Designing Shirts

Yesterday I worked all day on a t-shirt design for our semester. Every year a design is chosen and printed for the semester shirt, so it was destined for our semester as well. I put forth a design idea and throughout the course of the day people gave their suggestions. I was up against about four other designs, but after about four voting sessions and many revisions, a final design was decided upon. I’ll surprise you all with the shirt, rather than just put the graphics up here.

Egypt in Action

So just to add your multimedia exposure of my experience in Egypt, here is a link to a video that I put together of what we did. It doesn't have a lot of shots of the sights we saw, but more of the fun we had and how we expressed the freedom of no classes for a week. Some of the timing is a little off and the song skips in one part, but it was unavoidable unfortunately. I hope you enjoy!

P.S. A special thanks to Google Video for making this possible.
Egypt Video

Pictures from Egypt

Here is a link to see some of the pictures that we took while we were in Egypt. They are not in consecutive order, which I am sorry for, but they are fun to look at any way.

Epypt Pictures

The Israelite Goes Egyptian

Well, I’m back from Egypt as of Sunday night and I have already jumped full swing into school again. The last two nights I have only slept a total of three hours and as I write this I am quite tired, but I am rejoicing in the Lord who has enabled me to get everything that I needed done, so far. I won’t belabor you all with details of my trip to Egypt, but I will give you some highlights.

Cairo
The biggest city in Egypt is possibly the worst city in Egypt. With 22 million people, the city has a lot of problems. Apart from just being in Egypt, we liked Cairo the least. The most unique feature of life in Cairo is its traffic situation. The problem doesn’t come from people disobeying the law, but from the fact that there are no traffic laws. There are almost no stop lights, no painted lines on the streets including crosswalks, no speed limit, people don’t use their blinkers or headlights, and there are more cars in one place than I have ever seen. Pedestrians can cross anywhere in the street; it matters not if traffic is flowing. So needless to say, we had fun making our way through the streets of Cairo.

We arrived in the city at about 8pm and our taxi driver took us to a cheap hotel next to the train station for only 18 pounds a night (5.8 pounds = 1 US dollar). We stayed in Cairo for two days, seeing the Egyptian museum, the Giza pyramids, and Islamic Cairo. We had ice cream at McDonalds every night that we were in Cairo since a cone is only a 1.5 Egyptian pounds, it was nice American-type treat.

We had a funny encounter while on our way to the pyramids. We were told that the metro would be the fastest and cheapest way to get there, so we bought our tickets for less than a pound each and got on. On the metro they have a list of stops, but three of them have the word Giza in them and so we weren’t sure which one to get off at. When we came to the first one, Megan hops off and then the doors shut right away and the metro continues on to the next stop. So we have one girl all alone at a metro station while the rest of us were at the next one. Shane talked to a guard, who allowed him to go back and get her. We got back on and were told by the police that it was two stops down the line. After the first stop, the train pulled in with a bunch of other trains like it was going to get parked. A guy came in and asked us where we were trying to and after some simply English and corresponding choreography, he understood the pyramids. He showed us which one to get off at and then the train began to back the other way. At the first stop, a herd of Arab women flooded into our car. We were told only too late that we were in the women’s car and that the men’s car was the next one down. Well, you can imagine how Shane and I felt sitting in there with 50 women staring at you. The next stop we switched cars. We arrived at the pyramids…eventually.

Luxor
We got a night train to Luxor which is about an 8 hour ride; not the greatest sleeping conditions in the world. We spent two days here, seeing the temples on the east side one day, and the sites on the west, the other. A definite highlight was renting bikes. We saved big time on transportation and we got some good exercise. The Luxor temple at night had an eerie feel because it was all lit up and the huge architecture provides a very neat atmosphere. This is the place were we saw the most ruins. We had lots of fun seeing  such massive remains after spending all of the semester visiting sites in Israel that are just a pile of rocks. So on the east bank we saw the Luxor and Karnak temple and on the west bank we visited the Colossi of Memnon, Medinet Habu, Valley of the Kings, Temple of Hapshetsut, and the Rasmussen. I figure because you can learn about each of these in a history book, I won’t bother you with the historical details. We were able to hike from the Valley of the Kings up and over the ridge to the Temple of Hapshetsut. At the peak of the hike we had an incredible view of the Nile River and its lush green shores surrounded by the desert.

We found the best food in Luxor was across the street from our hotel. The dish that we had all three times that we ate there was called koshary; I can’t really explain it because I don’t know what was it, but believe me, it was good. We went to McDonald’s for ice cream while we were here as well. I had some fun with my long hair and grooving to the music that was there.

Aswan
We took another train down to Aswan which is 3 hours south. We spent three nights and two days here and wanted to stay longer. The first day, I led our group on a long walk to find an unfinished obelisk and took us the back route through an Arab community, but found it okay. Later in the day, we went out on the Nile to Elephantine Island where we went to a museum, saw a Nilometer (an ancient device to determine the level of the Nile), and watched the sunset on some rocks that jutted out into the river. The next day we saw the Aswan High Dam, Aswan Dam, and the Temple of Philae, which is a temple on an island.

Over all, we liked Aswan the best. We had the best hotel with the best food and it was the best weather. We had fun walking the market streets and seeing the Egyptian life.

Experiencing Egypt
Well, spending 8 days in an oppressively Arab culture definitely pulls on one’s soul. It was hard to see the women so suppressed, both the locals and Megan and Erin. The people are so controlled by their religion, not by their fear of Alah. I realized why there is such a conflict between the Jewish people and the Arab people; it is because their cultures and entire way of life is controlled by their religion, which is completely contradictory.

God really had His sovereign hand on my group. Lord allowed us to have a devotional and extended prayer for one another at least twice a day. The Spirit led us to the right hotels, to the places to eat, and what taxi drives to talk to. I was blessed by the others in my group, I couldn’t of picked better people to go with. We had a lot of fun and really had a relaxing week. We had fun walking down the market streets and having some of the most pushy shopkeepers I have ever seen come out and try to bargain with you. Shane and I did get man dresses, which is just a traditional Egyptian outfit. I thank the Lord for the opportunity to experience Egypt and to spend it in such a God-glorifying way.

I Lived To Tell About It

The most shocking experience for me while I was in Egypt was getting my hair cut in Aswan. My hair was very long leading up to this, I had not cut it the whole semester. I figured there was no reason not to get it done in Egypt, it was cheap and convenient. There was a barber shop right next to our hotel, so I thought I would give it a shot. The cut began fine. The man had some serious skills with the scissors. His hand was moving so fast and the hair was coming off in a satisfactory manner. I grew a little nervous as to what he was going to do next when he pulled out an old-fashioned flip out razor, yeah the kind my mom decorates with. He used it dry shave the hair off the back of my neck because there was a lot of it (mom, you know what I’m talking about). He used it also to trim my side burns just right. Then came the simplest yet most horrifying torture device to be used on a man’s face – the sewing thread. He took a segement of thread and wrapped it around his fingers and then brought it up to his mouth. Then he began to control the thread with his bobbing head – the result was excruciating pain shooting through my face as the hair began to be ripped out. He took out all the hair on my forehead, formed my eye brows, and took out the hair below my eyes. Well, I didn’t take this unexpected pain very well, and eventually had to have him stop otherwise I was going to vomit. But I can say that I had my hair cut in Egypt.

The Newest Apple Innovation

Make sure you check out this humorous ad. They can poke all the fun in the world, but you can't diminish the glory of the iPod.
-The Newest iPod-

The Wayfarer Returns

Me with a grinding bowl
my Egypt group

The Wayfarer has been silent for the past several weeks, wandering through the hill country of Judah. But with a conviction on the lack of updates, he pauses to inform those interested in his condition on his recent whereabouts.

General Thoughts
It seems as if I am a marble on the ever-increasing slope of the semester. The weeks go by so fast and all of the events that I remember looking at on the calendar at the beginning of the semester are cruising by and will soon all be over. The Land & Bible class is over already. This class was the one in which we went on field trips and visited the sites that we were learning about. It was sad when we had to pull into the moshav from our last field trip. There are other field trips with other classes, but no more to biblical sites with the whole class.

Egypt
This Friday, I will be leaving to go to Egypt for travel study break. I am very excited to travel and see some great historical sites. I am in a group with three others: Shane, Megan, and Erin. We have hung out a lot this semester, so it seemed natural that we would spend a week in Egypt together. We are leaving at midnight on Friday night and returning 8 days later on Sunday afternoon. We have a lot of plans for doing some fun stuff like going to the Giza pyramids, the Cairo Museum, Luxor, and Aswan. We also have some fun stuff on the list, such as going to the roof of every hotel we stay at, for the view, buying man dresses, doing a scavenger hunt with the other Egypt groups, and working at McDonald’s for an hour in order to get a free ice cream cone. Please pray that Christ would be on our minds in a very God-less culture. The situation in Egypt is different from Israel. It is all Arab and they hate both Americans and Israelis. Pray that if it is the Lord’s will, that we would be safe and enjoy Him as we enjoy another corner of Creation. Pray also that our group would live righteously to one another, seeking to make much of Christ and not ourselves.

From the Heart
Well, I haven’t completely updated ya’ll on Galilee and haven’t even started to tell you about our four day Negev trip. I can tell you about the places we went some other time, but now I am going to give you an update on what God has done in my heart over the past month.

Even though my time in Galilee was spent trying to grasp the weight of Jesus’ ministry upon the very shores that I was staying at and reading the Gospels in a different light, I left the place feeling empty. I felt as if I was supposed to be changed in a radical way, like I was to be completely different with new life goals and an amazing zeal for the Lord. Although I do believe that God used that experience for His glory in my life, I think I was expecting the wrong kind of change. What I was looking for was a change in outward actions, but what God wanted was a change of the heart. I was left in this quandary, confused about what I was to do in response to all that I learned in Galilee.

I have been going through Jeremiah while I have been here and during that time after Galilee, I was meditating on what it means to forsake the Lord. Jeremiah confronts the nation of Israel on how they had committed two evils: they forsook the Lord their God and replaced Him with their own idolatrous God. He says that the fear of God is not in them. I began to question what evidences were in my own life that show that I fear the great God of Ages. Do I live out the theology that I so readily can quote and debate about? I have been learning about the how the Jewish people have a specific emphasis on action, rather than doctrine. Although I don’t think that my focus on doctrine should decrease, but rather that I should place more weight than I have been on applying that doctrine. For example:

• Is it evident that I believe in the depravity of man by how I interact with unbelievers?


• Does my life show that I fear God and not man?


• Can others see that my heart belongs to Christ Jesus and that my affections for Him are abounding more and more?

During the Negev trip, we had a time in the wilderness, where we went off on our own and communed with our God. We talked with the same God who had brought His people across the very ground we were sitting on. Here is an excerpt of my journal from that day:

“For me, this time was very special and helped me to see my heart in another light. I read my favorite psalm, number 63, and it was very different to read it in the wilderness that it speaks of. The Lord revealed that my affections were weak. I don’t love Him with a love that burns within me. I am not desperately thirsty for Him. I cannot say with David that “my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you; as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” My problem is not that I love the things of this world too much, but rather I don’t love my Lord and Savior enough.”

I hope that sharing some of this with you has given you a small window into
the spiritual side of my semester here in the land of Israel. I know that
the Lord has great things in store for me yet; I don’t know if I won’t
realize what they are until I get back, or if He will reveal them to me now.
Our God is great. He has carried His faithful ones throughout history and He
will continue to sustain us today – He is the All-Sovereign Holy One.