Blessed Be Egypt, My People

After my post from yesterday, I am happy to announce that I went to bed at 8 Egypt time, and slept for an uninterrupted 13 hours straight.  I woke up feeling like a new person!  And it's a good thing that I had the extended slumber, because we ended up with not 2 but 3 shows.


(remember from my last post that you have to BE FLEXIBLE and pretty much anything goes when you're overseas)


Our current venue is this tent in the picture below.  Now, this picture is taken from our balcony and may seem small, but holds just over 750 people.  

We have done our last 4 performances in this tent with people pouring out the back, and angry that they aren't able to get inside.  The side flaps had to be raised so that people could see, making our performance available to over 1500 people.  This has posed a small problem for the promotors of this event because there are still too many people trying to get in.

In an attempt to make our show available to everyone that wanted to see it, we were moved to the stadium that is designed to hold all 12,000 people in attendance for this festival.  We filled the stadium to almost 7500.  

Now, this is not an ego-boosting blog post.  It's just amazing to see the response from the Egyptian people to what we're doing.  They flock inside to see the floating table, straight-jacket escape, and hear my husband speak to them.  They are completely engaged.  I wish that these couple of pictures did the energy and passion of the Egyptian people could come through.  

There are wooden carvings all over this complex that say, "Blessed be Egypt, my people" (Isaiah 19:25)  The Egyptian Christians that live and work here believe that God has given them a special place in history.  They struggle here in country that believes it should be entirely Muslim.  But they are both hopeful and faithful to their belief.  To be here at this time to serve, encourage and challenge them is humbling, and I love every second of it. 

Egypt: The First 72 Hours

If I were to tell the story of our Egypt adventure over the last 75 hours, you may think that I’m kidding.  It has been as amazing as it has been exhausting and full of surprises. 

We left the States on Monday afternoon, making our way through Atlanta, New York, and then on to Cairo.  That leg of our trip alone was over 20 hours of travel.  11 of it on our midnight flight from JFK to Cairo.  But as we hit the ground in Cairo, despite our obvious lack of sleep (because who can really sleep on a an airplane), we were energized with excitement of a new place and new people.  Our excitement was short-lived when we met our host and he told us that we would be leaving, previously unknown to us, in 4 hours from the Cairo airport to head on a one hour plane ride to Luxor, lower Egypt for a show.  So we stayed at the airport with our host and our Norwegian strong-men (for real…they are part of Team Extreme) until our 11:45 flight out of Cairo.

Time awake by the time of our landing in Luxor: 34 Hours (Side note: We have not slept since Sunday night, when it was in our own beds.)

After arriving at our hotel in Luxor at 2:30 in the morning, we found out that we would be heading out for our 4 hour van ride at precisely 4:30 am. However, anyone who has ever traveled internationally knows that exact times are never exact, but more of a suggestion.  So after napping for about 2 hours, we sat in the van for another before we ever even left the city.

The city that we ended up in, Sojh, 7 hours south of Cairo.  What started as one show turned into 2.  The audiences were amazing and the house was completely packed for both! All in all, around 3500 people saw our last-minute show. Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to stay after the last show because we were scheduled to fly back to Cairo, out of Luxor, that night at midnight. We piled back into the van, my husband and I and the 2 Norwegians, plus 1 Egyptian strong-man. We drove the 4 hours back to Luxor, where we were promptly dropped off at the airport for our midnight flight.

As I sat down in the food court with my pack of strawberry cookies and chili lime chips, (the other option was what looked like 3-day-old pizza), I took a deep breath, knowing that even though I was exhausted and a little loopy from lack of sleep, that it was not about us and our comfort.  We had come to Egypt to serve.  Plain and simple. And even though it had been frustrating and kind of made me want to weep uncontrollably, we were here for a purpose.

Time Awake as we fly back to Cairo: 55 Hours

Again, as you read this, you may be thinking that I’m exaggerating.  Not even a little bit.  But crazy at it sounds, it’s not over yet. 

After our 1 hour flight from Luxor to Cairo, we were picked up at the airport by our van, and piled in for our 1.5 hour drive to Wadi, where we would be putting down roots for a few days for the festival.  On top of my husband and I and the 2 Norwegians, we picked up a Brazilian jujitsu artist fresh off his flight from Sao Paulo.  We chatted and laughed about all of the things that had just happened in a short 48 hours, and talked about how nice it would be to have a good nights’ sleep in a real bed for the first time in days. But the chatter died down after about 2 hours (remember the 1.5 hour drive?) and we realized that the driver didn’t know where he was.  He began to loop around the highway, stop in gas stations, and stop at local street marketers close to the highway, asking for directions.

Now take a step back.  We are in a van, in the middle of the desert, with 2 Americans, 1 Brazilian, and 2 Norwegians, all of which speak no Arabic.  Our driver speaks no English.  We ask over and over where we are and why we aren’t at the hotel, and it flusters him to the point of extending our 1.5 hour trip to over 4 hours.  (You’d be flustered too if you had an angry Norwegian strong-man sitting behind you asking where the hotel was).  We eventually pull down a small road that eventually stops being pavement and is loose desert sand.  No lights, no road signs, and no camp in sight.  After having listened to terror stories about kidnappings and small side roads that lead to nowhere from our previous days’ driver, we all start to wonder if we would  ever make it out of Egypt alive.   But luckily for us, (and our driver), we pulled into the Biet El Wadi complex around 4 am. 

Time Awake when we reach our fresh hotel beds: 63 Hours.

Let me wrap this up by saying this: if you have every visited another country, you know that time is almost in a state of suspension.  There is no hurry, no on-time (except when flying), and no real worry.  Leisure reigns.  And when we are overseas, we have learned that our American pace gets set aside and we become flexible.  That is the travelers code: Be Flexible.  If you fail at being flexible, you would hate overseas work. It’s hard and rewarding and amazing all at the same time. 

As with every other time that I am overseas, I am in love with the cultural experience, the people, the food, and the way that God works.  I am looking forward to seeing what the next few days holds, and hopefully I can get my camera to work again by the time we get to the Pyramids.

Now for some much needed sleep…