Dryden @ 6 weeks old

Born at 3:56 am Nov 8, 2008. He weighs 8 lbs 8 oz, and is 21.25 inches long! Also, Mom is plenty healthy. I love him so much.

Egypt - Part 8 - So What Now?

As I’ve explained in a couple of a thousand words, God led me from thinking of Muslims of the Middle East as people I could never understand or bond with to people I can easily relate to and bond with. God has now given me a heart for the Muslim people. So what does that mean for me and my family? Stephanie wants to go to grad school so we can’t exactly ship ourselves overseas at this time. So what does this mean for us as American Christians? Well, I don’t have much of a practical answer right now. But I do know this, there are Muslims who need Christ right here in Colorado Springs just like in Egypt. Maybe God will use me to minister to them? Or maybe God has given me this new heart and perspective to pray for Muslims around the world. At this point I don’t know, but I’ll pray about it. Next, I'll start my transcript of a Muslim Born woman telling her story about how she came to Christ.

Egypt - Part 7 - A Surprising Empathy

Morals For this last one, what surprised me was not something I learned. Instead, I was surprised by how well I can relate to muslim culture. I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church with black and white morals. The concept of morality has never been difficult for me. I’ve always believed in right and wrong. It’s so engrained in me that I have difficulty empathizing with moral relativists I know. There is no question that Muslims have a strong sense of morality. The Koran is full of moral law. Now I certainly don’t agree with all of the morals they have, but I can empathize with them easily based on the fact that they have morals. A strong part of my testimony is when I realized that Christianity is more than a set of rights and wrongs. The Bible has a list of rights and wrongs that no human has any hope of following their entire life. But God stepped in, became a man and paid our price for our sin. Christianity is about accepting God’s grace more than it is about rights and wrongs. It is this lesson that both Muslims as a culture, and I as a person need to learn. That we need to lay down our own struggles to obey every rule and accept God’s grace through his son Jesus. I can easily empathize with someone who is trying to live up to a moral code and has difficulty doing so. I have the same story. This revelation shocked me more than anything else. p.s. I know moral relativists have their own code of morals. I just don’t identify with their set of morals as well as I can with the mindset of Muslims. At least that’s what I get from first impressions of Muslim culture.

Egypt - Part 6 - Casual Mosque-goers

Nominal Muslims / Radical Muslims I knew that there would be cultural Muslims just like there are cultural Christians, but seeing that acted out was an experience. Radical Muslim men are very easy to spot, that is they all have a spot at the top of their forehead. Due to praying so often at the mosque, the top of their forehead develops a visible callous. It’s obvious that there are those who have this callous, and those who don’t. All the Muslims there are Muslim in some sense. Most people practice fasting for Ramadan. It’s more in the life altering realm that people start to ease off traditional Islam. Not everyone goes to prayer five times a day is a good example. But the best example is probably... Western Influenced Fashion It was interesting to see what practices became part of the culture so much so that the meaning is lost. The most visual example of this was the way the young Egyptian women dressed. Most women, wore a head cover. Some wore the full burka revealing nothing but there eyes, others wore just the head cover exposing their face. I saw many examples of young Egyptian women wearing a head cover, but their clothes were western, and even skin tight. Though the laws of Islam were obeyed, they were covered from the top of the neck down to their wrists and toes. Some women even had gloves on. But the clothing styles were obviously western.

Egypt - Part 5 - Standards and Holidays

A Happy Religious Holiday Islam is known for being a strict religion with a very long list of solemn rituals. This side of Islam is visible everywhere in Egypt. Several times a day I would hear the words "Come to Prayer! Allah is Great" chanted in Arabic over the megaphone. More than once we had to cross the road to avoid a mosque whose attendance was so high people started lining up to pray along the side walk. But there was a much less formal and even happy side of Islam that I got to see in Egypt, Ramadan, which operated similarly to Christmas in many ways. There were traditional Ramadan decorations all over the city. Streamers were zig zaged between high rise apartment buildings. Christmas lights (though I doubt they were called that) are also strung along windows. Fanoos (Arabic for lantern) were hung outside of shops and homes that were beautifully decorated. If you look, the Fanoo in this picture has certain familiar arches on it. There was an atmosphere of happiness and goodwill. My favorite example of this took place while I was purchasing a bookmark for Stephanie with her name written in Hieroglyphics. I joked with the woman writing her name saying, "How do I know this says Stephanie. I mean, you could write "Your wife is ugly" and tell me that it said Stephanie and I wouldn’t have any way to know the difference." Her response was simply, "Oh, but you must trust us. We would not do that to you during Ramadan, so you can trust us." Of course it’s still true, that this lovely bookmark may say "Your wife is ugly." Also, many people told me that during Ramadan, people get a lot more time off to spend at home, and not as much gets done. This also has to do with the fact that they don’t eat from sun up to sun down, so they are sleepy during the day. The soap operas on TV tend to be more engaging during Ramadan because they know people will be relaxing at home. It was just neat to see that a religion so foreign to me, yet it developed a religious holiday time similar to Christmas. Note: Yes I know that the reasons we celebrate Christmas are different then the reasons Muslims celebrate Ramadan. But you cannot deny that a large bulk of what we associate with Christmas is cultural tradition, and not religion. Engineering Standards In the third world, there are often no building standards. Often, all that is needed is approval from a city official, which of course can easily breed corruption. This was not the case in Egypt at all. Even though the building codes were probably not as strict or extensive as exist in the USA, they still exist. That’s important. Fanoo shaped decoration Streamers between Apartments An Egyptian Market Some old buildings