David, and Where is Yambio, South Sudan?
A year ago, we had an extraordinary experience. We often entertain delegates visiting from other countries, and this time we had three African journalists, and, strictly by chance, they all turned out to be Christian. Most of our gatherings are strictly ecumenical, but these were joyful, praying Christians, and the evening took a turn we never anticipated.
“So how did you find Jesus?” one woman asked David, from the newest country in the world, South Sudan. Inside, I was shocked, and when I am shocked, my tendency is to laugh, I don’t know why, it is just the way I am wired. Every culture is so different. In the South, people might ask that of one another, particularly if you worship in a fundamental sect, but our sect is more formal, and to inquire into another’s spiritual life can be perceived as intrusive.
David, however, was not taken aback. “It’s a long story,” he said, and we all settled into comfortable chairs to listen better. It was Christmas, the decorations were up, the lights all twinkling and we had eaten. A good time for a story.
It was a long story. It started with a little boy in a happy family, who one day was told to run! Run! Run into the forest and hide! The riders were coming! His family grabbed a very few things and ran.
His family ran for years. His family ran into forests, across borders, into dry arid spaces. Sometimes some of the children would get separated from their parents for a while, but they would keep asking, and eventually meet up again, only to face separation again. Their whole lives were running, from the Janjaween, from border police, from robbers.
At one point, he and a brother stayed in a church, and a priest taught them about Jesus. Simple stories, simple songs, and he drew letters and numbers in the dirt – that was his early schooling. It was a haven of peace for him.
Many years later, the family was reunited in their village in the new country of South Sudan. Miraculously, every member of his family survived, indeed, most of his village survived. They had maintained lines of communication through all those years of running and separation, and were so thankful. Most of all, now, they were thankful – they had a church in their village. David had learned to love learning, and had completed his education and had found a wonderful job.
“I don’t know the book like you do,” he told us, “I only know it like a little child sitting at the feet of that priest, but I am learning.”
I can’t help but think that David knows more than he thinks. David holds his belief in Jesus like a child, simple and direct. His testimony is powerful and unforgettable. I am in awe, even a year later, of his story and testimony.
Today the church prays for the diocese of Yambio, in the South Sudan:
Qatar Wins Guiness Record for Largest Flag
As Qatar goes into National Day frenzy, they capture the title for World’s Largest Flag. Mabruk, Qatar!
As the country gears up for National Day celebrations, a Qatar national flag measuring 101,000+sqm was yesterday recognised by the Guinness World Records as the largest flag in the world, beating current record holder Romania, which created a 79,000sqm flag last year.
The flag, described as the “Flag of Gratitude and Loyalty”, is currently spread across a large area on the outskirts of the capital.
The announcement was made in the presence of a huge gathering of Qatari citizens at a glittering ceremony held at the Katara amphitheatre.
A Guinness World Records official flown in from the UK presented the certificate of recognition to a representative of the “Flag of Gratitude and Loyalty” team at the event.
Speaking about the flag, the Guinness World Records official said: “This is a big challenge and one of the most difficult records I have seen. The record grew many times from 1976 and the current record to break is almost 80,000sqm. It was established in Romania last year with a flag that set the record of 79,000sqm.”
He described the Qatari flag as “a very large engineering project involving a lot of challenges”, which must follow the Guinness World Records guidelines.
“More than 2,000 people have taken part in this project, which is supported by Brooq Qatari Magazine and Katara. Yesterday, I went to see the flag on location and was impressed by the quality of manufacturing, stitching, material and quality of fabric – all were of very high standards, as well as the participation of the people involved as nobody wanted to leave after the work was done. The flag means so much to them than just its size,” he pointed out before announcing the size of the flag.
The audience at the unveiling event were later serenaded by the Qatar Armed Forces orchestra.
From Tree to Amazing Carving
Thank you, once again, Hayfa, for this wonderful item:
(The original piece did not include this information, which I found at the Daily Mail Online:
A Chinese artist has won a place in the Guinness Book of Records after creating the world’s longest wooden carving.
Zheng Chunhui, a famous wood carver, spent four years creating the artwork which is over 40ft long and made from a single tree trunk.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2509367/Guinness-Book-Records-creating-worlds-longest-wooden-carving.html#ixzz2ngOQX2Os
One tree, four years of work and an indescribable amount of talent: that’s what it took to create this incredible masterpiece. A famous Chinese wood carver chopped down a single tree and tirelessly worked on it for over four years to make this piece. Your jaw will hit the floor when you see what he created.
Zabbaleen Cave Church in Cairo
My friend Hayfa sends me the most amazing things. Her mind is another Here, There and Everywhere Kind of mind. 🙂
This article resonates with me because when we moved to Tunis, the garbage collectors would fight over our trash. I felt horrible, we had an infant, and there were diapers in the trash. 😦 Our maid would take cans and jars and especially jars with lids out of the trash, and ask if she could take them. We learned before throwing anything away to see if she wanted it first. They used, and re-used, everything. We learned to look at our consumption in a whole new way. It was one of the best things about living in an ‘alien’ community; we learned to see ourselves with different eyes.
Thank you, Hayfa, for this fascinating article.
The Cave Church of the Zabbaleen in Cairo
The Monastery of Saint Simon, also known as the Cave Church, is located in the Mokattam mountain in southeastern Cairo, Egypt, in an area that is known as ‘garbage city’ because of the large population of garbage collectors or Zabbaleen that live there. The Zabbaleen are descendants of farmers who started migrating from Upper Egypt to Cairo in the 1940s. Fleeing poor harvests and poverty they came to the city looking for work and set-up makeshift settlements around the city. Initially, they stuck to their tradition of raising pigs, goats, chickens and other animals, but eventually found collecting and sorting of waste produced by the city residents more profitable.
The Zabbaleen would sort through household garbage, salvaging and selling things of value, while the organic waste provided an excellent source of food for their animals. In fact, this arrangement worked so well, that successive waves of migrants came from Upper Egypt to live and work in the newly founded garbage villages of Cairo.
For years, the makeshift settlements of the Zabbaleen were moved around the city trying to avoid the municipal authorities. Finally, a large group of Zabbaleen settled under the cliffs of the Mokattam or Moquattam quarries at the eastern edge of the city, which has now grown from a population of 8,000 in the early 1980s, into the largest garbage collector community in Cairo, with approximately 30,000 Zabbaleen inhabitants. Egypt is a Muslim-majority country, but the Zabbaleen are Coptic Christians, at least, 90 percent of them are. Christian communities are rare to find in Egypt, so the Zabbaleen prefer to stay in Mokattam within their own religious community even though many of them could afford houses elsewhere.
The local Coptic Church in Mokattam Village was established in 1975. After the establishment of the church, the Zabbaleen felt more secure in their location and only then began to use more permanent building materials, such as stone and bricks, for their homes. Given their previous experience of eviction from Giza in 1970, the Zabbaleen had lived in temporary tin huts up till that point. In 1976, a large fire broke out in Manshiyat Nasir, which led to the beginning of the construction of the first church below the Mokattam mountain on a site of 1,000 square meters. Several more churches have been built into the caves found in Mokattam, of which the Monastery of St. Simon the Tanner is the largest with a seating capacity of 20,000. In fact, the Cave Church of St. Simon in Mokattam is the largest church in the Middle East.
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Palestinian Snowman
Love this photo from Skye news; Palestinian photo as snowstorm hits Middle East. We were flying back from Cairo to Amman once, only to discover Amman had a snowstorm and there was maybe 4 inches of snow in a city ill-prepared for snow removal, LOL. When we moved there, we knew it got hot – but we had no idea how very cold it also got, and how the cold was amplified by the marble floors and hard surfaces. We LIVED in flannel shirts 🙂
Jesus Discloses Signs of the End of Times
Because we are also reading Revelations at this time of the Lectionary readings, I thought at first that is what I was reading, but no, these are the words of Jesus, talking about the signs leading to the end of times – wars and rumors of wars, lawlessness, famine, nations rising against nations, oh yikes. Sounds a whole lot like today.
(I love that this image has Jesus and his disciples looking like people of the Middle East 🙂 You find the most amazing things on the internet, and I found this on an Egyptian Coptic website, where you can also hear all kinds of Coptic Christian music and chants. St. Takla.org )
Matthew 24:1-14
3 When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, ‘Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?’ 4Jesus answered them, ‘Beware that no one leads you astray. 5For many will come in my name, saying, “I am the Messiah!”* and they will lead many astray. 6And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. 7For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines* and earthquakes in various places: 8all this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.
9 ‘Then they will hand you over to be tortured and will put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of my name. 10Then many will fall away,* and they will betray one another and hate one another.11And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. 12And because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold.13But anyone who endures to the end will be saved. 14And this good news* of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will come.
Where Are the Windward Islands?
Today the church prays for the diocese of the Windward Island, West Indies. Do you know where the Windward Islands are? I’m familiar with the term, but I never knew which islands they were:
IInterestingly, if you just type in Windward Islands, and not West Indies, you get this:
That could be confusing, like if you were one of the early explorers and traveling with a group of ships and the leader said “If we get separated, we’ll all rendezvous at the Windward Islands” and then one ship might end up at one island and one ship at another . . .
Or there is always the possibility that Windward Islands isn’t specific, but something that designates where serious winds hit first . . .
Jesus Gets Tough With Believers
Today’s readings in the Lectionary readings is from Matthew are some of the hardest for believers. We all like to think we are excelling in doing good, we focus on the outward appearances, and he outlines where we fail – and where we need him, desperately, if we want to enter the Kingdom:
Matthew 23:13-26
13 ‘But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them.*
15Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell* as yourselves.
16 ‘Woe to you, blind guides, who say, “Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.” 17You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? 18And you say, “Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.” 19How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?20So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it;21and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; 22and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.
23 ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practised without neglecting the others. 24You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!
25 ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup,*so that the outside also may become clean.
USAF Band Flash Mob at National Air and Space Museum
Once again, Hayfa, you have found a total winner. Wonderful music, wonderful surprise for the museum visitors 🙂
The Miracle of Giving (WestJet)
Thank you, friend Hayfa, for sending me this wonderful website. It kept me spellbound, made me laugh, and left me in tears of joy. You can see that the givers were enjoying it as much as the receivers.
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