onething Egypt - day 3

Wow. This conference just seems to be growing and growing! More buses keep arriving, and the morning session was even more packed out than last night’s! There are people coming from all over the Middle East to be a part of the conference. We are truly witnessing something historic!

If you have not been able to listen to any of the conference live, be sure to visit this website to listen to the archives!

http://prayforegypt.com/main/onething.php

There are only a few links on the page, so if you can’t read Arabic (don’t worry, I can’t) just hover your mouse over them to see what they link to in English.

Today, Luke Wood led the morning worship again and did most of the set in Arabic! “How Great is Our God” seems to be developing as the theme song for the conference. It was easy for us to learn in Arabic, and the crowd already knows it – so they engage their hearts with the Lord whenever we sing it! Jen Roberts spoke the morning teaching and was very passionate to declare the love that Jesus has for us in our weakness and immaturity.

It’s so evident that there is already impact in the Spirit. Last night as we were playing during the ministry time, I saw many people weeping as the Lord was touching their heart. The Holy Spirit was definitely in our midst. Seeing the Lord move on them just about moved me to tears right there on stage! Dwayne also gave an invitation to acknowledge Jesus as their Lord and Savior, and probably anywhere between 75 and 100 gave their lives to Jesus. Praise God!

Justin led the evening session, opening with a little bit of Arabic but mainly doing English songs. They really connected with Justin’s “Name Above Every Other Name”, although from stage it was really entertaining trying to watch them all sing “no one whose hope is in the Lord will ever be put to shame”! That one is even hard for a native English speaker the first few times. Despite all of the flies and the very warm temperatures, Justin did a great job and the room definitely connected with Jesus.

Dwayne’s message was very powerful. He called about 6 or 7 thousand young people to seven specific commitments that were drafted up by the Egyptian leadership team, something very similar to IHOP’s Sacred Charge:

• Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength
• Pray daily
• Fast weekly
• Read the Word
• Make a covenant with your eyes
• Guard your speech
• Attend a corporate meeting of believers once per week

A vast majority of the young people responded. Pray that the Lord would give them grace to continue walking it out! I truly believe that it was a historic evening that shifted something significant for this next generation in Egypt.

Tomorrow (Saturday) is the last day of the conference, and then we will be heading to Cairo to minister at a church for a few days. Wes Martin will be speaking at both sessions tomorrow. Justin will be leading the morning session and Luke will be leading the evening session. On Sunday, we’ll be touring Egypt a bit, heading to the Red Sea and the pyramids. I’ll definitely post some pictures afterwards.

I am so thankful for all of your prayers. The team has been doing well and there have been no major problems for us so far. The only major downside for me is that I wish I knew Arabic so I could more easily communicate with all of these people! Probably about 50% of them know English fairly well, though.

Check out the new pictures on my photos page! More updates tomorrow.

PS: Apologies that this update is being posted a few hours late – I wrote it at the end of the 3rd evening and our internet connection out here in the desert is not the most reliable… I’m hoping it will be better when we get to Cairo.