Trek Update: O-h-n Spells 'Cat' (Retro Update)

started: 7-10-06, therefore I write sometimes in present tense,
though by now, this already happend.

http://www.refuge-egypt.org/refuge_egypt/index.shtml

Its the website of Refugee Egypt - a program of All Saints'
Cathedral.

***




O - h - n Spells 'Cat'

"For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down
the middle wall of partition [between us];"
-Eph 2:14

We started school last week.
I'm working with Tiff and Brian at Central School for Refugees or
something. I don't remember the whole name, but it's Central for
short. Emphasis on the ral. Central is in Arbaa Wa Noos, amid a maze
of half-constructed buildings that sometimes remind me of one of the
maps on a car-racing computer game I used to play called POd. It's
oddly quiet early in the morning. Construction begins at 8:00. We
jump off the Number 10 bus at Seleb - a textile place. The buildings
are very tall and once you pass the wall, they are all constantly
under construction and look rather uninhabited. There is a brick wall
that separates the slum from the rest of Arbaa Wa Noos, which itself
is a poor community by Cairo standards. I don't understand why there
is a wall. If you are a human, you can easily walk along until you
find a gap where you can walk out to the main road. If you are a
building, you aren't going to move anyway. The only things I can
think of are that perhaps the wall used to serve a purpose that it is
no longer needed for, or it's just there to remind the people in the
slum that they're in the other part of Arbaa Wa Noos.

So you might be thinking, This has all been very nice Tracy, but what
are you DOING in Cairo?

This took us a while to figure out, too.
Physically, we were helping teach at schools, playing with kids,
making friends on the metro, and getting out to see Cairo once in a
while. This has been very frustrating to all of us. I can't speak
for everyone at once, but the general trend seemed to be that we all
felt that God wanted us here, but nobody knew what He wanted us for.
So we came expecting that to be made clear in time.
So we're trying to figure out how we're supposed to do any
lasting good in only a month and the trek leaders are telling us that
really, this trek is not for the people we are going to, its for us to
help us decide if we want to go into missions work, and we don't want
it to be about us, we came here to serve - but how is it serving if we
teach an English class while the teacher, who is perfectly capable of
teaching English just sits and watches us, and we've been talking
about building relationships, but how is one supposed to do this in
only a month and the refugees who spoke to us about the UNHCR don't
even have any concrete suggestions of what we can do to help and to
top it off, we aren't even living in poverty. How are we supposed to
live in Incarnational Ministry to the poor, if we are in such nice
apartments? It was the first time I've heard so many people
complaining that their living condition was too nice.

These are some things we were thinking about. And it didn't make it
any easier that I was trying to figure out what gospel Jesus sent his
disciples to preach in Luke 9 if he wasn't even dead yet while our
Amos studies seemed to indicate that God is either wrathful and sends
evil into cities, or He is a liar. And still, He is good? Are we to
speak up or keep quiet? In what ways have our views of righteousness
completely missed out on God's will for justice? How are we to react
to suffering when God goes and says things like: "I gave you empty
stomachs in every city and lack of bread in every town, yet you have
not returned to me." -Amos 4:6

And Charles is frustrated because, though his teachers are talking
about how much the students have learned from us American volunteers,
his students still come enthusiastically to the board to spell 'cat':
o - h - n.
ohned.

And we still are not living in poverty.

But then I remembered talking to Ken, a guy I've worked with over the
last few summers. We were discussing, right before I left, what a
blessing it is that God allows us to be committed to and to show love
for our fellow human beings when He has every right to demand that our
every energy be funnelled directly to Him.
I remembered a video from the IV Summit in which Mother Theresa says
it's not the greatness of the thing that you do that counts - it's
about doing Small things with great love. And I remembered that when
I was asking God to let me work for Him this summer, I didn't have a
particular job in mind. I came here with the intention to serve and
to do so out of love. It's not the servant's job to find the 'best'
tasks. The work of the Lord's servant is to do what he is given and
to do it with great love. It's still frustrating when your kids have
a hard time telling English numbers from English letters, but in the
end, the kids won't remember who taught them the number 7. But, they
will remember that they have brothers and sisters in America who came
to be with them. We Americans sometimes overlook the importance of
this with our results-oriented mentality.

Family is a lot more important to these people. I rarely saw
homeless people. This is because everyone has family to take them in.
You'll have rooms stuffed with people, but as long as there is
family, no one goes homeless.

And living in nice apartments while travelling to the slums every
morning ended up becoming a microcosm to me of the way I live in
middle-class America while wanting to serve the poor and the homeless.
I think that because this was our setting while dealing with these
issues in Egypt, we will be better able to carry over the things we've
learned to life in America.
Egypt has prepared us to return to America.

I think that this is the kind of 'work' we are really doing:

We have a Muslim friend, Asmaa, who we can write to and discuss
religious and cultural differences.

There is a fundamentalist (all covered in black) lady who sells
trinkets by the metro. Her name is Hanan. She is very poor, and
looked down on by some other Egyptian women, but whenever she sees us
walking to the metro, she smiles. I can tell she's smiling because
the edges of her eyes crinkle. I buy things from her- like those
little tissue packs - whenever I can.

We went to teach at a evening adult education school and one of the
teachers asked us what tribe we were from before he remembered that in
America, people don't have tribes. One of our other teacher friends
spoke up and said that he knew what tribe we were from. It was the
same as his. We're all Christians.

Sanaa and I met a Muslim girl on the metro who builds robots at
school. Sanaa was able to attend her engagement party - a big family
event at which she held hands with her boyfriend for the first time.

Tiff and I explored Arbaa Wa Noos in support of locals and their
businesses. We found a juice bar where the mango juice was only LE 1
and a nice (friendly) restaurant to force our new friend Gheda to join
us at. Gheda and her family live part of the slum near Central. They
waved us over and invited us for tea or soda the first time they saw
us. They want to travel to America, and it hurt to translate into
Arabic the number which represented the cost of our plane tickets.
I've never been in a situation where going somewhere else seemed so
hopeless. They wanted us to tell them how to get visas to America.
We don't know. I don't even have an American visa. I'm sure that
Arbaa Wa Noos does not get Americans very often.

We shook hands with excited children in Mokattam, the garbage
village. Something that I bet most American tourists aren't willing
to do.

We visited a family near St. Catherine's that has probably never seen
Americans be anything other than tourists.

We loved the children in our schools. It occurs to me now that
someday these children will grow up and some may be resettled in
America. I hope I can meet them again someday.

We were invited to a Sudanese wedding.

We visited and supported Tukul Crafts! Ask us about our awesome (too
cool...) T shirts! You too can support refugees by shopping online at
http://www.refuge-egypt.org/tukul/index.shtml. The conversion rate
these days is roughly LE 5.7 to $1.

We realized that to really help, we have to do more than just find
the right things to throw money at.

We tried to help in the schools in a way that supported the
authority, dignity, and capability of the teachers instead of just
coming in with our own program and insisting on doing things our way.
I guess American volunteers tend to have this attitude a lot.

We listened to refugee men speaking about the UNHCR, frustrated
because they'd told their story so many times, and no one has done
anything about it.
We're trying to figure out what to do.

We listened to the stories of some other refugee men and women. We
know some of what they have suffered and still suffer. As Americans,
we are automatically in positions of power. God help us if we don't
find a way to use it on behalf of our African family.

When Charles asked if we'd actually done any good, Pastor John
immediately said 'yes!'. When asked if he would want anything to be
different, Pastor John said that we should stay longer.

Ted gave his hacky sack to one of the boys at his school who loved to
play. During the course of the trip, he met several people who knew
his arabic teacher (Ted's arabic teacher in the States was a refugee
from the school that Ted ended up assisting at). One of them said, "I
miss him, please give him my picture."

Marko saw me drawing and told me to write a book about Central. It's
a good idea.

Brian is greeted at school with a handshake following a good pat on
the left shoulder. This is the way that close friends and brothers
greet each other.

At the celebration of the end of summer class at Central, we listened
to a teacher speak about how we were part of their battle against
illiteracy, how important it was for students to be educated so that
they could return to rebuild Sudan, and how perhaps one day, one of
their children might be the President of Long-Live-New-Sudan! Things
suddenly seemed much heavier than they had been.
In working with these children, we interacted with some of the future
of an entire, possibly new, country.

One day at school, Emmanuel told the music class about how important
it was to share our knowledge with each other, to help each other
along and to lift each other up. He told them that when you have
Jesus in your heart, it makes you want to go other places and share
what you know to benefit the people. He says that's why we have
volunteers from America.

A bunch of my trekmates and I have decided to serve the urban poor on
a longer term mission. We don't know yet when or where. I would like
to go back to see my family in Cairo, and I want to see their homeland
Sudan. They told me, "I hope someday you will have to visit Sudan so
you can see how beautiful it is." Maybe I can help them rebuild.

Early in the trek, we went to a Sudanese Church. It was amazing.
There was so much dancing and singing, even among a congregation whose
members have been tortured and persecuted. They asked if we thought
they were crazy, and said "Our craziness is from God. We shout
because of what the Lord has done."
They quoted to us Jer 29:7 - "And seek the peace of the city whither
I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD
for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace." They praised
God for the land of Egypt. A land where they suffered poverty,
injustice, and persecution.
Then the pastor turned around and said "You people in the West,
you have begun to forget what the Lord has done in your life. Because
of materialism, people have begun to abandon God. ...They don't want
to give praise to God. They want to be parasites feeding on what God
has given them."

Then the pastor said that in the church, different tribes come
together as one tribe. He pulled a young Sudanese man up front from
the first row on one side, and pulled Ted up from the other side.
They stood together at the front of the church and were proclaimed
brother and brother from America and Africa.
"We will never forget this day," the pastor said, "We are one family
and we will be together in heaven."


In Christ, there are no goodbyes.
-Tracy

Hallas? La.
I hope I have reported these things accurately, though I am aware
that they are in no way complete.



P.S. full hack count: 5 in LA. But, I don't know who was there.

P.P.S.
some scripture:

"Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power
and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases. And he sent them
to preach the kingdom of God (in some translations, the gospel), and
to heal the sick."
-Luke 9:1,2
So what kingdom were they preaching? They certainly weren't telling
people that Christ died for their sins. Jesus was quite clearly still
alive at this point.
This passage is useful - Jesus kicks off his ministry with a quote from Isaiah:

"The Spirit of the Lord [is] upon me, because he hath anointed me to
preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the
brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering
of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to
preach the acceptable year of the Lord."
-Luke 4:18
(Isaiah 61:1,2)
This is really exciting to me. This list is about meeting viscerally
tangible human needs. This gospel is beautiful. This is painfully
beautiful.

from Amos:
"Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the LORD, the God
of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken. Hate the evil, love
the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the LORD
God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph....I hate, I
despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn
assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat
offerings, I will not accept [them]: neither will I regard the peace
offerings of your fat beasts. Take though away from me the noise of
thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.

But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream."
-Amos 5:14....24

This sounds really noble, but as wealthy Americans, I believe we
cannot call for God's justice to run down and expect to maintain our
status at the same time. God's justice will be an equalizer, to
restore everyone the way that Jubilee years should have: all debts
will be both repaid and cancelled because everyone will again have
according to his need.
But how can we work for justice? I thought I knew, but reading
through Amos has convinced me that if God is just, then I don't
actually know what justice is. Fortunately, the words of God are
'Seek.. and live' rather than 'Find.. and live.' This will be a
continual learning process for us all as our search leads us to cross
the dividing walls enforced by society.

Read it like you mean it:
"And [if] thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the
afflicted soul; then shall they light rise in obscurity, and they
darkness [be] as the noonday: And the LORD shall guide thee
continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones:
and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water,
whose waters fail not. And [they that shall be] of thee shall build
the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many
generations; and though shalt be called, The repairer of the breach,
The restorer of paths to dwell in."
-Isaiah 58:10-12

Thank God for Isaiah 58. I wish I could reasonably quote the entire thing.
My faith in God is no longer about whether or not He exists. It's no
longer an issue of whether He is there for me. Now it's a matter of
trusting that it's worth it to forgive my debtors even if I remain
unforgiven. It's worth it to feed the hungry, visit the sick, and to
spend one's life breaking every yoke, because something will change.
It's worth it to spread myself out for the love of others the way that
He did. Maybe I'm finally starting to understand where to go when
Jesus says to pick up the cross and follow.

Again, the song,
Humbly you came to the the earth you created,
All for love's sake, became poor.

"If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, [from] doing thy
pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of
the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways,
nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking [thine own] words: Then
shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause thee to ride
upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of
Jacob thy father; for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it."
-Isaiah 58:13,14