It is hard to explain a mission trip like going to Egypt in just a short paragraph. So much goes into a trip like this and so much is received. It was a fast one—we arrived very late on Sunday night and left the following Saturday night, but we did a lot in six days. Our team from all over the US bonded immediately. On Monday morning we travelled from Cairo to Minya, about 4 hours south, to work in Manhary, a mainly Christian village of about 35,000, but tucked into a very small area. Since there was no room to build the playground on the ground anywhere, we built it on the 5th floor of the church that we were partnering with. This church also works in partnership with Healing Grace, an Egyptian organization that with the help of people like you and me, sponsors over 1,700 children in Egypt so they can get better schooling and health care. Because Manhary is a Christian village, we were told they get the “not so great” teachers. The best teachers of course, go to the Muslim villages, so these students are often lacking in their education. Being a very poor village, there is often not much health care going on either. We fell in love with the staff from Healing Grace, young folks, many who have dual citizenship in Egypt and the US, but who have chosen to work in their own country to make things better.
Being that there were no holes to dig (since the playground was going to be bolted into the cement on the 5th floor), we quickly finished the work. It was pretty cool playing on the playground and looking out over the village and the surrounding countryside.
We got to help clean another church in the village, and on Friday, we had a fun field day, playing games on the soccer field that one wouldn’t even know was tucked into the middle of the village, surrounded by 3, 4, and 5 story buildings. A highlight of the trip was going on eight home visits to kids and their families that are in the sponsorship program. We were able to deliver small gifts sent from donors in the US to their sponsored kids. We spent about 15 minutes at each home with a worker from Healing Grace and a translator. We asked the kids all kinds of questions about school and their participation in the local church programs, then we got to pray for each family! What a gift to know that even though we are now worlds apart, we can still be praying for the many needs of these sweet kids and their families, many of whom had suffered tragedies with fathers’ injured on the job and now unable to work for a living. (Talk to me if you would like to sponsor an Egyptian child!)
We did get to do a few fun touristy things as well, which was cool being that we were in EGYPT! We took a sunset cruise on the Nile while imagining the baby Moses floating among the reeds. We visited the Giza pyramids outside Cairo and even rode Camels!
This trips puts a different spin for us on the Christmas Story. As we read about Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus having to flee to Egypt, we can envision what that might have been like (well sort of). It does make us think in a different way, but it also makes us realize that God is at work all around the globe whether here in the OC or in faraway Manhary.
Thanks for you support and prayers,
Julie and Erin