A Couple Weeks in Review

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Hello Friends and Family!

Since our last update, a lot has happened!

A couple of the highlights for us as a team have been getting to go see the pryamids and the sphinx, getting to have a sailboat cruise down the Nile River, and getting to meet new friends at a new Y in Egypt.

As our time came to a close in Cairo, we wanted to go back to the hospital we had been working at to say good-bye to the friends we had made. We had an opportunity to say good-bye to Martha and Mary both of whom speak English. Prior to saying good-bye, we had the privilege of helping the hospital clean a new wing that had just been built (maybe is had only been remodeled?). We worked on cleaning the windows, mopping the floors, scraping paint off the tiles, pulling off the painters tape and plastic from the items they had covered. It's really neat knowing that we got to help the hospital that will help so many more people when the wing is opened. The floor will be used as a kidney treatment floor.

It was also time to say good-bye to our friend who had been our "go to person" in Egypt. He is studying to be a pastor, so as a thank you for all of his hard work we gave him a team photo of us, a button down shirt, and a tie because every pastor needs a good tie! It was neat to think back to the first day we met him and how he was pretty shy and not very talkative to the time we left him when he really interacted with our group and had improved his English tremendously!

After our good-byes we loaded up our van with our backpacks and left for the new Y. At the Y, we made some good friends and we had many opportunities to do a lot of manual labor such as hauling rocks and sand up a dodgy ramp via assembly line to the top of a roof, we are not sure why they were being hauled up there, we just did it. The tools we had to accomplish the task were not the easiest to use, but we had a great time working together. It was really encouraging to hear that through our actions, we, as a group, made an impact on the students there. We were told that we really encouraged the girls because 1.) the boys and the girls saw all of us girls working as equals with the boys. We were told that girls aren't allowed to work construction because they aren't as strong as the boys. 2.) They saw that the guys on our team didn't try to take over for the girls if we didn't do something right. They taught us how it should be done or showed us an easier way to do it. 3.) We all worked together and had a great time in the process. (Ephesians 6:7) Something else we all found pretty amusing was that they had NO IDEA that backpackers even existed. After this, a couple of the people wanted to see our backpacks and the small amount of things we actually travel with. One girl in particular was blown away that we can travel for two months with a pair of jeans, a couple long sleeve shirts, a t-shirt or two, pajamas and toiletries.

After leaving the Y, we journeyed on to Alexandria because we were told it was the place to be by many people so we figured we would find many backpackers. WRONG! We got there and it was dead. We made plans that night to leave Alexandria and to travel to Sharm El Sheik. We woke up the next morning and we were out the door at 7:00 AM. Actually, we were suppose to leave at 7:00 but with our group it meant we left at 7:15. 😉 On our 20 hour journey by train (3 hours) and bus (17 hours) we decided that Sharm was not the best place to go and decided to add another hour to our journey and head to Dahab. Once we got here we found that it was not a backpacker location rather a scuba diver location! Dahab is the 2nd best place in the WORLD to scuba dive we have found out. We have met many interesting people and have had a lot of really neat conversations including a conversation with a Muslim, a secular Jew, and Christians. It was really neat to hear everyone's opinions on faith.

Yesterday, we had the opportunity to climb "Mt. Sinai" (It's put in quotes because it's debated on where Mt. Sinai actually is.) We travelled with some of the people we met in Dahab and enjoyed the additional company. We got to Mt. Sinai and toured the St. Katherine monastery and then ventured on up the mountain. It took about 2.5 hours to get to the top (Maybe because we spent a lot of time dodging camel poop!) and it was a relief to get up there. The last leg of the climb included climbing 750 stairs that the monks had put in place to make it an easier climb. We stayed on the mountain and read the story of Moses climbing to the top to receive the ten commandments and watched the sun set behind the mountains. Once we saw the sun go down it was a race to the bottom because we realized that only a few people in the group had thought to bring head lamps. Thankfully we made it about 1/2 way down before it got extremely dark. This made it interested because a couple groups veered off the trail a bit and found themselves in the camel paddocks... yikes!

We will be leaving Dahab soon and will travel to Acaba, Jordan and then to Petra. We will spend a couple days in Petra and will then make our way to Israel. We have been told that this time of the year is not the best time to visit Wadi Rum because it's pretty expensive, out of the way, and there are no backpackers, let alone tourists there.

We are excited to continue our journey and to meet new people. Another update will come in about a week. We are trying to figure out an easier way to get video up online to share with you and to share pictures.

Thank you for your continued pr@yers and support. It's greatly appreciated!

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