West Meets East

This morning during the congregational prayer, we prayed for the Church in the Middle East. I was glad because sometimes I'm afraid that the Western Church forgets about its counterparts in the East. Also, praying for the Eastern Church reminded me of the incredibly committed and wonderful Christians I met while I was in the Middle East. So here are a few:
-Neegy. I met him at my service project, which was teaching two English conversation classes at a small language school for adults. He taught Arabic there, and was also one of my students. He had a gap between his two front teeth, which I noticed because he smiled a lot--although he was shy to talk to me at first. He invited Evan (my counterpart from our program) and I to his house twice where we met his family and tried to converse with them in our half Arabic half English--mostly making hand signals that no one understood--way of communicating. Actually, it usually ended up with Neggy's sisters making fun of him while Evan and I looked confused. The second time we went to Neggy's house, there was a thunderstorm--probably the one thunderstorm of the year--and we got soaked walking to his house from the Metro, so Neegy's mom and sisters made us put on their dry clothes. I liked Neegy because he was kind and fun-loving, and genuinely interested in pursuing a life committed to Christ.
-Isaac. Isaac is a Nigerian preacher. Evan and I met him at our service project, too. He preaches for a small church called the Senate--named so because there are at least 17 different nationalities among the 18 people who regularly attend his Monday night service. I went once. It was interesting--mostly people from Africa, but the songs were all American Praise and Worship songs, for some reason--and get this, the service lasted at least 3 hours. But it didn't really feel that long. Isaac had a bunch of the people from our program over for Kosherie (an Egyptian staple) one night, where we watched his pet bird, ate, and discussed the Western Church with a recording of the Bible playing in the backround. Just before I left Egypt, Isaac got engaged to a woman from Germany (who attends his church) and who also has a lisp. (Not a very important detail, but that's what I remember about her.)
-Elias Chacour. If you've read _Blood Brothers_ or _We Belong to the Land_ you might recognize the name Elias Chacour. He is a Palestinian priest who lives in Israel. His village was taken over by the Israelis when he was a child, and since then became a priest and started an inter-religion school (a big deal in that part of the world where the Jews and Muslims--and Christians, to some extent--don't get along very well.) He came to visit us in Cairo, which was a pretty amazing experience. He has some fairly radical ideas about how to view scripture. Very interesting--he challenged many of us to think in a different way about issues that have always seemed black and white--especially the infallibility of scripture. And through it all is a desire to serve Christ.
Those are some of the amazing Christians I met in Cairo. You might notice that there are no women on this list. I'm not sure why--it might have to do with the fact that women tend to make themselves less available in Egypt. But there are many Christian women who worked behind the scenes and who I have great respect for such as Nermene, the director of my service project; the nuns at the orphanage in Garbage village where many of the people from our program did their service projects; Karema, our amazing cook; and Heather (who is an American, but she's still an amazing woman) who taught us about Islamic Thought and Practice.

There you go. A tribute to the Christians in the Middle East.

Oh yeah, and check this out: http://pandora.com. It's pretty stinking amazing (thanks, Princess Sara for introducing my new favorite website to me.)