Lenten reflection

Getting over ourselves

By Garry Cox
Sacramento Presbytery Joining Hands Against Hunger

“Get over yourself” was an old phrase used by teens to chide their friends into not being preoccupied with their own problems. It was an encouragement to think of others or to at least get some perspective on their issues. Joining Hands is a project about “getting over ourselves” by encouraging us to live with the issues and concerns of people who are in a totally different context and life. In Sacramento our connection with India is an exercise in that direction. We are connected with people of an ancient culture who are struggling to live healthy, productive and sustainable lives in the midst of a globalized world. We are trying to think in different ways to support their struggle. Keep reading.

Family ties bind Egypt and Iowa for generations

In Cairo, Elizabeth Smith, Margaret Magill, Dot Turner and Ann Turner relax at a museum in Cairo.

Dot Turnbull hasn’t had to brush the dust off her shoes once she comes indoors for more than 40 years now — since she left the ancient, narrow and sandy streets of Assiut, a city crammed centuries ago between the Nile and the baking Egyptian desert. Or watched Africa’s steamy ball of a sun sink down below the river, shimmering in heat so palpable it is nearly visible to the naked eye. Or wakened to the staccato voice of the mu’azin, as the Muslim call to prayer cracks the morning stillness, compelling the faithful out of bed and onto their knees.

She’s 83 now and long retired to the perpetual breezes of the California coast, living in a retirement center where she has seven other former missionaries to Egypt as neighbors. Keep reading.