Update on Egypt and grace of being able to work

3/4/11 Friday
I’ll go work on cutting back the tree again today. It’s a bigger job than I thought, but that’s not unusual for me. It’s a common issue with TBI survivors, an altered sense of judgment regarding your abilities. Kind of an “Eyes bigger than your stomach” kind of thing. But that’s ok, I’ll be able to do this safely and have the grace of being able to work when I can and stop when I need to, on top of not being under any kind of time constraints, so I can take my time and be safe. Sure couldn’t do this as a regular job but am grateful for the opportunity to earn some badly needed money. It’s a $1200 dollar job that I’m doing for $300, but I’m helping a brother in Christ and can take it easy doing it.

We went to the Women’s Aglow meeting yesterday to support our pastor, who was the speaker that night. Cherie’s memories of this organization, decades ago when she attended Toledo meetings with her mother, were of dynamic events with standing room only often the case. The Toledo group apparently doesn’t exist any more and there was only a handful of people at the one in Midland. It has me wondering about the Full Gospel Businessmen’s organizations as well. I suspect that many of these once powerfully influential groups have lost their fire and dwindled in their numbers. Will ask Cecil about that when we meet today for lunch at the He Brew. He was one of the founding members of Full Gospel Businessmen I think. I will be giving my testimony at the Women’s Aglow meeting next month, telling of how God raised me from the dead and restored my life, mind, marriage, and faith.

We got an update from our friend, Ron, who ministers around the world but with a big focus in the Middle East and Egypt in particular. It’s a dangerous part of the world for sure. Ron is working to gain access back into Egypt in order to help the thousands of people there who depend on his organization for food, medicine, and water. Among those are the Muslims who accepted Jesus as their Lord and savior, and as a result were taken to the garbage dumps because in Islam when you convert you are considered dead and as garbage. During the riots and breakdown the army and police, who had been guarding the garbage dumps to keep these converts imprisoned there, were withdrawn. Tens of thousands of the estimated 4 million residents of the garbage cities fled the garbage dumps and headed for the borders of Sudan, Libya, and anyplace else they could go. Unfortunately when they are taken to the garbage cities their passports and identity papers are taken so they cannot cross these borders. As a result there are refuge camps filled with these now starving and sick people, who weren’t in the best of condition to start with. The hundreds of thousands who remained in the garbage cities are now exposed for the guards that kept them imprisoned also protected them from the Islamic radicals, who desire to kill them according to Sharia law. So it’s a horrible situation all the way around. Then there are the thousands of widows, who are considered cursed in the Islamic religion, for in their mind if Allah took their husbands or their husbands left them, it’s the widows fault. Ron’s organization provided food, in the form of Bags of Hope, to thousands of these widows and their children.

That’s it for now. I’m heading out to work on that tree some more.