ok2serve: Church of God Edara

Walking into sanctuary of the Church of God Edara

We arrived in Minya, Egypt after a 3 1/2 hour train ride--we left Cairo at 1am, but my traveling companions (Dr Latif and Pastor Ehab) boarded the train in Alexandria at 10:00pm. Minya, like most most of the population areas of Egypt, is along the Nile River.

After taking a rest and a late breakfast, we took a one hour car ride to the village of Edara. Minya is surrounded by many agriculturally-based villages; I felt I was driving through similar villages in the Guyana countryside where my mother grew up.

Pastor Ayman was so glad to greet us outside of the church building; this is one if the congregations in need of so much physical reconstruction to advance the ministry to the community.

After a few pictures outside, I could hear children when we came inside the humble structure. They are gathered this morning to begin the process of applications for the hope/vision of the Church of God in Egypt to bring the Children of Promise program into the Upper Egypt congregations. 15 smiling and pleasantly behaved children waited patiently while I got the tour of the 2-story structure.

The police headquarters for the area can be seen about 100 meters behind the church. The building, originally constructed of brick in 1947, is in very bad structural condition. Cracks are developing in the seams of the walls, the wood ceiling strains to hold the weight of the small brick structure above. The steps leading to the second floor are crumbling, you can feel the floor/ceiling below you sagging as we inspected the 2nd floor. The one room on the 2nd floor was Pastor Ayman's home for the first two years of his ministry here while he finished theological college--my hotel room in Minya may be twice as large and 100x as nice, especially when you take in consideration that my hotel room has a toilet, sink, & shower. Speaking of the toilet, the WC/bathroom of ChoG Edara does not have a toilet--only a drain in the dingy floor next to the sink.

Fortunately, the General Assembly of the Church of the God in Egypt supports Executive Committee's vision to raise funds to rebuild this facility. Government permission to rebuild has been received so far, but this can change once you are ready to build; architectural plans are in hand. The vision is for a three story facility: ground floor sanctuary, 2nd floor will be for serve as a fellowship hall and classroom, and the 3rd floor will be for a church office and a Pastor's flat.

The ministry vision is to have a facility that will better enable the outreach to more children in the village; somehow, they currently minister to 80 in their weekly Sunday School program based on the Awana model. They cannot serve more in the current, dilapidated facility. The addition of the Children of Promise program to this area will enable another avenue of ministry service to families.

Pastor Ayman has been married for 3 years and has a 2-year old son. In one of the pictures, you can see bags of grain behind him on the stage--these are the tenth from several of the farming families, given as offerings to the church to sell to support the ministry. The congregation received about 250LE (divide by 7 for US dollar approximation) per month in offerings; since the start if the tithe building campaign, the tenth comes in at about 800LE per month additionally. They have saved over 10,000 US dollars for the rebuilding project, but it is estimated that they will need at least 8 times this much.

We will be encouraging families to consider sponsoring children through Children of Promise this summer during our home assignment. If you have interest in supporting the General Assembly's fundraising effort to rebuild Church of God Edara, contact us.

Many more posts like this to come...

#PrayForEgypt