More music in my ears as I type. Right now, I’m listening to a band or a guy called “Gomez”. Has anyone heard of them? No idea where they’re from. Either the U.S. or U.K. probably. Over the past couple of days, I’ve also been listening to Robbie Williams, Morcheba, and Jennifer Paige. It’s all good stuff that my friend from Arabic class gave me.

It’s 10:30pm and I just got back from worshiping with a church in Orlando, Florida.

Confused?

Well, here’s the story. There’s an evangelical Egyptian Arabic-language church here in Cairo that has several thousand people in its congregation. They have so many people involved that they have services almost every night of the week and they fill up! Probably over 1000 people at each service. On Sunday nights, they offer headphones and someone is translating everything into English.

Tonight, they went one big step further and connected with a live audio/video link with a church called Northland in Orlando. One of the pastors from here flew there and a pastor plus a few people for the worship band came to Cairo. Over the past few days, they have been doing services for specific groups like youth and Sundanese. There was a projector and a big screen showing us the congregation/preachers in Orlando and they had the same so that they could see/hear us. It was quite a production!

Quite an interesting mix of America and Egypt. We sang contemporary songs in English and Arabic at the same time! Or at least we tried… There were only a few native English-speakers in the audience. I went by myself, but I saw Juan, Cathy, Julie, and Sherrie from the Presbyterian volunteer group, so I sat with them. They were joined by a few Egyptian friends, so it was quite fun to chat before/after the service.

The pastor who was here from Florida looked and sounded far too much like George W. *laugh* All kidding aside, he related a story about someone at their hotel here in Cairo asking him if he was the President. Weird…

There were 2 different sermons/messages given and one of themes was peace. That’s not surprising, I suppose. The messages also helped me to continue thinking about Grace and doing good acts. It’s been something I’ve thinking about the past few days.

I’ve come to a decision of sorts, or at a least a statement to make.

Grace and forgiveness is available to everyone. We just need to give up our earthly “selves” and bow down to the Lord. If we ask for Grace and forgiveness, it will be given to us. “Doing good things” has no direct connection with this. It’s not necessary in order to receive Grace.

But, “doing good things” is a way of saying thank you to God! *smile* It’s also one way of spreading His good will to others.

I surprise myself sometimes with the thoughts that run through my brain and get processed. These previous couple of paragraphs are a new understanding for me.

On other topics…

This afternoon, I got an International Student Identification Card. Yeah – now I get 50% off admission to museums/tourist locations, plus reduced rates on airfare, train/bus tickets, and at some stores/restaurants. I just needed to prove that I am a student and I did that by showing them the receipt for my Arabic classes and my upcoming teaching course. The card cost 52LE but that will quickly pay for itself!

Actually, I’ve already saved 3LE by using it. *grin* After getting the card, I went to the nearest touristy/historical spot. It happened to be the “Nilometer”. Before the building of the Aswan dam, when the water level of the Nile was controlled by nature, this was the measuring stick to see how much rainfall there had been and to predict how good the crops would be.

Now that it is not used, it’s just for tourists to look at. Unfortunately, there isn’t much posted to read about it, but the Lonely Planet guidebook gave some good info. I took some pictures, but they aren’t posted yet.

I’ll get to that in a few days, hopefully.

I haven’t been sending updates when I write in this journal, so hopefully people are still reading. Also, don’t forget to check out the archives, if you haven’t read my writings in awhile.