It is a strange and completely magical experience to walk through the columns of the Karnak Temple in Luxor Egypt and think that Moses might have walked through these same corridors as a young boy, as a prince in Egypt and step brother to one of the mighty Pharaohs. And also to swim in the Red Sea and imagine that the fleeing Israelites may have walked through its parted waters, or that Mary, Joseph and child Jesus walked these same sandy pathways we are walking, as refugees from Bethlehem. The two-week experience in Egypt with a small World Missions Team was transformative for us. We found each day to be an enriching immersion into Ancient Egypt, the earliest Christian Church and the oldest monasteries in the world, the recent Arab Spring Revolution in Tahir Square and contemporary, crowded urban Cairo.
This trip was the first of what is hoped to be many hosted by Christian Reformed World Missions personnel located in Egypt. The trip is meant to be an invitation to “come and see—come and see what God is doing in the Middle East, come and see the challenging situation that Egyptian Christians are living in, come and see the place where the story of God and his people began—come and see. It is also a ‘come and listen’ trip—come and listen to the stories of Muslim converts coming to faith in Christ, come and listen to what it was like to participate in the Revolution, come and listen to the pain and the hope in the lives of relatives of recent martyrs in the Christian community.
We began each day of the trip with daily devotions aligned with the five daily Muslim times of prayer. These devotions were taken from Oswald Chambers’ book My Utmost for His Highest written over 100 years ago. Chambers, a chaplain during WWI, died at the age of 43 and is buried in Cairo. Our days were full of opportunities to see the Ancient sites, meet Muslim and Christian believers and interact with them, wander the ancient pathways of the early Christian desert fathers and meander through the crowded market alleyways. There was laughter and tears, prayer and contemplation, and the sweet fellowship of new friends. If this kind of trip piques your interest, please talk to us about the possibilities.
Dennis and Jenny deGroot
The deGroot's were joined by Colin Banks and Joanne Kleywegt (Port Alberni, BC) Jessica Boy (CRWM recruiter - Nanaimo, BC) and Debra McCreary (Michigan, US)