On our last full day (for a few months, anyway) in Egypt

The most recent installment of the joint Hamblin/Peterson Deseret News column has appeared:

“The lotus flower is more than a simple water lily”

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The Interpreter Foundation is trying to make itself useful for this 2019 New Testament curriculum year in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

Here is an Interpreter Radio (audio) Roundtable — featuring Martin Tanner and Bruce Webster as panelists — for Come, Follow Me New Testament Lesson 2, “Be It unto Me according to Thy Word,” focusing on Matthew chapter 1 and Luke chapter 1:

“Audio Roundtable: Come, Follow Me New Testament Lesson 2: “Be It unto Me according to Thy Word”“

Here is an Interpreter Radio (audio) Roundtable — featuring Martin Tanner and Bruce Webster as panelists — for Come, Follow Me New Testament Lesson 3, We Have Come to Worship Him, focusing on Luke chapter 2 and Matthew chapter 2:

“Audio Roundtable: Come, Follow Me New Testament Lesson 3: We Have Come to Worship Him“

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The invaluable Robert Boylan of Ireland offers a useful note on “Recent LDS Works Addressing Macro-Evolution”:

http://scripturalmormonism.blogspot.com/2019/01/recent-lds-works-addressing-macro.html

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Here’s a really interesting and important short essay from the indefatigible Jeff Lindsay:

“Imagine Fewer Dragons (and More Data): Initial Reactions to the Film Believer with Dan Reynolds and John Dehlin”

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The rest of our tour group went to Alexandria today.  Five of us, though, stayed in Cairo — mostly because four of us had already spent several days in Alexandria before the rest of the group arrived.

We went out to the southern Cairo suburb of Ma‘adi for Latter-day Saint church services there.  It was fun to spend the first day of the new two-hour meeting block in the branch where my wife and I spent our first four married years.  The branch is more varied now than it was then.  There were several Sudanese members in the congregation, and one of the testimonies — it was, after all, Fast Friday — was given in Arabic.  The Gospel Doctrine lesson was taught bilingually, in both English and Arabic.  The Egyptian-born LDS translator was quite good.  I thoroughly enjoyed that.

Afterwards, we all five went to the home of the branch president and his family.  This was a treat for the son who has been traveling with us.  When our son was just a newly-baptized boy, the man who now presides over the branch here was a student with us in Jerusalem, and all of our children were extremely fond of him.  My wife and I had dinner with the branch president’s family when we first arrived in Cairo last week, before our son arrived, and today they very kindly had us all to lunch, along with the district president and his wife.  Great food and great conversation.

(For the record:  I don’t name my son or the branch president, etc., because I don’t want them to be attacked or contacted by my more hateful critics.)

Posted from Cairo, Egypt