A Shout Out to the FAC Youth Group!

Last week the high school youth group at First Alliance Church in Calgary phoned me up in Egypt to interview me about my time spent here. I received the phone call at 5:15 am, Thursday morning. The senior high youth pastor, Dallas, phoned me on Tuesday evening to remind me that they would be phoning me later in the week. For some reason, I thought that meant they would be phoning me the next morning (Wednesday morning) at 5 am. This means that I set my alarm for 5am and slept lightly in anticipation of the phone call. Around 3 am Wednesday morning, I realized that First Alliance has their high school youth service on Wednesday evenings, which would mean that they would be phoning me Thursday morning rather than on Wednesday morning. So, I set my alarm for later that morning and tried to finally get some sleep. I felt pretty dumb waiting for a phone call on the wrong evening. Stupid time differences and such. Anyways, as I said, they finally got ahold of me early Thursday morning… but the connection was so bad that they couldn’t understand what I was saying. I could hear them cheering and laughing and stuff, which was really cool, but they couldn’t really understand what I was saying. So, because of this, I am going to spend this blog entry answering the questions that I was supposed to answer last Wednesday night. So, without further ado, here I go:

1) What are you involved with over in Egypt?
I am a youth intern at Maadi Community Church (MCC). MCC is an international church, which means that most of its members are expatriates (non-Egyptians). The church has about 1500 people in attendance each weekend. I work with the middle school and high school students in this church. We do weekly youth services very similar to the Oxygen and Elevation services at First Alliance. In addition to this, I teach Friday School (Sunday School) to the middle schoolers, and lead a couple weekly small groups.

2) What was the process that God took you through that made you think, "Maybe I am called to M1$$10Ns (later referred to as M’s)?"
To tell you the truth, growing up I always thought that the worst job in the world would be to become a M. Until this year I had never been to a foreign country, and never wanted to go to one. I hated spiders and all those other nasty creatures that seem to get bigger in far away places. Mostly I hated the thought of leaving the comfort of all that I am familiar with in Canada. But during school last year, one of my professors told our class that there is a huge need for youth pastors in the Middle East right now. I’m not entirely sure why I did this, but at the end of that class I walked up to that prof and told him that if there was such a huge need, I could probably do my internship somewhere in the Middle East since I was looking for a place to intern anyways. He said he’d look into it for me. Part way into my next class with him, he mentioned to me in front of the whole class, “Oh Ryan, it looks like you’re going to Egypt.” I said, “Cool” and that was that. So I guess the opportunity fell into my lap, and I ran with it.

3) What has been the biggest change for you since moving to Egypt?
For the three years prior to moving to Egypt, I was a student at Canadian Bible College. This meant that I was surrounded with people who were my age, and shared my interests. When I moved to Egypt, however, I was removed from this luxury. All of the people in the expatriate (foreigner) community are either below college age, or they are in their 30’s and higher. There is a gap of about ten years because everyone who is in their 20’s tend to move away from their family and head back to their home country to receive their higher education. I grew so used to having a tight network of friends surrounding me back home that when I moved here and couldn’t find anyone my age I became quite lonely. I’ve had to learn to relate to people who are older than me, and try to establish close friendships with them.

4) How are spiritual needs of people the same or different from Canada to Egypt?
The people here are very religious. They pray at least five times a day, they read their Holy Scriptures, they participate in various religious holidays, and they seem to have a fairly good nature about them. But the members of the dominant faith here seem to be focused on earning their salvation. They don’t see Christ as one who came and redeemed us. He was just a prophet, fully human, and nothing more. So, in many ways the people here share a faith very similar to ours. It is when Jesus is brought into the picture that the two faiths diverge. We see Jesus being both fully human AND fully God. Jesus came to Earth and died a torturous death... for us, so that his blood was a sacrifice for our lives. Because of His death, we don’t have to do anything to ‘earn’ our way into heaven. All we have to do is believe that Jesus came and died for us. And more than that, He rose from the dead three days later. This grace, show by God, is the biggest difference between the two faiths.

5) Tell us a story of something amazing God has done while you have been in Egypt.
I suppose the most amazing thing that God has done has been to get me this far through my internship without having a mental breakdown! God has helped me to deal with increased responsibility, He has helped me to be an upfront leader, and He has comforted me in my loneliness.
Many cool things are always happening around me, though. For instance, when my friends were here, we were waiting at a train stating to purchase tickets to Luxor. As we were in line, we realized that the ticket salesman didn’t speak any English at all. Luckily a man in line behind us stepped in and translated for us. Many things like that happened as I was traveling around with my friends. We would go to places like Luxor and Alexandria, and have no idea how to get around to see the sights we wanted to see, and yet people would always walk right up to us and provide us with everything we needed for the day. It was really cool seeing how everything would always work out so perfectly for us.

6) How has this experience changed your heart? What is God teaching you?
This internship has helped me to become less dependent on others (and myself) and more dependent on God. Throughout my time here, God has helped me to become more courageous, and more willing to accept responsibility. Not only that, I feel much more of a love for Egyptians now that I lived in their country and can see the background that they came from. I have more of a respect for cultures other than my own.

7) If you were trying to let somebody know how important m’s is, what would you tell them?
The Bible says to do it, so do it! I’ve found that you grow as a person when you are challenged to tell others about God, and do things that are outside of your comfort zone. It allows you to put your faith into practice. It's like church is going to school, and m’s is the job you get after graduating. M’s is finally taking what you've learned from school and putting it to use. And, just as we learn tons more about our field of studies from our workplace after we graduate from school, we learn tons more about Christianity when we practice it through m’s.