I spent Thursday and Friday at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit, hearing the most extraordinary set of lectures/speakers I have ever had the pleasure to hear. If you are ever invited to attend, GO. Do not hesitate. Take two days off work to improve your walk and your work.
I wanted to talk about the GLS here in relation to mission. One of the speakers was Mama Maggie Gabron, a Coptic Christian. Mama Maggie is sometimes called "the Mother Teresa of Cairo" and with good reason. She has begun a ministry, called Stephen's Children, to help the poorest of the poor children living in the slums and garbage dumps of Cairo and it's neighboring cities. She has opened schools that now see more than 12,000 students in Kindergarten and elementary school, and is continually expanding this ministry.
What is most amazing about Mama Maggie, from a Western perspective, is that she is the youngest daughter of a respected Cairo doctor. She grew up in private school, travelling to Europe every year to keep herself in the latest fashions. Educated in Europe, she returned to Cairo to be a professor at the American University there. This is a woman who had it all. Everything. And she gave it up to become everything to the children of Cairo. It's such a remarkable story!
This morning, as I was helping one of Ardmore Elementary's Kindergarten teachers get ready for a new school year (Jubilee Service Day, yay!), I kept thinking of Mama Maggie and her kindergarteners. Children rescued from a life of filth, darkness, and oppression, because this one woman heard God call her, and obeyed. So extraordinary. So encouraging. So challenging.
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