The Sun Will Rise...

After leaving the camp fairly early, we drove to the Monastery of St. Macarius, also in Wadi Al-Natrun. It was founded in 360 A.D. by St. Macarius the Egyptian, who was spiritual father to many monks. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this monastery is that relics of John the Baptist and Elisha were said to be found below the northern wall of the monastery’s main church during renovations in the early 1970’s. John the Baptist was the greatest man born of a woman according to Jesus, so if we did indeed see where some of his relics were held, that would be crazy. Some of the pastors here in Egypt believe that this is fact, but others aren’t sure. Either way, it was still thrilling. We were led on a tour by one older monk and got to talk to another 60-year old monk who had been living there since he was 27. Unbelievable!

After leaving the monastery, we headed to what so many foreigners think of first when they hear about Egypt - the famous Gaza Pyramids. I can’t begin to describe how massive these structures are. It’s unbelievable that these pyramids were constructed with such meticulous detail thousands of years ago. They are much bigger in person than in photos. Each stone used to build the pyramids weighed about 2.5 tons! Imagine trying to move several hundred thousand of them. Apparently it took over 10 years for the largest pyramid’s completion. And that was with thousands and thousands of workers. Wow.

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.

After an uneventful and long 8-hour flight from Atlanta to Paris, and then another long 4 hour flight from Paris to Cairo, we’ve finally arrived in Egypt! There were no major hiccups along the way, and customs even went smoothly. Praise God!

The onething event is being held at a sports camp about halfway between Cairo and Alexandria in the middle of the desert. The camp has a covered soccer stadium that holds about 8,000 people, and they are expecting to come close to packing it out at the Friday’s bigger sessions. Everyone is buzzing with excitement about what God is going to do. Many believe that this gathering will be historic, gathering the most number of Arabic youth and young adults attending from around the area (including some from Dubai and Jordan) to a Christian meeting – something unprecedented for hundreds of years. What a privilege to be a part of something like this!

Well, after almost 2 years of the same website design, I figured it was time for a facelift and an upgrade to Drupal 6, the content management software that runs my website. I can’t begin to tell you how version 6 radically improves some of the features to make my site so much easier to manage and provide you with more relevant content!

First, some of the major changes in addition to the site’s facelift – you’ll notice a "music" section for prophetic musicians, including a page describing how I use my laptop on stage at IHOP – something many of you have been waiting for. I’ve added lots of new recommended resources, revamped the photo and audio section a bit, and added lots more ways to get my site’s content by RSS feeds.

I have not updated my page in a while, so I want to apologize to those of you who followed my blog on a regular basis. Regular postings will resume! With the time I would have used to blog over the past few months, I’ve rewritten much of the content on the "About" pages, because I wanted to bring some more biblical clarity to the calling of an intercessory missionary. In addition, many other intercessory missionary websites have just copied my content on that page directly, so I wanted to reword it with clear and simple language that was unique to my site.