Walstons in Egypt 2024-2026

  We walk a lot. Some days we may walk up to 8 to 9 miles, but normally about 5 miles. There are so many dogs on the roads. There are many that sleep and bark on top of the cars, like the two on the left. One one road we counted about 40 dogs in a short distance. We went to the Magdi Yacoub Hospital for an afternoon meeting with Boyce Fitzgerald and Mike Howard, our current and new DTA. After the meetings we were invited to Iftar with them. This is the month of Ramadan and families gather to break their fast every evening. We were blessed to be able to share the meal with them. These are some of the leaders of the hospital. Most are physicians and they will open their 310 bed hospital in the near future. The church has made very large donations toward the hospital the past few years and we anticipate continuing this. This is the construction setup at the hospital. You can see on the horizon the Egyptian pyramids in Giza. We are standing with the leadership of the hospital. There is...

  We had the privilege to take our branch president, Madut Bol and our primary president, Samia Yanga, to the Kenya Temple this week. Madut is only 27 years old and I serve as his first counselor. Samia has only been a member for just over a year and had never traveled outside of Egypt.  Samia insisted that we take a picture prior to boarding our plane to Kenya. Our flights were both in the middle of the night and we arrived in Kenya at 3:30 am to find that the car agency we had booked with did not have a counter at the airport. After about 1 1/2 hours they found someone to take us to the temple grounds by 6 am and then we waited there until our session at 11 (instruction started at 9 am). Our car was delivered at about 10:30 am. The temple was just opened last May. The people working here were wonderful. We had booked and paid for a hotel that was a 15 minute drive through a ghetto but the temple found rooms for us and after the first night of many mosquitos, noise and a tiny...

We were invited to eat at Gina's. She is the only member in her family. Her husband is a Muslim, but not very dedicated. We would like to see if we can baptize her 11 year old daughter and 8 year old son before we leave. Very nice people. I have helped the daugher, Magda, with her algebra. They pay 5,000 EGPs a month for rent. This is a little over $100 USD and have school fees about 1,000 EGPs and the father probably only makes 7-8,000 a month. This is the road outside of their apartment. These are some of the investigators, who have come to our dinner and discussions. Two are members, who have helped us translate. Most have limited English fluency. From left to right, Basem, who was baptized about 8 months ago. Paul (Yassir) who was initially a Muslim, but became a Christian about 20 years ago. We had to get Area and apostolic (Elder Bednar) permission to teach him. Madut Bol, our branch president, Maged, Mariam's husband, Guirgis, Maged's brother, Laila, Guirgis' wif...