Exodus Experience, Part 1
Thursday, January 29, 2009
A group of 14 study travel pilgrims, who are all either members of Cargill United Methodist Church, former members, friends of members, descended on Chicago O'Hare airport on Thursday, January 15th and the journey began. The first rule of travel is patience! The second rule of travel is more patience. We boarded our Royal Jordanian air flight right on time for a 9pm departure to Cairo, Egypt via Amman, Jordan. However, we proceeded to sit on the plan for two hours while the baggage crew fought the 15 below zero weather, complete with mechanical malfunctions in order to load the plane. Finally we took off and settled in for very smooth eleven hour flight. With a smooth transfer in Amman, we arrived in Cairo at 8:30pm Thursday night only to discover that two of our group had luggage that did not make it- remember the rules of travel.
We set out for our hotel in an area of Cairo near where we would be visiting. Immediately noticeable were narrow streets, huge traffic jams, a smell of smog and rubble and dirt among the subtle beauty of a big city. At 14 million people, Cairo is an over crowded city. Cairo is so big that our bus driver and accompanying customer representative couldn't find our hotel and the streets were so narrow that the bus driver couldn't find a way in once we did arrive! Finally we were in the hotel and settled and ready for some rest.
Now, why travel to Egypt when our goal was to visit the holy land? Actually the entire middle east, egypt, the mediterranen area including Turkey, Greece and Italy can all be considered the holy land. We specifically designed a trip that would help us understand the people and the land of the people of Israel who were enslaved in Egypt for 400 years before God directed Moses to lead the people out of slavery, over the Red Sea and through the Sinai deserts in order to reach the promised land. In addition, scripture records a "reverse" exodus when Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus flee from Nazareth to Egypt in order to escape the hand of Herod who wanted the baby Jesus killed (read Matthew 2).
Please note that these writings are delayed by 10 days and that all travel has been safe. There has been no heightened security that is visible whether we were in Egypt, Jordan, Israel or the West Bank. In fact, if you were in Israel now (as are we), and did not have a TV or internet, you would not even know that there had been fighting going on in Gaza. Of course the whole region is thankful for the cease-fire in Gaza. Please join us in a continuing prayer for peace in Israel and the middle east.
Rev. Forrest Wells and the pilgrims
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