Earlier this year...

We spent one week in Cairo, Egypt recently. Cairo has a population around 16 million. It is a huge & ancient city. Home of the pyramids & the pharaohs. Home of up to 4 million Sudanese refugees.

Cairo is old, creaky, chaotic, dirty, sprawling & ramshackle. The traffic & the dust are choking & ever-present. Traffic lights & lanes are meaningless. The Egyptians drive like maniacs. It is hard to imagine & maybe even harder to put into words, how bad the Egyptians drive. Simply put, they only worry about their car & where they are going.

Thank God for the Nile. Yes the river is polluted & sometimes smelly but it does give the city a break from the never ending sprawl of traffic & buildings. & there are few things as nice as a sailboat ride on the Nile at night with friends.

& thank God for the Egyptians. Their hospitality & their food are wonderful. We in the West could learn a lot from their warmth, generosity & general love of life, regardless of how much & how hard they have to work.

I got to know my wife in Cairo in November 2000. We were both attending debriefing meetings after the first major model of a kids sports ministry event. We spent 4 days in meetings & 4 nights running around Cairo with our Egyptian friends until the early hours of the morning.

This visit we didn’t stay out until the early hours of the morning but we did reconnect with friends from Egypt & from around the world. Once again we were at meetings with 1,200 people from the region who were learning about how to use sports to create positive change in their communities. The 2 of us led a 3 day workshop on the power of partnering.

The historic Christian community in the Middle East has been around since Jesus. But the Christian community’s influence has dwindled over the centuries from persecution & from emigration to the West. It is exciting to witness thousands of people from traditional Christian families throughout the Arab world join together to help build & encourage their communities & their countries whether it is by running camps & drug rehab centers, providing food & shelter for refugees from Sudan & Iraq, or providing sports & recreation opportunities for kids throughout the region.

From Egypt, we flew to Chennai, India.

[written while in India]
What do you say to an Indian who tells you that India is the best country in the world & you are in a dining hall in a Catholic seminary in the mountains of Coonoor, India & you are surrounded by 100 other Indians? That’s what I wondered tonight at dinner.

& now I’m listening to Ben Folds sing a farewell to Elliot Smith. & it’s sad. & chilly. But quiet. & I have to wonder like the lead character in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, ‘Did I listen to pop music because I was sad, or was I sad because I listened to pop music.’

Thank God for the little pleasures like a few sips of Bakers’ whiskey after an exceptional Indian meal. For a Catholic retreat center on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere in India, the food is amazing. I’ve never had egg curry until now but it is fabulous. Like every meal I’ve had here in India.

Tomorrow at 6:30, I will go to mass with my friend Brian. I figure I might as well get up & attend since the bells for the service wake me up every morning at 6am. Brian has the luck of being brought up Irish Catholic, so he will have some idea of when to kneel & when to sit. But the Father here is about as cool as they come, seeing as he plays volleyball with the boys in his seminary. So this will be my first mass in Asia, which is good & overdue. I like going to mass. I don’t know what I’m doing & I don’t know what it all means but it is nice & the churches are usually quaint & beautiful (like the one here & in Arlington) or ornate & beautiful (like St. John’s in Indy) or just massive like the London Cathedral. My friend Ed from Baylor talked about something I will never forget. He loved that he could go into mass anywhere in the world & feel right at home because the service is the same everywhere. That may sound boring to some but I like that thought of finding something very familiar & hopefully comforting regardless of wherever you find yourself in the world.

first entry in 2006

Well, we've been back in Indiana for almost four months now & are just now writing. For those who are interested, we ARE planning on keeping our blog. Please make note that the new URL is www.mbandk.blogspot.com. And the blog has a new name: Back Home Again.

I know K & I are still processing the time in South Africa and will continue writing our thoughts on that experience as time passes. Since we've been back, we've traveled to Cairo, Egypt and Chennai, India. We have thoughts we'd like to share on these trips as well.

And of course, being back is worthy of its own time in the spotlight. The most current developments occurred in the last four days. Good Friday: My mom's 60th birthday, awesome house church, golf ball-sized hail storm resulting in one broken window in our house & teeny little dents all over the hood of our car. Saturday: Spent in Upland, IN celebrating Mom's birthday & visiting their new lake house an hour and a half away (from Upland). Easter Sunday: Spent with my entire family minus D & S, K's entire family (all kids included), and St's entire family. Very fun. Monday (today): Discovered a racoon had found its way into our little house next door...little muddy footprints & poop to boot. Fortunately it only sat on one new chair... Sigh.

Of course, there is more to share about how we're reacclimating to this place. But the short story is that we love being back. Had you asked me a year ago if I could see myself "back home again in Indiana," I would have said "absolutely not." Not because I don't love our friends & family here, but because I had my heart set on being back in the PacNW. But alas, my heart has done a complete 180, which is nothing short of a miracle. And I am grateful.

m