Egypt Journal #10

From November 16th - 27th, I traveled to Egypt with a group from Duke Divinity School, led by Professor J. Warren Smith. In the next few posts, I am going to include edited sections of my travelogue. It was an incredible journey - which included an unexpected experience of spiritual renewal for me. I hope you enjoy reading about our travels.
---------------------------------

That just about wraps up my journal. After I got back home to Durham, I reflected on many aspects of the trip that I had not included in my day-to-day journals. I never really reflected properly on our guides - Osama and David - who made it possible for us to see and experience all that we did. They showed us a wonderful hospitality and a great deal of patience! David even had us over to his home for a real Thanksgiving dinner - complete with a turkey that he and his wife had gotten from the comissary attached to the American embassy in Cairo.
We were fortunate to have both Osama and David with us.

It was also interesting to have with us a government escort everywhere we went, who wore a compact sub-machine gun on his belt. I asked a couple of people about this, and they said that it was the government's way of making Western tourist groups "feel secure." I'll leave that without further comment.

On the Wednesday night we ate our Thanksgiving meal at David's house, we later went to a "Bible study" led by Pope Shenouda III at St. Mark's Cathedral in Cairo. It was a wonderful experience, as we got to see the Coptic spiritual revival in its fullness. I write about this experience in my column this week in the United Methodist Reporter, so I'll let you read more about it there.

It's good to be home, although I find my mind drifting back to Egypt some each day. I hope to return there at some point in the future. And I really hope that the openness the Coptic Church has to the presence and work of the Holy Spirit is an openness that the church in our land can have someday as well. If so, we would experience a great, tranforming revival.