Egypt -- Jim & Donna's Excellent Adventures, Pt.15

     If the names Cairo and Asyut sound like names with ties to antiquity, Luxor sounds like royalty. Ancient royalty perhaps, but royalty nonetheless. Everywhere one turns there are reminders -- this is not just a very old place with lots of things to see and ponder,  it is a place with one foot in the modern world and one foot firmly in the unimaginable past.

 

  We had a 4 p.m. lunch at the Swordfish Restaurant, which seemed oddly named even for a "fish restaurant" given that the principle body of water close at hand was the Nile. It was visible from our hotel window, with the barren hills of the Valley of the Kings rising above the green flood plain.

   Memorably for me, the only part of that lunch I recorded was this little fellow in the photo below with the big eyes. The prawn in the soup.   

After lunch we had a meeting with local pastors, many of whom had traveled considerable distance into Luxor to meet us. At the end of our time together we took photographs. Pastor Milad, of the big smile and contagious laugh, has been appointed to be the next pastor of the new Badr City church, which we visited early on. He will be taking on that new work after 18 years at his present location near Luxor. 

  The other pastors gathered for our meeting include Pastor Tata, Pastor Aram, Pastor David, and Pastor Jimi. I have names and details in my notebook but sadly I cannot connect the names with the faces in the photographs. I'll keep working on that.) Except, of course, our tour maestro, Nagy, in the striped shirt. And Pastor Jimi (or Jimmy, without the clerical collar) whose church we would visit later that evening.

    All of these pastors have families who are either young or grown and beginning careers, all have extensive work going on in their communities and towns, and all have ongoing work with their congregations and/or buildings that need creativity and attention.

    After our meeting we were driven to Pastor Jimi's church, which we learned is not officially recognized by the government as a church because it does not have its own  building. Government regulations are complicated. The congregation rents space in the basement of a building situated next door to the National Heritage Museum just off of the newly  excavated and restored Avenue of the Sphinxes. Here one literally finds the ancient culture right outside the door!

    We attended a worship service there that night, which was again an uplifting experience. After the service we met Jacob, the worship team's guitarist, whose day job, it turns out, is as tour guide. He would be leading our sojourn into the Valley of the Kings in the morning. Then, after another late night, we returned to the hotel. The streets of Luxor resemble the streets of Asyut and Cairo but, somehow, without the same chaos of traffic and shop clutter spilling out past the curbs -- as one might expect of a royal city.

[Night view of the Avenue of the Sphinxes]