Following last year's touching service trip to El Menya, another trip was planned for people of all ages across England to join The Good Shepherd and Mother of Light service in El Menya in July, 2009. 

Day 1: Our group from the UK all met at the train station, most of which had arrived together after having been at the Anaphora retreat. Our group included youth from London, Stevenage, Coulsdon, Manchester and Rotherham. After meeting,we joined the Shepherd and Mother of Light group and boarded our own carriage on the busy train. With the fuss of everyone boarding and the unbearable heat, people were anxious about the trip ahead. However, spirits were soon lifted with Agpeya prayers and singing praises and worship songs.

After 3 and a quarter hours, we finally arrived at our hotel, 'Horus', checked in and had dinner. We were briefed about the service we were about to take part in and were reminded that we were not going to serve but rather we will come away having been served by the people instead.

Day 2: After Breakfast the next morning, we were split up into groups of 5 or 6, including one older servant from the Shepherd and mother of light group and one older servant from the UK. HG Bishop Angaelos discussed what message we want to bring across as we enter each house. We were reminded to see Christ in every person we meet today and treat them with the same love and respect. We wanted to take this opportunity to explain to the simple people who we were about to meet that God's immense love for them is exactly like a parent's love for their child-something they value very highly and can relate to.

We then got into our groups and set off to Dairut, a 2 and half hour drive in the scorching heat.

After visiting the set amount of cases that each group had (on average 10), our groups reunited and exchanged stories of the cases they had seen at the motraneya (diocese gathering place) before heading back to the hotel. It was evident that everyone had been touched, whether it be those who experienced this for the first time or those who served last year and were reminded of how poor, yet thankful these people are.

After dinner, HG gave a small reflection on the story of the 4 friends and the paralytic. We discussed the importance of being close to God first before trying to bring anyone closer...

Day 3: We were handed out service T-shirts the night before which we were told to wear when we go to the sunday school convention. However first, we got up for the 7am mass at the beautiful church near our hotel.

Once mass was over and a little organisation was done, we were ready to all head to a hall where sunday school celebrations were held for graduating children who were taught to read and write by the church nursery as well as hymns. The heartwarming performances by the children were impressively in arabic, coptic and english!

We were then informed about the adults education project and heard testimonies of how much the adults have benifitted from this in the church. A special play was even put on by the adults to convey God's love and support, even in hard times.

After the celebrations, we were keen to get moving and start visiting houses again. The groups split up into different minibuses and headed off to various villages.

Most of the groups went back to the hotel around 7pm whereas a couple of groups passed by the motraneya and the Church of Abouna Abdelmessih before getting back to the hotel at 9pm.

After we freshened up and had dinner we had the option of going to visit the beautiful church of St. Abaskhiron El Kellini The Martyr, a church with a beautiful story in which the saint saved the congregation, who at the time were celebrating 7 weddings, from a massacre by moving the church from lower to upper Egypt where the church stands today.

Day 4-

Having a pretty flexible schedule compared to the day before, we were able to rest, get up for breakfast and spend some time packing before we gathered.

Groups were reshuffled for the painting activities planned so that we got to be with different people and different servants.

After being handed out gloves and face-masks, we were ready to go. We split into 2 buses and the buses dropped off each group at close surrounding villages.

We were given the equipment and shown where and how to paint most efficiently on the mud/clay walls and wooden doors. Since we spent a long time in each house, many groups sat with the families and held bible studies or just got to know them more by talking whilst painting.

Once a group finished painting the walls of their house, they often went and helped out another group until we all gathered and worked on one house together, even attracting the local community to come and participate with us!

With most of us covered in white paint (including HG!), we boarded the bus and sang our way back to the hotel where we cleaned up and had dinner before collecting our things and leaving to catch our train. We arrived at the station in good time (partly because the train was late) and we went home with our memories and lessons learnt from our trip, full of eagerness and excitement for next year's trip