Chapter 52 - Cairo Macchiato
In the fall of 2004 Larry and I rent our log/stone-sided home in Black Forest and pack to move to India. After twelve long years a home is paid for and rent from the lower apartment will help support us. The yearly mission trips and the kids and my education stretched the five-year goal into twelve years.
We request $800 a month travel support as mission workers from New Life Church, and are offered $1,000—so encouraging, since this will help us teach throughout Asia more freely.
Nick and Linda now live in Birmingham, Alabama, involved in business and their church, with three children—Madeline, Hudson, and Macy. Jared and Megan are at New Life Church, have little Everett, with another son on the way.
Jared sees us off at Denver airport. After two days of flying east, Prabha meets us in Mumbai with a van to accommodate our multiple bags. “How are you, Brother Larry and Sister Marti? It’s so good to see you!” This Indian Ywam leader is slight and strong, radiates joy through brown chiseled features.
“Prabha, I can’t believe we’re here! How is Mary doing, and how is the Bible school?”
“Good,” he answers. “We are in our new location in the hills at Lonavala. Mary and I live in a room at the big base.”
We drive through miles of slums and then high rises on our way east from Mumbai. While climbing the hills toward Lonavala four hours later, we are still in misty smog. The Youth with a Mission base is on the edge of town, white two-storied buildings climbing the hill among spreading trees and tropical greenery. Mary greets us shyly, her dark hair framing a beautiful smile. Joyfully, our friend Neibano welcomes us…her articulate emails have kept us informed of Indian mission life.
Since there is a leaders’ gathering at the base, we stay at a hotel in town. During the next week our elation at arriving is tempered with jetlag, heat, and the claustrophobic hotel room. Friends help us shop for a car in Pune, further east. Our two-hour train rides to and from there take us past crowded towns, golden fields plowed by oxen, and beggars forlorn at train stations. Riding with us are women dressed in brilliant saris, clean schoolchildren bearing backpacks, businessmen perusing newspapers, and laborers worn and dozing from work. An astonishing microcosm of Indian life is in one railway car.
We meet petite, energetic Anna who is attending the YWAM leaders meeting in Lonavala. She is a Brazilian from the smaller base in Goa, an hour’s flight south. We have been emailing her about the possibility of living in Vasco Da Gama, a town in Goa, near the Indian Ocean. She welcomes us warmly…and after a few days it is decided we will be based there and fly in and out to teach.
Larry is still trying to obtain an international driver’s license, so when we finally buy the white Maruti car, an Indian friend must drive us the bumpy, winding kilometers to Vasco Da Gama.
I envision Vasco as a large, white-washed town with European flavor. I know that many English vacation there. Portugal originally colonized this province, and Catholics built stately white churches. I am disappointed to find the town looks old and dreary, with cows roaming the streets, walls moldy from past monsoons, and electric wires hung helter-skelter from shops to market. Only the beachside hotels are elegant.
Anna and Gloria welcome us warmly into their comfortable apartment. We have dinner, and they offer us a bedroom until we can locate housing. “What kind of ministry do you have, Gloria?” I inquire as we eat. She is taller, also Brazilian, with thick brown hair and dark, expressive eyes.
“I teach children from the slums,” she replies. “I love kids, so I help as many as I can in the small room we’ve rented in the village. As they learn to read, we also teach Christian principles and hygiene. It’s rewarding…the children and their parents are so grateful.”
“And you guys are supported by your churches back home?”
“And by family.”
“What a blessing. Such treasure you’ll have in Heaven!”
“Yes…and I have the children’s love,” she adds, laughing.
In the coming days we meet more Indian and Brazilian staff at the base, which is a large home in a sprawling subdivision. Gloria inquires of neighbors for an empty flat and locates a second-floor apartment with metal stairs up to a bedroom. After negotiations we agree on rent, sign a lease, and drive winding roads to the larger town of Panaji (Panjim) to buy furniture, cookware, and bedding. After years of living in cool Colorado the Indian heat bakes energy out of us. We find that the most comfortable spot is our air-conditioned car…that as we drive, life becomes bearable!
Staff meetings with prayer twice a week, study for teachings, walks on the beach in the evenings. We begin to preach at a local church once a month, then teach the DTS students when school starts at the base. We fly in and out of the small Vasco airport to Mumbai when we have other speaking engagements but have little day to day ministry in Goa. Months pass…
One week we teach in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at the invitation of Dass and Rani, our Malaysian friends from Penang. They were students in 1992 and are now leading the work in Ethiopia. This is our third time teaching in Addis--this week’s subject is on the five stages of growth in leadership. The class is eager, receptive. Dark faces glow with understanding, they ask pertinent questions.
We are home for a few days when I share with Larry, “You know, I’m beginning to fight depression each time we come back to this quiet place. Do you think we made a mistake in moving to Vasco, to Goa? Also, we spend so much money flying in and out of Mumbai. We’ve taught locally some, but we could be busier in a larger hub.
“So what are you suggesting?”
“Well, Cairo, Egypt is central to Africa, Europe, and Asia, and they have Ywam work there.”
“Let’s call Dass in Addis,” Larry says thoughtfully. “He knows leaders in Cairo. Maybe he can recommend someone.”
When we telephone, Dass is enthusiastic. “Yes, I know a good leader in Cairo named Moses, in charge of urban ministries. He’s Korean—you could perhaps join his team. I’ll call him.”
After Christmas back in the States we stop to visit Moses and Joanne in their Cairo apartment. “We would love for you to join our team,” Moses Kim says, leaning forward on the couch. “We are mostly Korean, but you could fit right in. You would be the grandparents…you know we honor those older than us,” he says smiling.
I nod, commenting, “I see you have maps all over your living room walls.”
“Yes, Moses loves maps,” Joanne says, offering us more cookies.
“It helps us to envision the mission fields of the world,” he explains. “Then you can pray! If God leads you here, there are two Bible schools you could teach in. Victory Bible Institute needs instructors, and another one north of us. And I know of a couple who are moving back to England—you could perhaps rent their place.”
“That would be wonderful.”
“You could probably buy dishes, bedding, many household items,” Joanne added. “We can introduce you to them tomorrow.”
Before we fly back to India we talk to the leaders of both Bible schools and have the third floor apartment lined up. We will buy their household items for a reasonable sum…and many flowering plants will be left on the balconies. I am amazed and grateful.
On our taxi drive north through Cairo to the airport we pass through miles of sand colored apartment buildings. The pyramids are far to the south, on the edge of the vast city. The traffic is thick, the air heavy with smog. Such a concentration of people in one place! When the mosque prayer calls ring out, the whole city reverberates. I am struck with the enormity of Cairo—15 million Egyptians—most of whom do not know Jesus.
As we fly back to Goa via Mumbai, I think of the masses in these huge cities. The world is so big! How can the Gospel reach every city, every people group? We need to multiply ourselves in discipling others through these schools.
“Please, Lord, make us effective,” I pray, gazing out the plane’s window.
In the spring months we teach books of the Bible for Prabha in the School of Biblical Studies at the Lonavala base. That school is smaller, the students more intense as they do hours of inductive Bible study. After outlining the book with themes, I give context and historical background, and at the end Larry and I pray for each one individually.
One evening Mary serves chapattis, delicious dahl and rice, as little Jerusha toddles around us. “We want to multiply these schools, and also work with the poor in the slums,” Prabha shares. “There is need for teams to multiply this work.”
“We pray for you guys daily. And we want to keep helping support you. You also, Nibu,” I say, nodding to her. We would teach in her DTS.
“In a few months we pack up and have a farewell dinner with Anna, Gloria, and the team. They have become close friends….we will miss them. But in Cairo we’ll be more centrally located.
The most stressful part of moving to Egypt was not settling into our third-floor apartment or working with the Korean team. It was the challenge of retrieving our excess baggage—air cargo that arrived weeks later. Day after day as Larry telephoned the cargo company in Mumbai, the clerk was in turns emphatic, vague, or conciliatory. “If you’re not sure where the luggage is and when it will come, perhaps I need to fly to Mumbai and find the baggage myself!” Larry fumes to the clerk.
But at last it arrives…and we spend one long day in customs, walking our papers through various offices for stamps of approval. Near the end of the line someone discovers that we have a printer.
“Oh, you will have to go to a building in Tahrir Square to retrieve that, in downtown Cairo. You need a special stamped paper to import an electronic machine like that.”
“I can’t believe it,” I mutter to Larry.
“Why did you tell him we had one?” Larry asks me later.
“He asked if we had anything electronic in the luggage. I was trying to be honest.”
“Well, maybe here they’re concerned with people copying propaganda and distributing it.”
Another day we actually locate the downtown office, and a genial official signs a permit to retrieve our printer!
In the following weeks Larry paints our apartment a cheerful light yellow and we hang red curtains from India, pictures, and woven tapestries. We befriend neighbors and have the Korean team over for prayer and dessert. We attend the bimonthly city team meeting, get acquainted with the main YWAM leader and various ministries in the city. And every Friday morning we attend Maadi Community Church.
Since Muslims are off work Fridays, the Christians also gather on that day. Our open-sided pavilion church resounds with worship and good teaching from Pastor Petrescue, as uniformed soldiers stand guard round the church compound. In fact, every block is guarded by two soldiers, to protect foreigners from terrorism. I grow accustomed to them as we walk the mile down Road Nine to Grecos, our favorite coffee shop. I feel safer, but I also sympathize with the guards long hours of boredom in the extreme summer heat or winter cold. As we begin teaching two or three times a week we trudge the long mile to Grecos almost every day. It’s a great place to study.
On the way we pass small Arabic tea shops where men sip chai and smoke water pipes, then the train station where businessmen hustle past, and thickly clad women tread heavily, carrying bags of groceries from the market. Another block or two and the stores become more elegant. Tourists browse in handicraft shops, a guard stands by the bank. A little further, after passing under tall trees and a beggar or two, there is Grecos. Amir or Walid set steaming lattes before us, topped with heart shaped froth, after we trudge in with our backpack of books.
I love the study of the Bible and life principles. I love teaching them! Have we found our niche of ministry? Am I at last finding my tribe?
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