On our first day in Cairo, after a short night of dreamless sleep, we hit the ground running. That overused phrase, "hit the ground running," took on new meaning for me when I saw a man step off a moving bus in front of us and run four or five steps to stay upright. When I commented on this to our tour guide, she said, "The bus doesn't have stops there. He wanted to get off. It's common."
So we figuratively hit the ground running. Our whole team, five of us, traveled together, always. Our van took us down increasingly narrow and increasingly crowded streets to visit the Egyptian Bible College, which meets on the third floor of Dr. Atef's church. It is the norm, as far as we were able to discern, for the pastor to live above the church and sometimes for a church related set of activities to take place above the pastor's home on the third floor. In this case, it was the Bible College.
I attempted to photograph many street scenes, most of which came out as a blur of color and melting shapes. This one is not particularly typical because it is blocked off and devoid of human and vehicle traffic. But it is reasonably clear. It is notable for the presence of a mobile police unit on the left hand side, just to the right of the flag. Such units were not uncommon.
Here is the entryway to the church pastored by Dr. Atef, which is also the location of his home and of the Bible College. Out front are Pastor Kamal, new Superintendent of the Wesleyan Churches in Egypt, Dr. Matthew Friedman, our team leader and Professor from Kingswood University in New Brunswick, and Nagy to the right.
We were greeted by the caretaker of the church and his son, who was entirely unsure what to make of these visitors, especially of the grandfatherly man with the white beard who tried to engage him with smiles and wanted to take his picture.
Before venturing to the third floor for the teaching sessions, we stopped at Dr. Atef's office on the second floor just outside of his home where we presented him and Pastor Kamal with a gift from our church, a vivid reproduction of the watercolor of Houghton Wesleyan by Roselyn Danner. I read for them the inscription expressing our desire for a growing bond between our church in North America and the Egyptian churches.
Upstairs, Dr. Friedman conducted two hour-long class sessions in this room for Bible College students on the history of world Christianity. We were told that there were a number of students absent because they don't usually hold classes on Friday and these students had other obligations. These students were all pastors, men from various places in Africa and the Middle East. While varying from person to person, their conversational English seemed to be quite good to my ears and their experience both as pastors and with Scripture was extensive.
After a lunch break provided by the staff, I taught for an hour session before Dr. Friedman returned for the last hour. My lecture, which was not sequenced with the other lectures as to specific subject, dealt with Psalm 121. I described a method for using the English text in multiple ways -- as a tool for improving one's English, as a way of using the form and structure of the Psalm for structuring sermons, and so forth -- that I adapted from the first chapter of my book Words That Move Us. [Forgive, please, the shameless self-promotion here.]
At the end of the school sessions, it was pressing on 4 p.m., and we got back into the van for the second half of our day -- at Badr City. We had apparently hit the ground in order to keep running!
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