was expecting us to arrive four days from now.

All of which has me asking, “What are disasters for, anyway?” Well, one answer comes from basic narrative theory. In his delightful book, How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method, Randy Ingermanson says that a good story must have, “big, horrible, hairy disasters.” Disasters do three things for a novel: they add excitement, they force decisions which reveal the true desires of main characters, and they send the story in a new direction. Don’t worry; I don’t actually think Rich and I have become characters in a book… but thinking about these principles helps me process the frustration of this day. I would add to Ingermanson’s list that disasters make characters tired. I’m exhausted! And hungry—though the dust storm that has turned the sky a reddish grey makes me really uneager to explore chilly Eilat in search of dinner.

But, as Ingermanson promised, the day did reveal a desire. We really do want to get to Egypt. At one point in the lengthy search for tickets, Rich sighed and wondered aloud if we needed to cancel Egypt and lose it along with Amman. If we had to wait nearly a week in Aqaba for the flights to resume up in Amman, our time in Egypt would become so short as not to be worth it. So we opted to work hard to get there, and in fact get there early. Why? We aren’t really exploring a possible call to Egypt. We guess that we are too old to learn all that would be needed to minister effectively in such a vastly different setting. But we care about the suffering of that nation, we’re intrigued by signs of God doing new things there in and through all the turmoil of the last two years, and we’re interested in what it looks like to train leaders in that context. We’ve not connected much with ministries of our denomination yet, and this is one great opportunity to do so. We’ll be hosted by a Presbyterian-affiliated seminary there, the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo, which is doing really exciting work in equipping the church for radical faithfulness in extremely challenging times. In fact, as I sit nestled under my blanket in a peaceful town in Israel, blessed to have had the technology and resources to able to shift gears so quickly, reading blog posts like this one http://www.layman.org/newsb95b (not brand new but still relevant and insightful) about the challenges Christians face in Egypt, I’m reminded that my minor disasters pale in comparison. And, while I mentioned that we haven’t become characters in a book in the Inkheart sense, I do believe that God is writing a good story through his people. And we’re glad and grateful to be two minor characters, looking for his hand in the twists and turns of the plot as it unfolds.

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Reflections on our Israel Visit

1/1/2015

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We are still in Israel as I write this, and it may be premature to draw conclusions about a visit to Israel that has a few days remaining. But our kids, who were with us for 10 days, left two days ago and our time is winding down. I do expect that this visit will remain with me, impacting how vividly I read the stories of Scripture. But beyond that, here are a few reflections I have had during our time here.

1. Repeatedly, we saw things that could have been the actual place where someone did something. (I know this observation sounds quite obvious as I say it, but bear with me please.)

In the ancient town of Joppa, now called Joffa or Yafo near Tel Aviv, we saw the port Jonah sailed from to escape God's call to Ninevah, and we viewed a home labeled as the former home of Simon the Tanner. It certainly looked like it could have been, with a flat roof perfect for praying and having a vision, like the one Peter had in Acts 10 before Cornelius' men came to the door to invite him to come to meet with the Gentile Cornelius.
In Caesaria, the home town of Cornelius and Peter's destination after his vision opened him up to new experiences, we saw the ruins of the coastal town built up by Herod the Great, the place where Paul was imprisoned and where he appeared before Festus and before King Agrippa. We were led over to the assembly room that "could have been" the room where Paul gave his defense in Acts 26, and also the prison where Paul was likely held.
In Capernaum, we saw Peter's house, or at least the ruins of an ancient stone house over which a 5th century church was built, and then over which a modern Catholic church was built, lofted above the site so that it is visible below and not disturbed by the modern worship space.
Along the Sea of Galilee, we saw the "Jesus boat", which of course no one claims is the actual boat used by Jesus and his disciples for crossing the sea of Galilee, but which is dated to the same time, plus or minus a few decades, and is exceptionally well preserved and on display.The brief documentary about its preservation and restoration was fascinating.
In Bethlehem, we went to the Church of the Nativity, which preserves the site that has traditionally been regarded as the birthplace of Jesus.
And in Jerusalem, we went to two of the places thought to be where Jesus was buried, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Garden Tomb.

Of course, just because something has been honored for centuries as the actual location of Jesus' birth or burial place or Peter's home does not mean that it is that actual place, but neither is that any reason to dismiss the traditional understanding out of hand. But, as our guides stressed several times, it is actually not as important that this place or that place is the actual place, but that the events honored and marked by these churches, national historical parks and archeological efforts actually happened. And, in fact, they happened in places not far from and very similar to (if not identically the same as) the places being so honored and noted. And indeed, remembering that we cannot completely know if Jesus actually preached his Sermon on the Mount on the "Mount of Beatitudes," we can still be inspired that those powerful words were spoken at all, on a hill very much like the one upon which we stood, and then recorded for us to read today nearly 2000 years later, still relevant and infused with paradoxical comfort and wise hope.

2. In general, all over Israel we saw signs of a lull in tourism, which I'm sure was a hardship on all who rely on tourism for their livelihoods but made our visit more peaceful and focused. We were in Bethlehem on Christmas day, and it was quite crowded, but that was about the only time we were really inconvenienced by crowds. People here connected the drop in tourism with the Gaza war from the summer, yet we never felt unsafe or worried about our security. But we were able to enjoy many chance encounters with others who were striving to visit Israel, as we were, devotionally and not just as tourists.

One of my favorite times was on the above-mentioned "Mount of Beatitudes", where Jesus' beatitudes, such as "Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," are written on memorial stones along the path. When we went into the church, we heard a small choir of Fijian men singing songs, carols in Fijian and in English, with energy and reverence. When we spoke to them afterward, we heard that they were soldiers, sent by Fiji as part of a United Nations Peacekeeping mission to Syria, and were on break after the peace they were trying to keep broke down.
We saw many groups of Nigerian pilgrims with identical scarves or patterned, brightly colored clothing. They have been sponsored for tours to the Holy Land by the Nigerian government, which is also sponsoring Muslims on pilgrimages to Mecca. We enjoyed their singing, and several times spoke with them. They were always glad to meet American Christians, and often requested to have our pictures taken with them.
Singing Christmas carols in Christ Church in Jerusalem on Christmas eve was a real highlight, as groups of English-speaking people from all over the world cycled in and out of a sanctuary that was packed to standing room only. Singing familiar songs in such a place reminded me again that the events of the Christmas story, which if they were fiction would still be fairly called wonderful, a marvelously crafted story that we might wish were true, but because these events actually did happen, we can be grateful when their truth and beauty and power sink deeply into us. Jesus, Lord at his birth! Born that men and women no more may die! Angels downward bend their burning eyes at mysteries so bright...

3. We also took some time to visit the Yad Vashem, Israel's official monument to the victims of the Holocaust, at the heart of which is a museum that displays the history of Europe and Jews in Europe before and then during WWII. The architecture and layout of the monument and the narrative components, including first-person video interviews of survivors and documents telling of the lives of those who were lost, combined to make a very powerful experience. The message was not one of sheer numbers (6 Million lost their lives) but that each person who died had a family, a world, a history and a future and all of those families, worlds and futures were lost, each loss a tragedy in its own right.

We came to this part of the world over the holidays for many reasons, but mostly to enjoy meaningful time with our kids and friends in a place that could be enriching of our spirits and souls. This we certainly received, and we did receive all of this trip as a precious once-in-a-lifetime gift of God to us. We begin 2015 excited about the year before us, and the changes and gifts that 2015 will bring that are currently unknown to us.

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Good News from Egypt

A Disaster, of sorts

Reflections on our Israel Visit

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