Journey Back to Eden.pdf - St Mark Coptic Orthodox Church Chicago

124 FEBRUARYsources. I had some of my new friends in Cairo ask their businessassociates to search various Bank Misrs until the funds I had wiredcould be located. A few days ago I received a tip about where theyhad been deposited, so I was able to retrieve the money today. NowI shall be able to travel appropriately in the company of my friendand pay my own expenses. But it was marvelous in a certain waynot to have had any money at all for all these months, to have simplyexperienced the charity and the hospitality of the desert monks.God has been taking very good care of me.Historic SitesFEBRUARY 25, WEDNESDAYWell, we have had almost a week of touring. We’ve seen thetraditional sights in Karnac and Luxor and Aswan. We’ve taken afeluca, a boat ride across the Nile, and visited Elephantine Island inUpper Egypt—a site which is very interesting archaeologically.It seems that there was a sizable Jewish community on that islandfor several centuries. They may have even had a genuine temple—oddly,a temple with sacrificial holocausts and offerings, parallelto the temple in Jerusalem. One wonders why a Jewishsettlement would have temple sacrifice outside of Jerusalem longafter David consolidated Hebrew worship in his own city. This unusualNilotic temple ruin and the monasteries of the Ethiopianwilderness are giving me the idea that I should title my anthropologicalethnography “Sacrifice in the Desert.” I recall from theBook of Exodus that Moses was commissioned by God to offer sacrificialworship in the desert after he led Israel forth out of Egypt.At any rate, we saw a great deal of Egypt and visited some of thevarious Christian churches as well as Muslim mosques.Pope Shenouda’s AudienceI took Father Jim to Pope Shenouda’s Wednesday evening audiencetonight where five thousand people were in attendance—mostly young people. As noted before, the Pope’s whole format issimply to take questions from a question box and to answer them atsome length for nearly two hours. The congregation listened with