Trip Summary
Eshtah (phonetically spelt) is Arabic for everything is good, really good and that is the word that best describes the first ever Christian sports camp held in the Middle East and specifically in all of Egypt. T Bar M has just returned home from training 120 Egyptian Christian volunteers (ages 19 32: doctors, dentist, engineer, and students) to run Wadi Sports Camp for Egyptian youths. Wadi Sports Camp consists of five separate ten day camps for Egyptians ages 10 17. The goal of camp is to reach all of Egypt in ten years for Christ and to impact the entire Middle East region. The camp is hosted by the largest Evangelical church in all of the Middle East
Four T Bar Mers including a camp dad from Houston spent four days training and participated in the first camp from July 2 through July 11th. In our pre-trip orientation we were informed that the campers were reserve, hard to motivate, to expect little interaction and that they were eager to learn sports.
We found the Egyptian volunteer staff and campers to be very open, affectionate, interested, enthusiastic and hospitable. Camp included cabin clean up, bible study, Sports Majors (basketball, soccer, swimming, tennis and volleyball), FUAGNEM, Sports Minors (major sports plus American football and baseball), Sports Challenge with Alphas and Omegas and Main Thing (Team Meeting). We were only able to display our USA flag on July 4th due to the heavy dislike toward our country and president though they were very kind to us individually. Wadi Sports Camp is the first camp in all the Middle East to have a 50 foot climbing / rappelling tower with zip lines as well as a have a low ropes course.
The campers spoke Arabic, French and English and they cried deeply when we left. They were very appreciative and kind to us. The Egyptian diet includes beans at all meals along with pita bread, cheese dips, honey, and molassesand yes we had to drink bottled water.
We clearly felt Gods protection and love and it was truly an honor and privilege to have trained and run the first ever camp in all of Egypt. God is good all the time!
Shukran, (Arabic for thanks) Johnny
Oh yeah, they loved singing Youre my brother, youre my friend and most Egyptians eat supper between 1 and 2:30 oclock in the morning ( psst our camp day went from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.).