I'd been half dreading, half looking forward to today. October 7. Today was the day my team from Times Square Church in NYC would arrive in Egypt for a short-term missions trip. I've been planning and organizing this trip pretty much since I started working back in August, and slightly panicking about it for the last two weeks as I tried to get everything ready!
After rushing around all morning doing last minute things, I went with the driver (Medhat) to the airport to pick up the team. The van we went in seemed a little small - there are 9 people in the team, plus me, and the seats for 10 people took up ALL the space inside. Medhat assured me that we would put all the luggage on top. Okay...
As you may guess, women on a 10 day trip to Egypt don't exactly pack lightly. We had 18 suitcases to deal with. Medhat started piling them on the roof, but had to stop when we had three levels of bags and still 5 or 6 more to go. Down went the last row of seats so we could fit the bags in. Thank goodness this team has a sense of humor - they were snapping pictures of the pile of bags and laughing (all the while saying, "he's gonna tie that down right?"). We crammed in the remaining seats and were off -
- to a very slow start. As it turns out, the weight of all the bags on top was messing with the clutch (something to do with the stick shift) so we went about 5-10 miles per hour for ages and had to pull of twice (once to put another rope over the bags and once for the driver to try to fix the clutch). After the second time I asked the drive, "fi mishkala?" Is there a problem? Instead of saying, no, no no problem, like I expected, he held up his hands and shrugged. Uh-oh.
We ended up stopping by someone else who was working on their car and borrowing a wrench, which Medhat was able to use to fix whatever was wrong with the clutch. Then we were going strong for a while -
- until we got lost. Unfortunately, I don't know Maadi very well outside my little triangle of home/church/metro, so I was no help. Fortunately our transportation coordinator Nabil was on hand to come find us and lead us to the place the team will be staying (a convent actually - somehow connected to France, because all the sisters speak French and Arabic).
I got the team settled in and then went to sort out the food situation. I had delegated the task of buying food to someone else, and the convent had refused to let her in because she wasn't with me and they didn't know her. Woops... So the food was in the church office and we had to go and fetch it and bring it back to the convent for tomorrow's breakfast.
After a really brief break at home, Dylan and I headed out to walk the team to dinner on Road 9. We ate at Lucille's, which has the best hamburgers in the world, according to Time magazine (the article is framed and displayed on the restaurant wall). The burgers were delicious, everyone enjoyed it, and after walking everyone back to the convent again, I finally signed off hosting duty for the night and went home.
The team will be here through next Friday, so if you think of it, pray for them as they work and for me as I host and continue to work out all the logistics! They are here to serve and are excited to see what God will have them do. I'm excited too!
After rushing around all morning doing last minute things, I went with the driver (Medhat) to the airport to pick up the team. The van we went in seemed a little small - there are 9 people in the team, plus me, and the seats for 10 people took up ALL the space inside. Medhat assured me that we would put all the luggage on top. Okay...
As you may guess, women on a 10 day trip to Egypt don't exactly pack lightly. We had 18 suitcases to deal with. Medhat started piling them on the roof, but had to stop when we had three levels of bags and still 5 or 6 more to go. Down went the last row of seats so we could fit the bags in. Thank goodness this team has a sense of humor - they were snapping pictures of the pile of bags and laughing (all the while saying, "he's gonna tie that down right?"). We crammed in the remaining seats and were off -
- to a very slow start. As it turns out, the weight of all the bags on top was messing with the clutch (something to do with the stick shift) so we went about 5-10 miles per hour for ages and had to pull of twice (once to put another rope over the bags and once for the driver to try to fix the clutch). After the second time I asked the drive, "fi mishkala?" Is there a problem? Instead of saying, no, no no problem, like I expected, he held up his hands and shrugged. Uh-oh.
We ended up stopping by someone else who was working on their car and borrowing a wrench, which Medhat was able to use to fix whatever was wrong with the clutch. Then we were going strong for a while -
- until we got lost. Unfortunately, I don't know Maadi very well outside my little triangle of home/church/metro, so I was no help. Fortunately our transportation coordinator Nabil was on hand to come find us and lead us to the place the team will be staying (a convent actually - somehow connected to France, because all the sisters speak French and Arabic).
I got the team settled in and then went to sort out the food situation. I had delegated the task of buying food to someone else, and the convent had refused to let her in because she wasn't with me and they didn't know her. Woops... So the food was in the church office and we had to go and fetch it and bring it back to the convent for tomorrow's breakfast.
After a really brief break at home, Dylan and I headed out to walk the team to dinner on Road 9. We ate at Lucille's, which has the best hamburgers in the world, according to Time magazine (the article is framed and displayed on the restaurant wall). The burgers were delicious, everyone enjoyed it, and after walking everyone back to the convent again, I finally signed off hosting duty for the night and went home.
The team will be here through next Friday, so if you think of it, pray for them as they work and for me as I host and continue to work out all the logistics! They are here to serve and are excited to see what God will have them do. I'm excited too!