Walstons in Egypt 2024-2026

  There is a place in Makattam, Egypt where they take the garbage. Instead of a dump, they take it into the city and people in their houses pick through it and sort it. Obviously, the people here are very poor and a high percent of them are Christian. Before the Swine Flu pandemic in 2009-10 they have thousands of pigs that helped eat the garbage. However, even though pigs did not transmit the flu, the Egyptian government decided to kill most of the pigs, as Muslims feel they are unclean. This had a very detrimental impact. This picture is the outside of the city. Normal cars cannot drive into it, as the streets are too narrow. We were visiting a NGO, APE Makattam, which helps the community through teaching their children and teaching skills for women to help support their families. Here is the lunch for little ones. Note almost pure pasta. The NGO also takes care of babies. They employ about 60 people, mostly women and care for their children. Here are some of the things they make...

  Because of the very hot and long summers, the Area Presidency lets the senior couples go somewhere for 10 days during July - just not home. We chose to go to Switzerland and Greece. We were able to attend the Swiss Temple. It was wonderful to be back in the temple. The last time was last December when we went home for Kristina's baptism.  The area around the temple is beautiful and reminded us of the Sacred Grove in New York. We went on a couple of short hikes while we were there. We drove our rental car into Bern and, as always, after a long time were able to find a parking place. This is one of the old clock towers there. We ate in a 2nd story apartment and had way too much to eat. This was a common occurrence during our trip. I will need to lose weight again now that we are back in Egypt.  We drove into the Alps one day and saw beautiful sights and had cool weather. The 2nd part of our trip was in Greece. We first flew to Thessaloniki and took a day excursion to Mete...