(Part 2 from Steve’s time from Cairo below:)

Nazereth, Bethlehem, Egypt, Gulf of Aqaba 2008:

What an amazing year!

The Christmas cards pile through the door. Nazereth, Belthlehem, Jerusalem, Egypt.. “Yep been there, done that”… could easily be the reaction! To have walked in the footsteps of Joseph and Mary does however add depth to the days ahead. For those who are interested, click on the links below and see how new paths are being opened up through the journey we have taken. Nice to know that we are ahead of the BBC!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mfiddle_east/7780152.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7780777.stm

Below is Paul’s report from the second of the two weeks – the week that turned our faces east again after finding incredible grace in the global gateway of Cairo. Do take a read; it makes enjoyable reading.

Paul Wood writes:

Cairo to the Gulf of Aqaba, 4-10 Dec., 2008

Team: Chris Swan, Hannah Swan, Steve Hallett, Steve Lowton, Nancy Mina, Paul Wood, Penguin and Monkey.

Our last week’s walking this year was unique in many ways. After the climax of reaching the Nile a few days earlier, we turned our faces east towards Arabia and headed out on the long desert motorway from Cairo to the city of Suez. With just one day’s walking done, the trusted rhythm and expected timing of our journey was suddenly taken out of our control. Given security restrictions in Egypt it was a miracle that we had walked unhindered all the way across North Sinai and into Cairo, but at the end of that day I was hauled off the road by a waiting police patrol.

“Where are you going?” the very large and self-important chief policeman asked (In Egypt important people are always large). With the sun going down and with absolutely nothing for 60km ahead there were not really any convincing answers. I just needed a friendly support car to come and claim me before my captors decided I was lost, or alien, and needed alternative accommodation.

“My friends are just coming in the car”, I explained, “I’ll call them…” I reached into my pocket for the mobile phone we agree to always carry with us when walking. No phone! Only the plastic monkey I had bought at MacDonalds a few days before, along with a plastic penguin I gave to Steve. My credibility took a downturn, but innate Egyptian hospitality and humour was on my side and I persuaded them to let me wait by the road. Eventually I was picked up…and Monkey was reunited with Penguin.

Not wanting to give up too easily, the next day we thought we’d try again a bit further on, but the police must have been following us. As Chris and Hannah got out of the car for the first stint of the day, an all too familiar blue truck pulled up in front of us.

“I think we saw you yesterday…”

We got a second yellow card – and were not released until we promised not to walk on motorways again.

“It’s not safe, there are no good people here, you can walk inside city limits.”

Frustrated? Well, at first, but over the next twenty-four hours we realised we were being caught up in a dramatic Passover narrative. Even the Egyptian police were only actors grafted in to play the part of Pharaoh’s pursuing chariots and horsemen. At dawn the following morning the great sacrifice that marks the climax of the Islamic pilgrimage season took place; the Eid el Adhar; the ritual slaughtering of sheep and cattle to commemorate the deliverance of Ishmael.

In our Suez hotel we woke to massed chanting of “Allah-ul-Akbar, Allah-ul-Akbar” that continued for an hour and rose to fevered intensity. After breakfast we walked out of Suez through streets running with blood, bloody hand-prints on doors and cars, blood-smeared faces. We headed for the tunnel that would take us under the Suez canal, through the sea on dry land, out of Egypt and into Sinai. At the edge of the city a police truck put in an appearance, we hurried into the car and drove the last few km of our exodus.

And in case you were wondering, that’s why monkey and penguin joined the team; to help our heads and hearts through the toxic religious carnage. A tiny band of prayer-walkers cannot take on things so dark and so heavy by matching intensity for intensity. It does your head in. We can only run to the finished work of Jesus, rediscover child-likeness, get our muddled adult heads up into the heavenly play-room.

Out in Sinai you realise you are in Egypt only by name. In every other respect this is Arabia, and, banned from walking, we were there with spare days. The vast and dreadful wilderness is incredibly beautiful in places, but offers zero accommodation, so we headed over to the Aqaba coast.

In Dahab we gazed through the early morning haze at the arid mountains of Saudi Arabia, snorkelled in warm coral sea and bought handmade jewellery from young Bedouin girls. Dahab was once a Bedouin town, commandeered by Egyptians who have turned it into an artificial hedonistic paradise to milk the tourists who flock there to dive the Red Sea’s renowned coral reefs. A paradise with Jesus shut out, and it has a darker side, as a resort built on three converging sea serpents. But it’s name means ‘gold’ and unexplained money turned up in pockets – a hint of gifting to be unlocked perhaps.

If Arabia is a Laodicean region then we found ourselves appropriately on the doorstep, knocking, waiting, learning. Turning back from an early morning walk along the beach I glanced at the time, it was 07:07. Meditating on the seventh of seven letters, we counted this was also Steve’s 14th walking trip out of the UK. It was also the adoption day for Zhen, Steve’s Chinese daughter, marking the beginnning of her 7th year in his family. On the seventh day God rested from his labours.

So after a couple of day’s rest we returned home, leaving our journey plans messed up, accelerated, and now safely beyond the limit of our capability.

Back to Steve

Have a great Christmas everyone.

Thanks hugely for all the interest, prayer and care.

Maranatha.. come quickly Jesus.

http://www.stephenlowton.com

http://www.storiesfromthestreet.com

Here is a report from Steve Lowton on their walk to Cairo… Thank God for what has changed these past 10 years…

South of Gaza Strip to Cairo

4th Dec, 2008

Team: Paul Wood, Kathy Garda, Adam Clark and myself

Desert, clear blue skies, desperately poor Bedouin hamlets, wonderful Egyptian hospitality, the fun and camaraderie of team life, showering in bottled water, the full on laughter of the children of God refusing to be intimidated by so called giants-a cascade of different memories as this first week concluded on a bridge over the River Nile. From Whitby to this huge artery of North Africa, one incredible journey.

To walk with Paul Wood back into the city where he and Angie gave several years of their lives a few years ago was and is a huge privilege. Right now one team is on its way home and another joins us over the next 24hrs whereupon we turn our faces east once again. Not since Adana in southern Turkey have we been heading in that direction, for soon we turn back into the Sinai after finding clear passage through the continental gateway that Cairo is. Standing at the bridge of Africa and Asia it remains a global base for the training of other faiths. We walk however not  for such grand mandates, rather to proclaim the wonderful presence of Jesus in the simplest of ways. having our hearts encouraged greatly by the incredible stories of the people of God and what the Lord is doing in these middle eastern lands.

As we journey east we are looking for the one that joins east to west, the word to the spirit, the intuitive to the logical, the masculine to the femine, the hidden to the seen. So we track from one global gateway to another, asking of the one who spans the continents for the full measure of Jesus to be released in these days.

Below I leave space for Paul to tell something of his own journey. Once more however I am hugely grateful to the team. In particular Kathy Garda, and of course her husband Malc for their courage in allowing us to journey as men and women. So powerful a statement in the face of so much destruction. The next few days we begin to knock on the door of Arabia. Like Jesus coming to the church in Laodicea so we come to this laodicean peninsular knocking firmly. The knowledge that the handle is on the inside keeps good and safe bounbaries to our journey.

Paul writes:

To walk back ‘home’ to Cairo has been such a moving experience and I feel so honoured to carry and be carried by three amazing friends, each so uniquely bearing new winds and new waves into an old old place with a long history and a far reaching destiny. The curse on Africa of the pharaohs drowning the hebrew babies in the Nile is redeemed as God entrusts his own baby Son to the Egyptians in a time of peril, and we have now walked that path down from Manger Square in Bethlehem.  The creaky reluctant old gateway is opening in these days and there are signs of new freedom and space. The eleventh hour workers will receive the full days wages, the full share of the harvest. Intercessory journeys across continents that we know nothing of are meeting in this place. Some will go far further than they ever planned to, others will suddenly lay down maps and plans and be re-booted by heaven for a surprise new day. Twice in the last 36 hours I checked the time on my phone and it was 00:00 exactly. Re-booting, re-setting.  Laying down old understandings, beginning again as a little child.  We write this in an internet cafe above a Toys R Us store, zero.  The workers need to rediscover play, and we must let the sound of heaven’s wild party into earth.

We wait now for Steve Hallett and my daughter Hannah and her husband Chris to join us. If you pray for us then thank you so much. We take nothing for granted til our return to the UK on the 11th December

Steve and the team