Walstons in Egypt 2024-2026

  We left Egypt on March 24, 2026. We will miss all of our wonderful friends. One of these, David Adel, came to the airport with us, as we were not certain if we would be able to check in the luggage we created for two of Wael's paintings we were bringing with us. We left at 2 am so it was very kind of him. We had 5 checked bags, two carry-on bags, and two backpacks. The black bag on top of the other luggage we made to contain two of Wael's paintings. We had a 2-sided wooden box made and then filled it with bubble wrap, cardboard, and 2 rolls of tape.  This winter in Utah (and the Western US) has been one of the warmest on record. Our fruit trees look beautiful in bloom, but it is far too early. These pictures are in the back of our yard in Bluffdale. This is looking toward our sports court. The temperatures has been up to 84 degrees and very little rain in the past few months. Even the peach trees are in bloom. This is looking at our sports court. Our grandchildren came after...

This was our last full week on our mission to Egypt and there were many tears and goodbyes. On the left are the people who attended my last English class in the Center - Yvette, Victoria, Stella, Samia, Joyce, Paul, and Juma.  This was the last investigators' group that had dinner and discussion at our home. Kathleen was tired of trying to determine what to fix for dinner, so I made a lot of pancakes. This was also the transition for this group to start going to the Whipple's next week. From left to right Laila (baptized last week), Yvonne, Phillip (behind her), Paul, Wael and Basem (members), Guirgis (member now) and Maged. We loved working with these wonderful people. Wael painted this picutre for us. He is a wonderful artist. We will miss him especially. His family remains in southern Syria and struggle. At church, after clearing this with our branch president, who still is in South Sudan, I supervised the ordination of 3 new members to the Aaronic priesthood. Bahar Marcous ...

  We had our last baptism of our mission on March 14th. The Whipples have been teaching young adults, almost all from South Sudan and we have been teaching Egyptians. This day was a great day where we had 7 baptisms. This is the back of our church in Egypt and we had about 40 people attend. This is the group that was being baptized and baptizing. From left to right is Coco, Elder Whipple, Vision, Peter, Stella, Love, Laila, Guirgis, Lam, and Steve. This is the mobile baptismal font that we set up. The water was very cool. I was the first in and baptized Stella, Laila, and Guirgis. I did the baptismal prayer in Arabic for Laila and Guirgis and in English for Stella. This is in our church before the service began. We had our new Elders' Quorum President, Salah, give the first talk and Jal, a new convert give the second talk. They were both 15 minutes late and I had scrambled to ask two others to fill in, if the talks didn't show up. Luckily they did. We had our former branch pres...

  On Feb 28th we took a trip to the Valley of the Whales or Wadi al Hetan. Here there are more than a thousand fossilized whales that have been found. The area used to be a large sea millions of years ago. Ironically, this is the same day that the Trump administration decided to bomb Iran and start a regional conflict. It is a lot of desert here now, but there were mango swamps millions of years ago. Many different kinds of whale bones have been discovered here. There was quite a evolution of different whales. These rocks contain remains of fossilized mango swamps. More desert. We went when the weather was quite cool (for Egypt) and there was a breeze. The temperature was probably in the 60s. The area was interesting to see. We traveled there with the other missionary couple, Dave and Maire Whipple. Interesting rock formations. You can see in the middle layer of this rock a whale skeleton. The next picture is a monument to celebrate the valley of the whales. It was probably 30 mile...