Final Day in Egypt

Glory to God!! We arrived in Atlanta Saturday morning about 5:30 am after a non-stop 12 1/2 hour flight from Tel Aviv. It is sooooo good to be home.

We thought you'd want to know, so here is our final day in Egypt and some final thoughts prior to traveling to Israel.

Monday May 25
Egyptian Museum. We had a bit of an adventure on the way to the museum. The journey required riding the Metro, which is the subway system of Cairo. The Metro is set up so that 2 of the train cars are "women only" and all the others are for the men (and any women who dare to enter). They do this to limit the amount of harassment the women have to endure.

So, I get on the "men's" car next to the "women only" car, so that the rendezvous at our destination point would run more smoothly. Well, I get off at the proper destination, look over to see where the women should be getting off and don't see them as I expected. I panicked, then quickly looked for the train station name (which aren't marked very well), and zeroed in on the first name I saw, which happened to be a station name indicating the direction of the train, and rushed back on. Oops!! As the doors were closing, our host yells through the train window, "Brent, you should have gotten off".

I get off at the next station and attempt to make my way back to the previous station, thinking that it would just be a matter of getting on a train going the other direction. Not so easy. Unfortunately, it required exiting the arriving side and re-entering the departure side, which meant buying another ticket. Yikes!! Strange land, don't speak the language, and don't have any local currency in hand. Real bummer. As I was figuring out that I needed to buy another ticket without any money, mind you, I see our host on the other side of the tracks coming to rescue me. Whoa!! God is soooo very good. This adventure could have really turned out much worse than it did, but God was faithful (as was so evident throughout the trip).

Unfortunately, the adventure was not quite over. Our host and I returned to the proper station where she yelled across the tracks to June, Sandra, and Jennifer to exit the turnstiles and wait for us there. They misunderstood, exited the station, and went up to the street level to wait for us. Needless to say, when we arrived on the other side, they were nowhere to be found. After about 15-20 minutes of looking, they were led back down to look for us and we were finally brought together once again.

The museum was very interesting and Egyptian history is so rich, but there is so much death and worship of death and the dead in this country. Think about it, the pyramids are dead pharaohs tombs that are worshiped by many. The Coptic Christian church essentially worships it's dead Saints (especially St. George the dragon slayer) and ignores the power of a risen Savior and the Holy Spirit. And, of course there is only death in the religion of the land...their prophet is worshiped, but is still dead. There is no risen Savior. Death was undoubtedly the most prevalent theme observed by our team while in Egypt. Now we understand why our hosts had us praying life into the land and into the people. Thank you for praying us through Egypt. I assure you we could not have survived without them. God Bless you.