Dear Friends and Family,

Greetings to you from Cairo. I’m writing this reflection between Easters. We’re approaching Eastern or Orthodox Easter here on May 5, quite a bit later than the Western-calendar Easter. By now many of you are planting gardens and watching early spring flowers fade.

I know this year has been a challenging one in the church, and I’m looking forward to catching up with all the news when I come back this summer to itinerate.

One of the blessings of serving in mission in the Middle East is living and observing through both Eastern and Western church calendar—two Christmas days, two Easters. Having two dates to honor and remember the Lord gives you a chance at getting it right the second time, every year.

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor (Luke 4:18).

The great commission intimidated me in my first year in mission work in Jerusalem five years ago. What an awesome task mission is! But bit by bit, day by day, I find that in many ways one goes to work just like every other working adult in the world. Showing up is half the battle, as they say. Ever so quietly the Holy Spirit works through us in mission, shaping us as we go about our days, whatever they bring.

The following news is also reflection on the past five years work. As this mission term comes to an end, a review of sorts will bring you up to date on my work.

Sunbula – Handicrafts and Human Rights

During my first year, 1997, I worked at Sunbula, a Palestinian craft cooperative that marketed Palestinian handicrafts. Sunbula, a non-profit organization, is as intentional about educating its public about issues as it is about selling high-quality handicrafts. The stories of Bethlehemites, women from Surif and the Negev are woven into the fabric of the dresses, shawls, and rugs for sale there. The patterns are stitched from the history and tradition of each village. The color red dominates; this color stands for the life blood of the people.

Sunbula staff comes from different religions, different age groups, and different ethnic groups. I worked with Rula and Hiba for almost three months before we ever spoke about our religion. When we did, we found that we started conversations with the points we believed in common. Then were able to talk about difference from a position of mutual respect.

The shop is still in business despite the occupation and conflict, and lack of business because there are no tourists or pilgrims in the Holy Land. You can still buy from them using their website, www.sunbula.org.

Young Adult Volunteer Program

The Young Adult Volunteer Program placement in the Holy Land has been suspended temporarily, but the impact of the volunteers who serve from 1998 to 2001 remains. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has every reason to be proud of this program and its participants. The stated goals of building partnership while encouraging the leaders of tomorrow’s church are realized repeatedly. From your perspective, you’re more likely to hear about the volunteers and their stories, particularly last year’s stories from Gloria Yi and Wendy Mathewson who wrote poignantly about their experiences. Through them, you hear about their work and their relationships with local organizations. I’ve included photographs of some of our more light-hearted times together while we were traveling together in orientation.

My day-to-day work while I lived in Jerusalem included everything from presiding at a Sunbula board meeting to visiting Near East Council of Churches projects in Gaza, from traveling with fellow pilgrims to Nazareth to helping with the business English class at the East Jerusalem JWCA. The volunteers and I visited sites around the West Bank, Gaza, and northern Israel, including the Golan Heights. My work was about relationships, primarily, the building and maintaining of precious connections that make a program work.

But I’m writing today from Cairo with a heavy heart. Proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor isn’t always easy. The escalation of violence in Israel/Palestine threatens to undermine the safety of everyone we know there, our friends, partners, and colleagues.

Nostalgia accompanies transition, you know. Writing about mission work in Israel/Palestine and in Egypt helps balance sadness.

When you hear the stories and meet the people of Egypt you will agree that mission work in the Middle East is not only essential, but also richly rewarding.

August Ordination

This past August I was ordained at Fairmount Church. Words fail me when I write about the culmination of the preparation for ministry in a service of friends and family. Friends from Jerusalem, Scotland, and England met with some of my friends, family, and church family in a service of praise and thanksgiving.

From Jerusalem to Cairo

I left the states within two days after the ordination service to come to Cairo to live and work at CEOSS, the Coptic Evangelical Organization of Social Services, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) partner. CEOSS is one of the oldest and the largest Egyptian NGOs. Established in 1952 by Dr. Samuel Habib, this community development organization has served disadvantaged groups in Egyptian society regardless of their religious affiliation. I am the latest in a long line of PC(U.S.A.) mission workers in this well established relationship.

My days consist primarily of writing proposals and editing English translations of Arabic texts. CEOSS offices are in Heliopolis, a "suburb" of Cairo on the northern side of the city near the airport. I live at Dawson Hall, part of the Presbyterian Church at the Ramses College for Girls that lies four metro or train stops from downtown. I go do work daily, riding in a CEOSS van. Our office in Heliopolis and an office in Minia, Upper Egypt, serve over 150 smaller community service development organizations working in the poorest areas of Cairo, the Delta region, and Upper Egypt.

To see and feel the heart of development work, you need to leave the administrative offices behind and go to the grassroots projects such as the ones in Kom Ghorab, El Taybeh, and Beni Ghani. Here you feel the pulse of village life. Your senses and feelings are assaulted with color and sights that substantiate the paperwork and sweat equity put in by administrators like me.

Amal means hope

Amal is a member of El Taybeh Evangelical (Protestant) Church and a volunteer in a community development project founded by her church. Amal’s especially interested in disabled children and their families. And these children are obviously in love with Amal. As we walk through the village to visit families, a collection of children cling to Amal, touch her dress, hold her hand, and sit in her lap when she’s seated. They adore her and the feeling is obviously mutual. I ask Amal what motivates her. She looks at me with a puzzled face. "Amal means hope," she says. "My name says it all. And besides, I love these children so much. I love this village!"

"God has been so good to us."

Hanya Nagy Habib and Mary Nagy Habib stand in the door of their newly refurbished home in Beni Ghani. The earth floor has been swept clean; there’s running water at a new sink, and one piece of furniture, their bed. The roof is new, the walls are old. But it’s so much better than before, they insist. This one-room home with a chicken coop in the corner has been renovated by a CEOSS community development project. They have each other and a new home. "God will continue to take care us, He always does."

Hanna - Star of our Village

Hanna Farid always wanted to be a studio photographer, but childhood polio and living in a rural Egyptian village seemed to have eliminated possibilities of achieving any of her dreams. But through a revolving loan plan, Hanna was able to purchase a used camera and started her studio work in her home. Now she has two cameras, one video and the other for studio photography. You can see the portraits on the wall of her business. She’s blossomed physically and is excited about the prospects of expanding her business because of the demand for her time.

"Hannah is the star of our village. Perhaps she’ll run for political office," says one of her neighbors when we visited her. Hannah blushes and replies that she’s got her hands full with her business and is not going to take on more than she can handle. One gets the feeling, after visiting with her, that she could handle anything she takes on now. Her confidence is palpable.

All these stories are testimonies to what ultimately Stephen Knisely, in Faith and Development calls the core of development, "the relational process whereby individuals move toward conditions of humanness and wholeness." Each of these individuals, Hanna, Mary, Mannah, Amal and Mona are moving toward a more productive life of wholeness. They are God’s chosen people.

A Community Leader

CEOSS frequently takes visitors to Kom Ghorab, a poor district in old Cairo, to meet there with community leaders who tell their stories. It’s notable that children and teenagers always participate in these meetings and are considered an equal part of the community.

Mona lives in Kom Ghorab, where the average family size is six, the monthly income per adult is approximately $50 a month, where 60 percent of the families have no water or electricity. There are approximately 3,000 families, and Mona is one of the lucky 1,500 children who was working in extremely hazardous conditions either in leather tanneries or pottery kilns before the CEOSS project brought community awareness to their dangerous plight. The long-term CEOSS goal is to effectively eliminate child labor, but short-term conditions can be improved, and they have been improved with better kilns and moving the tanneries to the outer edges of the community. Mona is one of the community members who speak to visiting groups. What is remarkable about Mona is that at 15 years, she’s sitting in a thoroughly Muslim community, with adults, with foreigners, speaking about her life, her hopes for her future, the kidney disease and asthma that she has as a result of the poor air quality at home and at work. The community accepts teenage girls as community leaders.

I feel that I am truly blessed to be working in mission in the Middle East. There has been no more pivotal year in my memory through which a set of events such as September 11 and its aftermath have shifted international focus. Being in the Middle East post September 11 and during the worsening crisis in Israel/Palestine has given me deeper insight in to the Arab world and its response to U.S. policy.

Being here also has challenged me to consider, who is my neighbor and who are the poor? Considering neighborliness is mandatory in the Middle East because the roots of Christian hospitality took hold here.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed , to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 19).

Layne

The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 143