Cairo - Day 3 & 4

The day after our pyramid tour we had scheduled in a slower day figuring we would need rest and we were right. We slept in and barely made the cutoff for breakfast at our hotel. We then tried our best to accomplish school, mostly being forced to sit in the lobby because the Internet did not reach to our room.  Finally after multiple hours of torture, we headed to meet the LD crew for their small group.  Our new friends, who we'd met at Chili's, had an unexpected home repair situation come up, so were unable to meet us as planned, so they texted that some friends of theirs would pick us up.  We joked (but it was totally true) that we were being driven by our cabbie to an unknown set location to meet some unknown people who would then take us to an unknown location - sort of like a spy movie.  LD has multiple small group meeting scattered throughout the city where teams gather for food, worship and fellowship.  Even though we knew none of these people, they welcomed us in like family and it was a blessed evening as they fed us and even volunteered to pray over us and help us with some future connections as some of our future plans were in cities some had previously lived in. One family had even lived near the base Mom worked on in Naples, Italy for a summer as a camp counselor, and their daughter had played softball at the complex Mom lived in!  We continued to be amazed at how alive and active the body of Christ is all over the world.

Our fourth day we planned to visit an international church before heading over to the Egyptian National museum. Church was in Arabic but they had a small section with headphones which translated the service into English.  This experience was very cool as the Arabic speaking world came together to worship, and it helped us relate to foreign speakers wearing headphones to translate worship back home in the States.  The place was packed and there was even a maxed-out overflow room with a screen projecting the service inside.  The pastor talked about how so many Egyptians are depressed and that things since the revolution are not well within the country, but what an opportunity this presents for Christians to rise above the current circumstances and minister to those in need.  It's interesting to contemplate how the whole world over has different situations but anything within humanity rings of similar tones.  After church we mingled with some of the other English speaking headphone wearers and made some other connections of people we had in common as Dad had his Young Life hat on!

Service in Cairo

Following the service we headed over to the museum which was within walking distance.  This museum contains over 250,000 artifacts found around Egypt but they are not well marked or organized. It felt a little like walking through a garage sale of ancient priceless relics.  We had been warned about this by our friends, so we opted to get a guide.  This unfortunately was not worth the price though as he turned out to be somewhat of a flake. He helped get us to the important stuff for sure, but often would conflict with the the little information that a display case may contain.  Despite this frustration we saw an amazing amount of history with the most impressive being real mummies and King Tuts treasure. Tired and frustrated we had had enough.  It was once again another case of the difficult mix of amazing Egyptian culture being mixed with a very difficult and hurting people group.

Egyptian artifacts

Kids in front of King Tut's undergarments

1 of 4 Golden Boxes found in Tuts tomb

One of the four chariots found in King Tut's tomb

G & SJ in front of a mummified dog and monkey