september 29, 2007 to Red Sea and Sinai

Lauran Lloyd
September 29, 2007
This morning was our last morning in Cairo. We drove through the city and saw the citadel built by Saladin and the mosque built there by Muhammad Ali. It was lit by 365 hanging lanterns; the carpets were over 50 years old; Muhammad Ali’s tomb was there. It offered a spectacular overlook of the city. After the mosque we went to a Christian church known as a hanging church, for it was built atop a tower. We also went to a Jewish synagogue (what other kind of synagogue is there?) where a priceless cache of Hebrew manuscripts were found. They believed that anything written in Hebrew is too holy to be thrown away or destroyed, so they keep it in a cabinet in their synagogues. This cabinet contained hundreds of years worth of manuscripts – some only business transactions, but also scripture and other sacred texts. It was invaluable to historians.
We ate lunch at a restaurant overlooking the Nile. It was a beautiful view and they had delicious pitas they cooked in a stone oven right there! We enjoyed the time by the Nile while we could, then we piled into the bus and headed out for our six hour bus ride. Laura and I spent a good portion of it up front listening to Brother Huntington’s array of music – classic oldies, ABBA, wicked awesome Arabic pop, etc. Those of you who have not yet had that pleasure definitely need to check it out – they man’s got great taste! We had two rest stops over the course of six hours in which we stocked up on ice cream bars, orange soda, etc.
We pulled into our stop and ate dinner around 8:30. Typical food except for the now-famous “camel potatoes” (or cow, depending on your nasal preference. Those of you who tasted them know what these descriptions are talking about). Dinner was followed by sacrament meeting. We ended up meeting in the room our previous JC programs had met – the groups that came to Sinai before the JC was closed down. It was crawling with cats, but the meeting had a really good spirit about it. The talks were wonderful: Brooklyn discussed enduring, Carlee focused on trusting in the Lord, and Trevor based his on 2 Nephi 2:25 and joy. It was a great meeting.
Supposedly we were supposed to go to bed after that (it was now about 11:00) and our call time in the morning was 1:00am. Hmm… 2 hours. I ended up staying up until 12:20 or so talking, reading, etc. and felt pretty good going on 40 minutes of sleep. A lot of people sprinted into their sheets to catch as much sleep as they could, while many others gave up and just pulled an all-nighter. Either way we chose to spend the night, we were more or less ready for Mount Sinai the following morning.