Walstons in Egypt 2024-2026

  We had a very nice dinner at Daud's family. They have a very tiny apartment and only part of the family could eat with us. They have 4 children and her mother living with them in 2 bedrooms. They also live on the 5 or 6th floor that require walking up very narrow stairs (no elevator). He is now the branch's elders quorum president and the soccer coach. We have agreed to have another project with the Don Bosco School. They are an Italian, Catholic school that focuses on education. They have been in Egypt for decades. This is their primary campus. They have a high school and vocational training. Our project is to help fund new training equipment for their air conditioning and provide 66 scholarships for the poor to receive the training. This is the director of the A/C training. He is a Coptic Christian, who graduated here and then went to the university to obtain a degree in mechanical engineering. This is some of the equipment they have now. We had our friends, Mariam and Mage...

We have been doing a lot of teaching recently. The young men have not had an advisor, nor anyone teaching them consistently. Therefore, I decided today to help organize their class. The young man in the pink shirt is not a member, but very helpful and the man at the end of the table is the branch president, President Marcous, who came in for a few minutes. We are planning to have an activity with the boys at the start of July. They were excited. This is located next to our chapel. We also began tutoring the youth via Khan Academy twice a week. Here are 3 of the young women working at the Center. On the other side of the room we have boys working on math. I promised them that each unit they fully master that I would pay them 50 EGP, which is about $1. The boy at the far end is close. He is Danni, who is the son of the current elders quorum president. We also had Maged, a non-member husband of our primary president and my friend, teach a PhotoShop class again. Here is a picture of who at...

May went by rather fast. We had temperatures spiking as high as 111 but then dropping down in the high 80s. We are having some progress with our church membership. Above are 3 investigators who Wael ,in the middle, has been teaching. Wael has only been a member just over a year and I was privileged to be ask by him (below) to ordain him to the Melchizedek priesthood. Two others in this group were likewise ordained. The Gathering Center was closed almost all of May. The African school (on the banner) has class above us and they had built a classroom without permits. To be cautious we moved our programs 1.2 miles to where we hold church. Last night we had our first classes there again. I helped tutor the children from 4-6 pm, while Kathleen taught piano lessons. We also always bring something for them and they families to eat. There were a lot of people there last night and they went through 2 boxes of fig cookies and I sent out one of the older boys to buy a big bunch of bananas, which ...