Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Here in Egypt, most Christians are Coptic Orthodox. This particular sect of Christianity doesn't celebrate Christmas on December 25th but on January 7th!
On Christmas Eve, we went over to a friend's apartment and spent time playing games together and eating. It was so sweet of Avery (an American student studying here in Egypt) to host us and even let me borrow her books!!
After Avery's we went to our church's Christmas Eve service. It was a candlelight service under the stars. We sang worship songs and reflected on Scripture about the Messiah. I really enjoyed spending Christmas Eve this way.
On Christmas Day, we spent time at home. Kathryn and I got Christmas gifts for the students and we decided to follow Megan's family tradition. Her family hides Christmas gifts and makes everyone find them! So that's what we did. It was so much fun to watch the students seek out their gifts. After gifts, we went to go see Avatar! The movie was very good and a few of the Gap Year team cried.
We also went out for dinner to get sushi!!! Most of the team has home cooked meals for Christmas but once again, Megan's family pulled through. Her tradition is to get Asian food for Christmas. In Egypt, there are some kinds of Asian food but sushi seems to be the most popular. We enjoyed a lot of sushi that night.
New Years Eve was a big deal here in Egypt. We wanted to go to a church service to worship God into the New Year but we didn't find an English speaking church with an evening service. We ended up going to a nice restaurant and eating a good, big dinner (at 9pm). After that, we went home. The place we are staying is a dorm building with space to rent, which usually gets rented by churches. And on New Years Eve there was an African church service in our building!!! What an answered prayer from God. We all dressed up and worshipped for a while. I only stayed for about an hour and a half, because I was very tired, but the service continued until 7am.
Ministry in Egypt
We have been working with WellSpring here in Egypt. WellSpring is a ministry that puts on camps for different people and children to encourage curiosity and give them an opportunity to adventure through educational games. We have been able to help them in a variety of camps! We have been camp counselors, we've worked behind the scenes, we've worked as sports coaches, etc. We have done so many different things in one month.
In the last two weeks, we've gone to two four day camps both through WellSpring Sports. At the first camp, we were counselors. We were with eight to twelve kids who were between seven and twelve years old. My group was all boys who were full of energy. We played tennis, soccer, paddle tennis, and dodgeball. Even though working with boys this age was a challenge for me, I had a lot of fun and got to connect with the kids. God was definitely teaching me patience and when to give grace vs when to discipline.
The second camp we just got home from, was so much fun. We stayed at a sports complex for four days and served as coaches. I was nervous to coach because of my lack of experience in most of the sports we were playing. God met me in this and I was more of an assistant than a coach. We played volleyball, soccer, basketball, and skateboarding. The focus of this camp was skateboarding as there was a skateboarding facility in the complex.
Because I was a coach at the second camp, I got to meet all of the kids who came to the camp. There were boys and girls, ages eight to sixteen. I connected with quite a few of the kids and really, really enjoyed playing soccer with them.
We cannot share the Gospel while we are working at a WellSpring camp so we pray that everyone sees God's love through us. You can join us in praying that God uses us to change the hearts of all the people we interact with!
Enjoy some more photos!!
