Wednesday, October 31, 2007

past tense

I started working with the girls all day Tuesday and Wednesday this week, and it is amazing. I end up leaving smelling like cinnamon and flower sealant, and smiling about how ridiculous they must think I am.

The girls speak much better English (which isn't too much) than I do Arabic (I can only speak in the past tense and know like 20 verbs), so they get a lot of blank stares and "ana mafahemtish"s which means I don't understand, but we laugh a lot.

I am so thankful for this community of women and the opportunity that it brings for everyone involved.

On an almost completely unrelated note, I kept eating these amazing sesame seed cookies things and they saw I was hungry, so they went out and got me like 3 bags of chipsys (flavors: chicken, tomato, and lime) and then shared their bread with me. Yostina taught me how to make a chipsy sandwich. Which is really just chips stuck in a hot dog bun. It was kind of amazing and now might be in the top 10 least nutritious meals that I enjoy.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Change

Well, since my last post, my life has changed in so many ways. It's funny how fast things happen

Just an overview.

I moved. I'm still living in Maadi, just on the other side. I have a new Egyptian family. I call them my Egyptian family, but none of them are Egyptian. My Egyptian parents are from Canada, Rod and Susan, and my Egyptian sister, Mo, is American.



The girl in the middle is Mo, my Egyptian sister, and the one on the right is Rachel, who is her friend from OBU. I made them go Ramadan light looking with me. This tree had like a 100 Ramadan lamps. It was beautiful.

Ramadan is over. We can now find food in the middle of the day. It's kind of crazy that there is traffic between 5:30 and 6 because before everyone was home eating.

Cheri and I started with the workshop. Our first day was Wednesday and only one of the girls showed up. But, that was good because we got to see where everything was and Cheri went though the curriculum for ESL. We have started preparing lessons, and it is going to be amazing to see what God is going to do because we have no clue. Cheri thank goodness has had some training in this. Which is why she has the wonderful privileged of actually teaching.

God has been so incredibly faithful during all of this change, and I want to thank anyone who has been praying for me and everyone else over here. I hope that you will continue to do that, especially for Cheri and I as we are planning stuff and for our future endeavors at the work shop. :)

Monday, October 8, 2007

Dahab

Dahab is one of the most beautiful places on earth.


Granted, I think almost anywhere I go is one of the most beautiful places on earth.


But, I'm pretty sure I was made to live on the beach.


On a more serious note, we figured out which ministries we're going to work with this year.

I'm going to teach ESL and do crafts. It will be exciting.

Also, I'm working with the fund raising.

While I'm here, my goal is to build up leaders and to give support to those people who need it, and equip long term projects with a fresh outlook. I would love prayer for this. I am so very excited to start working on these projects.

Nobody does it better

Six hours and a continent later, we arrived in St. Catherine's to sleep (or laugh hysterically because you're playing in the mosquito nets) for about an hour before waking up early enough (NB 1:30 am) to climb Mount Sinai to see the sun rise.

The hike was rocky and camel treaded, and since it was 2 in the morning we couldn't see much further than the rocks directly in front of you. (and since I have terrible depth perception anyway, I couldn't see and I ended up coming off the mountain with a fancy bruise on my leg to remind me of the hike) But, the lack of sight on our journey up made the final product so much more majestic. And, let me tell you, it was breath taking.


The crowds of people broke into song rejoicing.

O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.


Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.

They were all singing in different languages. They had all come to see the beauty that God created. They had come to experience the challenge that Moses had endured as he pursued God.


This is our intern team. They are some of the most amazing people I have ever met.



On the way down, we got to see everything we had missed in the dark. I never knew rocks could be so beautiful.