Women's Conference Day Two

Hello Everyone!

I'm actually writing this two days after the Women's Conference, but it was so crazy that the details are still pretty fresh in my mind. Pastor Ryan wrote that the first day of the conference was pretty awesome but the second night was crazier still.

The Sudanese love to dance and so of course, there was a lot of dancing. Grace shared her powerful testimony of God calling her name. Joanne preached and shared the word of God with the refugees. Norm share a word he received from God earlier in the day calling his name, "NORMAN!". And finally, Pastor Ryan preached the word of God and called up people for prayer. It was nuts because lines and lines of people came up wanting prayer for stomach pains, kidney problems, cancer, headaches and all kinds of other illnesses. We also blessed the children that all the women brought and of course, we ended the night with even more dancing!

Boy were we pooped by the end... But excited.

Yesterday we got to see the Pyramids. I wish I could be more descriptive but the only way I can describe them as are "big". They are big and the weather was HOT. Personally, after I saw one pyramid, I was ready to go home, but we ended up seeing all three of the major pyramids. They were basically all the same and surprisingly, none of them offered any good shade. Oh, I will say one more thing about our experience at the Pyramids though, NEVER buy anything from the vendors there. Don't even let them touch you. They come up to you saying, "No money. It's okay. Free!" and they try to put things into your hands or on your head and then they demand that you pay for them. I thought I was being all good about bargaining and paid 20 Egyptian pounds (approx. $4 US) for this arabic head covering thing to protect my head from the heat. But it turns out it was supposed to be only 3 pounds (Less than $1 US). I'm never buying anything from them again.

Anyhow, today we are going to minister to the Sudanese refugees again and then come back to watch the Korea vs. Iraq game. It should be a good day :)

Blessings to all!~

Matt

Women's Conference Day One

What an awesome day!!!

We had a great day at Pastor Immanuel's church to begin the day. Then, we came home and had the best pizza ever!!! Then, we watched Korea beat Iran in penalty kicks ... Joey and John were so excited along with me.

We then had our first night of women's conference. Jenny and Echo preached. It was awesome ... presence of God filled the whole room. Margaret (leader of the women's ministry) came forward and said this: "Pastor Lee is crazy and he brought the crazy medicine here to make all of us crazy!" Crazy we were ... crazy for Jesus!!! Everyone was dancing and praising God ... joy of the Lord filled the place. It was awesome.

We are all doing great here ... everyone is so eager to minister to people ... and so eager to serve one another. We do not have any selfish people here who would cause trouble ... or criticize others or complain ... Dr. Mesghina says that this is the best group he's ever had ... and Norm is in love with this group ... as am I. We genuinely love one another and enjoy one another's presence. I can see how next year's going to be already!!!

Ryan

Picture Time #2!

Here are some more pictures that we took of our ministry times:

Here's Jenny giving her testimony. Notice the height difference


Simon and Grace praying for the sick.


Here's a good shot of Pastor Ryan praying for someone.


We also danced in a conga line... of course :)


Everyone received gifts after the Men's conference was over. Here are Joey and Norm rocking their new African threads.


Joey striking a pose at Garbage City.


This is the type of boat that we rode on the Nile. It was such a nice night.


Here are Matt, Ryan and Benjamin posing for the camera while on the boat


This is Benjamin, Dr. Mesghina, John, and Pastor Samuel on the boat.


Here's Joey getting a little too close for comfort with Dr. Mesghina.


For Sunday service we went to Pastor Emmanuel's church. Here is Joey and Joanne leading praise.


This is a picture of Pastor Matthew preaching on Sunday.

Here is Echo teaching the Sunday school.

As you can see, we're having a great time over here. Please continue to pray for us and leave encouraging comments. We are coming back in a few days! Praise the Lord!

God is Great!!!

We are now done with the general conference and we are preparing for the women's conference. Last night was just crazy!!! Everyone was dancing and the Holy Spirit fell so hard ... brought incredible joy to so many people who had been suffering for a long time. Many more incredible healings and salvations ... it was totally awesome!!! Everyone here says that they have had so many conferences, but never has this happened ... where the entire auditorium was just rocking. Norm is so filled with the Spirit, he just bounced and danced around all night ...

I think the highlight of the day for me was when we went to visit this one Muslim lady who had cancer. It was a miracle to begin with in the fact that we were even allowed to come into her house and pray for her. While we were praying for her, Echo boldly preached the gospel message to her (which most people would have been afraid to do in a Muslim household - I know I was somewhat timid to do that) and the lady received Jesus into her heart ... and she shed tears ... I truly pray that God would heal her ... she is in the last stage of cancer and has no other hope. Please pray for her complete healing now that she is in the Kingdom of God.

After everything was over last night, we went on a boat in the River Nile ... same body of water that once carried Moses into safety ... same body of water where God promised He would destroy the Babylonians ... it was just amazing ... eating chicken and drinking soda there some 3,500 years after Moses ... WOW!!! I still can't believe we are here in Egypt where a lot of biblical events took place. Praise God!!!

Thank you all for your prayers ... everyone is healthy ... everyone is getting along because no one is being selfish ... I think this is so important in missions ... being selfless ... watching out for others' interests.

Praise God!!!

IN Egypt

Hello!
This is Jenny. I'm having a great time in Egypt. God is teaching me a lot here.
The people are very nice here. The place we are staying at and the food we are eating is very good.
Our team is great too. Everyone is getting along and learning from one another.

I'm so blessed by the people here. There are so many Sudanese refugees here and many of them suffer so much. So we are ministering to many hurt people. But God is moving here. We are seeing people changed and healed.

I miss Blessed and the people back home. But I'm so glad that I'm here in Cairo. The people here LOVE to dance and worship God...so we saw most people from our team dancing with the people. And they are very tall...we are very short here.

Today is the last day for the conference for everyone. We will soon have the women's conference.
Continue to pray for us!


Jenny

2nd Night of Conference

Although we have not had 1,000 people show up for our conference as we thought, we are having good turn outs with several hundred people coming each night. Tonight, Joey sang, Jenny gave a testimony, Matthew preached and we all prayed for salvation and healings. After Matthew preached powerfully, there were approximately 30 people who accepted Jesus as their Savior and Lord. Also, there are many healings that are taking place. Two women gave testimonies today at the conference that they had been healed from aches and pains and sleepless nights, etc. We prayed for a boy with a lot of neck pain and the pain left immediately ... many miracles and more importantly many salvations.

Also, the joy of the Lord hit us very hard tonight and everyone was dancing ... man alive ... Norm is a dancer!!!

I am so proud of our team. We are getting along great and having a great time together. Thank you all for your prayers. I am so blessed by our team and also the people here ... what God is doing with all of us!!!

Matt will put up more pictures tomorrow ... pray for us. We are going into the poor villages of the Sudanese people tomorrow morning and then healing ministry and then another conference night in which I will be speaking ...

Ryan

Picture Time!

We took so many photos that it would probably take forever to upload all of them. Here are just a selection of some of the photos that we took:

This is our first group photo before we got in line for our departure gate.

Immediately off the bat, Joey established himself as our team cut-up.

Ryan and Joanne in Travel Mode.

No, Joey is not just excessively happy. He is actually on the receiving end of one of my famouse nipple twists. Jenny took this picture at just the right moment :)

This is us waiting at a trainstation in Amsterdam. I would say "When in Rome..." But since we're in Amsterdam, "When in Amsterdam..."

We took a nice canal cruise tour around the city of Amsterdam.

As you can see, Ryan enjoyed it thoroughly.

Like I said, we took a lot of pictures. Here's me taking a picture of Norm taking a picture of me.

Check this out. Our flight to Cairo from Amsterdam got delayed four hours... WITH US IN IT! We literally sat at the departure gate for four hours as they fixed our "air conditioning unit". That was not fun.

This is Me arriving in Cairo not too worse for wear.

Our van was not big enough for all of us and so Me, Joey and Dr. Mesghina took a separate taxi.

This is Dr. Mesghina and the Pastor of the Anglican church whose facilities we are using.

This is Pastor Ryan worshipping on stage with some of the Sudan Leaders.

This is a picture of Norm giving his introduction to the crowd. It looks kind of empty but it filled out as the evening went on. Dr. Mesghina told us this is how the Sudanians roll.

This is Joey leading praise.

Alrighty, like I said we took a lot of pictures and these are only a few. We'll post more pictures soon.

Matt

Conference Begins

We arrived in Cairo today (Thursday) at 7 am, took a nap, then prepared for our first night of conference. Joey sang a couple of songs and rocked the house ... the Sudanese people know many of the songs we sing. I was able to preach and then our team prayed for the sick. Many came forward to receive prayer. I felt a strong presence of the Holy Spirit. We will find out if anyone got healed tomorrow. We are also praying for the sick tomorrow at 3 pm, just before the conference. Please pray for us.

Everyone is getting along great ... I am thankful for these beautiful people who are doing their best to keep the unity. Our team is great!!! We are also having a lot of fun just being with each other and talking about a lot of different things. Praise God!!!

Ryan

Hello From Cairo!

Hello Blessed Faithful!

After a harrowing two days of travel, we have arrived in Cairo! We are all pretty tired but thankful to have arrived here safely.

Just to give you some thoughts of what happened in the last few days:

1. The trip to Amsterdam wasn't too bad. The food on the airplane wasn't that great and we were all pretty tired, but all in all, it was an okay flight.

2. Amsterdam itself was quite an interesting experience. None of us speak Dutch and have never been to central Amsterdam and so we spent a lot of time getting lost. We did end up taking a one hour canal cruise tour of the city, but it was just... hm... okay. Not very exciting. The city of Amsterdam itself was pretty interesting. We spent a good 45 minutes looking for a place to eat because we didn't want to eat McDonalds having come all the way from America. After looking and looking and being unable to decide on what to eat as a group, we ended up eating at McDonalds anyway. Tastes exactly the same :P

3. Amsterdam is probably one of the only cities in the world where right next to a restaurant, there are sex stores with all their wares in full display. Right across from the McDonalds we were eating at, there was a store with huge posters of women in their birthday suits. As the Turkey team would say, it was "interesting".

4. Our flight from Amsterdam to Cairo got delayed four hours. Something about the air conditioning malfunctioning. The fact that we got delayed four hours doesn't seem that bad until we mention the fact that we were stuck in the plane THE ENTIRE TIME!!! ARGGH! j/k. It was funny though because at one point, Jenny fell asleep and woke up an hour later and asked, "have we arrived in Cairo already?" No, Jenny. We haven't even left the gate yet...

5. Cairo is hot and humid. What can I say. And it's only 8 in the morning here. Dr. Mesghina says that this is nothing. Pray for us.

Matthew Kim
Cairo, Egypt

Pre-Flight Thanks To All!

Hello everyone! Our Egypt team will be leaving tomorrow afternoon (July 17th) and return on the 27th. On behalf of the team, I just wanted to go ahead and thank everyone who made this Summer possible. I am sure that we will send out many more teams in the future years of our ministry, but each time I either go out with a team or send one out, I realize how much of the grace of God it is that we can do this at all.

Please continue to pray for us and encourage us through intercession and even by leaving us comments on our blog entries! Anything will be appreciated.

God Bless You All!~

Matthew Kim
Blessed International Fellowship
Orange County, California

Who's Posting?

If you are reading this and you are not a part of the Egypt team this summer, you might be thinking that it's just one person who is posting up on this blog, but you'd be wrong. This blog is open to the entire BLESSED Egypt team and so please be aware of who is actually writing the post. So far, I, Matthew Kim have been the only one posting so far, but one day, you might just seen someone different posting something on this webpage. You will know who the poster is by the name at the bottom of their post.

Also, leave us comments! Encourage us, ask us questions, ask if you could buy us dinner, but please interact with us! All potential fellowship opportunities are welcome here :D

Matthew Kim
Blessed International Fellowship
Orange County, California

Morning Prayer

Spiritual preparation for any missions trip is very important. If there's one thing that I've ever learned from a missions trip, it's that spiritual warfare is real. I'm not just talking about the inner struggles that we all have, for example, some people call it spiritual warfare when we find ourselves distracted and unable to pray. The spiritual warfare that I'm talking about is full on physical illness, persecution and other inexplicable occurrences that people often like to blame on coincidence. Also, what I call the "post-missions fallout" is something that I've seen far too many times to deny. There have been many people I have gone on missions trip with who were not prepared. They went, got messed up, came back and came back to find even more struggles waiting for them at home. I even know a guy who doesn't even go to church anymore.

In any case, preparation for missions is extremely important, I would say on an almost life and death level.

It would be very easy for us to take our Egypt trip for granted because it's only 11 days long, but we need to pray... a LOT.

Having said that, we will be meeting every day next week every morning from Monday to Thursday from 6am to 7:30am to pray (7/9-7/12).

WE NEED TO PRAY!!!

Matthew Kim
Blessed International Fellowship
Orange County, California

First Post

Hello Blessed Faithful!

If you are reading this post, welcome! This blog will be used to inform, edify and encourage the body of Christ about what is going on with the church in Egypt. We will be updating frequently and even posting whatever pictures we can barring any photos that might put our contacts overseas in danger. In our post 9/11 world, we can't be too safe.

Feel free to browse, leave comments and continue to pray for us!

Blessings!~

Matthew Kim
Blessed International Fellowship
Orange County, California