A TRIP TO THINGS BOTH ANCIENT AND NEW
Our report from Egypt – April, 2026
Dear Friends,
I wrote in our last Hope News report about our upcoming overseas trip to Malta for a ministry conference of Middle Eastern leaders. We are now thankfully safely home. After meeting frontline Gospel workers on Malta, we went on to visit Egypt, where we saw many amazing sights and again, met incredible people serving the Lord there. The time on Malta had four highlights. One was a chance to speak in a seminar on the subject of the Kingdom of God and the Mystery of the Gospel. The talk was well received. Secondly, we met the conference speaker, who heads up a large training ministry across the Middle East region. He is a long-time servant of the Lord, with a humble heart. We hope to be able to support this work in the days to come. We also had an encouraging meeting with our partners from Manara International in Jordan, one of the truly effective and far-reaching ministries in the Middle East. Lastly, we met some caring servants of the Lord who work with a ministry called Stephen’s Children in Cairo.
We were able to spend a week seeing the wonders of ancient Egypt, thinking of the Exodus of the Jewish nation and Moses in a basket among the reeds on the Nile. The memories of the trip concluded with a stirring experience that points us to the future. Through a contact we made on Malta, we were able to include visits on our final Cairo day both to a ministry called,” The Cave Church” and to a ministry called Stephen’s Children. The Cave Church is considered the largest church in the Middle East. They meet in a huge cavern and have up to 8000 people attending on a Sunday. These are Coptic believers who represent the original faith community in Egypt. Indeed, the word “Coptic” means Egyptian. Near the Cave Church, there is a huge population of garbage pickers in an area called Garbage City. This community, mostly made up of Copts who could find no work in the largely Muslim population, took to collecting and sorting the garbage for most of Cairo. The living conditions for these people are abysmal to say the least. The smells alone, are overwhelming. The abuse people suffer is heart breaking. Into this environment, some 40 years ago, a young woman named Maggie Gobran, was moved by the Lord, to begin ministering to young children. They came to refer to her as “Momma Maggie”. She was a successful university professor and business woman. But at the Lord’s leading, she sold all she had and started an outreach in this area. As the years have passed, she has met with great success, even being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Today Stephen’s Children has some 500 staff people running day care centers, schools and orphan homes. We had the blessing of visiting one of their centers on our last afternoon in Cairo. What a refreshing joy it was, after being driven through the heart of the garbage village, to enter into a courtyard where a beautiful circle of 12 orphan girls, ages 3 to 6, rescued from the garbage village, have found a loving home. They stood in a semi-circle, joyfully singing songs to Jesus. Our hearts were drawn to them immediately. We were able to spend the next couple of hours in their midst, learning more of their history and their hopes for the future. What a sweet way to put an exclamation point on our Egyptian experience. We have made it a goal to offer some tangible help to Stephen’s Children this year as the Lord gives us grace.
We are grateful to the Lord for giving us these now treasured experiences along with a hope for new opportunities to be of service to Him. It has been your support over the years that has made it possible for us to do this work.
We are grateful.
With love in Christ,
Lance & Christie Thollander
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Hope Builders International.
PO Box 91359, Austin, TX 78709
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Your mission partners in India
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