Walstons in Egypt 2024-2026

  An Egyptian vendor, who has worked with the Church in the past, invited us to dinner at a traditional restaurant. Aside from Kathleen and I, Kevin and Amy Livingstone, and Steve and Deb Whipple were invited. They dinner was a traditional Bedouin style, sitting on cushions and a lot of cooked meat - pigeons, goat, and chicken. They had a dervish dancer and a fire performer. Both were very good and interacted with their audience. We have had a very difficult time funding items, like wheelchairs, that have been purchased outside the country and then sit in the customs' warehouses for months and months.  We currently have 1,000 wheelchairs waiting for governmental approval and will probably have to pay close to $20,000 for storage when they are released. We will follow up with the vendor to see if we can facilitate this. The initial price going through a vendor might be more, but the delays and storage costs may be alleviated. 

  These are pictures on our walk to our church or gathering place. The first is a beautiful bush. There are some very nice houses and a number of embassies in the area. However, the parking is horrible and often they are double and triple parked, which makes walking an adventure. One certainly would not want to walk not paying attention with all of the cars weaving in and out of the parked cars and pedestrians. People also tend to park some vehicles and other things and leave them for very long times. This car looks like it has been parked for a few years in this location.  Then there is my favorite partner (yes, in the front). The dogs are napping on top of the cars. There are many semi-feral dogs that either dig shallow holes in the ground or sleep on top of some of the many parked vehicles.

 I was walking today back from delivering Kathleen at a Relief Society activity and saw these two interesting sites. The first is new construction that is using scaffolding that could have been used 200 years ago. The poles are tied with cloth and rises 10 stories. The next is the railroad that goes through the city in which we live. The train goes through about once per day and, as can be seen, collects a lot of garbage.

  This is our 2nd Friday attending Church in Cairo. We left at 8:45 am and arrive back in our apartment about 2:30 pm. It makes for a bit of a long day, but it was good to meet the members of both branches. Now we understood the words of the first branch (Cairo Egypt- English), but are still pretty clueless in the Arabic meetings. We did have an Arabic lesson after Church that was taught by a very bright man from Syria, who has been a member of the Church only since July. He is a refugee and was fairly prominent in Syria and belonged to the Druse religion there. At the left are Kathleen and I walking back to our apartment from the Church. There are a few very pretty areas and then a lot of trashy areas. Next Friday will be the 50th year celebration of the Church in Cairo. We will have Brother McKay, the Church historian here and both branches will be singing songs in Arabic and English. The  picture on the left is the Arabic and transliteration of the song. We are trying our b...

 We went to the visa office again today, as we now had the $150 each cashed at an Egypt bank. This totaled 14,200 Egyptian pounds, which can be seen in the picture below. This was a large roll of money to carry. We now have to wait a week for security clearance then return to the visa office to leave with them our passports. Then, hopefully, 2-3 days later we can return to pick up the passports with an extension of 3-6 months on our visa. Sadly, we will have to repeat this process 3-4 times before our mission ends. The cars and pedestrians share the same streets, walkways, etc., which makes walking more exciting. The picture below is walking outside of the visa office. You hear the constant sound of horns, as cars ignore lanes and have a need to warn other cars that they are approaching. Today we reviewed the humanitarian projects that we are taking over and will be contacting the various parties. We also with the Livingstones met with a realtor, who will be identifying apartments ...

Today we had a good, busy day. I was up at 2 am again and worked until about 5:30 am, then finally got a couple of hours of sleep before our day got going. We are blessed to have the Livingstones here. We prepared to go to the visa office tomorrow by going to the bank and cashing $200 USD. We have to have this and copies of our lease, passports, etc. just to apply to extend our 30 day tourist visa. We will leave here tomorrow at 7:30 am to get in line. The Livingstones have told us that it could take 2-3 visits before we can get an extension of our visas. We walked the 2 miles to the Gathering place so Kathleen could play the piano for the Nile Branch (Arabic) members to practice singing in both Arabic and English. They applauded Kathleen for being there. The two street pictures are part of the path we walked. It was dark on the way home. I met Brother Salah there, who has been a member for 8 years and he related to me why he fled South Sudan. He had been a merchant buying things in Ju...

Today was Sunday and the first day of the work week in Egypt. We traveled with the Livingstones to visit a NGO that has established many health clinics across the nation. We have had 2 major projects with them and are proposing that we furnish a NICU unit for one of the local hospitals. They are all Coptic Christians. They showed me the crosses that were tattooed on their hands and indicated that most Coptics at the age of 4 or 5 will have one tattooed on their hands, arm or neck. They were very engaging and we will follow-up with them. One the left is the apartment where we live on the 6th floor. They have tiny elevators that play Love Story when it is running. On the way down today we could not get it to operate and started down the stairs to have the stairwell lights go off. It was so dark that we had to slide our feet on the steps to be certain we did not fall. In the evening we walked down to a main road to buy a few things. On the left is a couple of pictures of where we walked. ...

The two branches in Cairo had a joint work project today. The other missionary couple has found a building to rent to create a "gathering place", primarily for the Arab branch, but open to all. The place will have internet, computers, and recreational items to attract members and friends of the Church. The building needed a lot of work and, as can be seen in the pictures, quite of few people came to level the backyard and hand carry in bags of sand.  I help load many, many bags of sand. The international members are mostly from the USA and are employed by governmental entities. The Arab branch members are from many areas, including Sudan, Lebanon, and Syria.  We walked from our apartment to the gathering place and back. It was a 34 minute walk each way. The neighborhood we are living (Maadi) is rather pretty with the many trees, but few sidewalks exist and one must constantly dodge cars walking. We both had a rather sleepless night last night and are looking forward for jet l...

We arrived in Cairo, Egypt on October 17, 2024, after 25 hours in transit from Salt Lake City. Today is Friday and we attended the 2 branches. The first was the international branch and the second the Arabic branch. Members are from all over the world. Many from Sudan, but also Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Uganda and, of course, the USA.  The picture on the left is our branch building that has room to grow. There was only one  branch until four years ago. Now about 40 or so people attend each of the two branches. We are very fortunate to be in Cairo. The existing couple, the Kevin and Amy Livingstone, have been here for about 18 months and have been great with us. They picked us up from the airport, helped us get a phone and groceries, walked with us to church, and had us to dinner again today. The two other people that ate with us are relatively recent converts. Waleed is from Syria and was a Druse before his baptism last year and George is from South Sudan. They were fun to conver...