lots of good stuff...

hey everyone...

we are still doing well and enjoying our time in cairo immensely! so much has happened in the past 24-36 hours since our last blog and we are excited to tell you about it...

yesterday morning, we headed to the Garbage City Church outside of Cairo. Part of the city serves as the predominant dumping ground for the city of Cairo's garbage and waste. (Cairo has roughly 18 million...so let your mind wander to think about how much trash that actually is). Garbage City just happens to be where the majority of the city's Christians live as well. Right now, much of the city is recovering from the government's decision to kill all of the pigs that lived in the city and provided income for its inhabitants. Remember, Muslims do not eat pork so there is no loss for them. Many Christians in the city believe that the government has been waiting for a time to eliminate the pigs, and thus their livelihood, for years and years. Well...that time came when the swine flu epidemic came a few weeks ago.

Inside of the city is two of the most beautiful churches your eyes could imagine. both were built and carved out of the stone that was already in the mountain. go to www.cavechurch.com/home to see the pictures. they will not do justice to what the human eye can see, but we bet you will be blown away. you can also do a you tube search for Garbage City Church and learn more about it as well.

while there, we had the opportunity to pray inside of the churches and all over the grounds. primarily, we prayed that the Christians would not feel persecuted and their income would be replaced as well as for revival! we have also both been plotting on ways to get Louie Giglio to do a Passion event there. yeah...you would want to be there for this...

So after that, we had the chance to spend a little bit of time at Al Azhar Park. To our surprise, this beautiful park was funded and built by us - the Americans! We learned that the #2 country that America supports with resources after Israel is Egypt.

Last night, we had the opportunity to meet and pray with two Americans who have been here less than 6 months. Their heart's focus is to reach a certain Muslim people group near the Red Sea who has not been reached yet. There are roughly 800,000 people in this people group...wow! These guys are struggling with wanting to move forward with their mission, but needing to know the Arabic language fluently before they can head out.

All that in one day...cool!

Today's highlight has definitely been one of the most unexpected. As we were coming back from our morning prayer time at the church, we met this lady who runs a counseling center here in Cairo. She took us to her office where we met the primary counselor who works with sexual abuse victims and is trying to break down the wall of silence that exists in Cairo. Some of the facts that we heard were staggering. For example...

- only one counselor in the past 15 years has been trained to work with children who have been sexually abused
- approximately 80% of the females here have been circumcised
- if a female marries and can not prove on her wedding night that she is a virgin by blood being on a piece of cloth, then there is a very real chance that she can die
- it is pretty common for men to show their pre-teen sons pornography on a regular basis to make sure they are ready for 'manhood'

this counselor was very interested in hearing about Amanda's work with sexual offenders but made the statement that treatment really wouldn't work here because there is no mandate to receive treatment...

this has been overwhelming news...

thanks for reading this very long blog. we continue to appreciate your support and prayers and ask that you just continue...

much grace and peace...chip & amanda