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| Church of God Edara |
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| Pastor Ayman |
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| Church of God Edara interior |
We arrived in Minya, Egypt after a 3 1/2 hour train ride--we left Cairo at 1am, but my traveling companions (Dr Latif and Pastor Ehab) boarded the train in Alexandria at 10:00pm. Minya, like most most of the population areas of Egypt, is along the Nile River.
Pastor Ayman was so glad to greet us outside of the church building; this is one if the congregations in need of so much physical reconstruction to advance the ministry to the community.
After a few pictures outside, I could hear children when we came inside the humble structure. They are gathered this morning to begin the process of applications for the hope/vision of the Church of God in Egypt to bring the Children of Promise program into the Upper Egypt congregations. 15 smiling and pleasantly behaved children waited patiently while I got the tour of the 2-story structure.
Fortunately, the General Assembly of the Church of the God in Egypt supports Executive Committee's vision to raise funds to rebuild this facility. Government permission to rebuild has been received so far, but this can change once you are ready to build; architectural plans are in hand. The vision is for a three story facility: ground floor sanctuary, 2nd floor will be for serve as a fellowship hall and classroom, and the 3rd floor will be for a church office and a Pastor's flat.
The ministry vision is to have a facility that will better enable the outreach to more children in the village; somehow, they currently minister to 80 in their weekly Sunday School program based on the Awana model. They cannot serve more in the current, dilapidated facility. The addition of the Children of Promise program to this area will enable another avenue of ministry service to families.
Pastor Ayman has been married for 3 years and has a 2-year old son. In one of the pictures, you can see bags of grain behind him on the stage--these are the tenth from several of the farming families, given as offerings to the church to sell to support the ministry. The congregation received about 250LE (divide by 7 for US dollar approximation) per month in offerings; since the start if the tithe building campaign, the tenth comes in at about 800LE per month additionally. They have saved over 10,000 US dollars for the rebuilding project, but it is estimated that they will need at least 8 times this much.
More stories can be found at the Oldham's blog: http://www.ok2serve.blogspot.com/
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Prayer Requests & Praises
- Praise for funding and work for villa renovations; pray for the right renter for the next year.
- Praise for a safe and fruitful trip to Upper (southern) Egypt.
- Praise for the wonderful reports of Ana Terzo’s leadership of the annual 1st of May Unity
service in Lebanon. Pray for their upcoming camp preparations.
- Pray for a joyful conclusion of this CCF Kids ministry term before summer; pray for CCF as
they continue weekly worship in our absence this summer.
- Pray for continued peace and stability in the region, especially as new presidents in Egypt
and Lebanon begin their terms.
- Pray for our kids to finish the school year well.
- Pray for our family and church visits to be a blessing for us all.
- Pray for traveling mercies during our busy summer.
