In June of 2022, with the help of generous donors, we provided initial funds to begin the  construction of a large workshop/shop that will be owned and operated by the Bedouin women living at the trailhead leading to the Cave of St. John Climacus. This location is ideal for attracting Christian pilgrims as well as hikers of other faiths who want to visit the cave of St. John Climacus and other ancient hermitages and Sinai food forest gardens in the immediate vicinity. We are now undertaking a major fundraising effort with the hope or raising the remaining funds needed to complete the construction of this building, and to equip it with new sewing machines, shelving, work tables, and other necessary items that will aid the women in their sewing and embroidery. 100% of the donations given for this purpose will be going towards completing and equipping this very important construction project.

St. Catherine's Monastery has worked to help the women of the Jebeliya Tribe for many years by providing them with sewing machines and equipment, teaching them how to improve the workmanship of their products, and helping them sell overseas. Father Moses of St. Catherine's Monastery, who was responsible for this oversight, needed to retire in 2016. To his great sorrow, no one was available to replace him. Since January 2018, we took over this task with his blessing, on the monastery's behalf. One of the goals we were asked to fulfill, was to help the women become more self-reliant and able to continue even without continuous outside help. To fulfill this request, we have been giving them new designs, inspired by the Sinai Christian heritage, that are attractive to Christian pilgrims. As pilgrims in Sinai see and become aware of these embroidery designs, there has been rapidly increasing demand for them there. In order for the women to keep up with this demand, they need better, larger facilities to work, and a much larger shop for sales. They also need the means of transferring the designs onto linen, requiring diode laser engravers and a laptop computer.  

This embroidery project currently provides work among the entire community of skilled hand-embroiderers of the Jebeliya Tribe who live in close proximity to St. Catherine's Monastery. Through the construction of this workshop/shop, sales should increase and more opportunities for work should become available, keeping the Bedouin women adequately employed, while they practice a traditional tribal art form as they care for their children and families. 

Progress on the new workshop/shop!

​

"As the Israelites lacked nothing in the desert, when they left the slavery of the pharaoh and Egypt, the same is with you. God will take care of you, who will go to the mountains for freedom in Christ, to run away from the Egypt of this world, and the slavery of pharaoh – the Antichrist. You should know this will take you to the Promised Land – Paradise, and will brighten you like the sun.”
In his last days Monk Gabriel preached only love and taught to all his visitors with tears in his eyes:

“Remember, God is love. Do as much kindness as you can to save yourself by this kindness. Be modest, as God bestows mercy upon His humble servants. Repent of your sins and don’t wait for “tomorrow”, as it is the trap of the Devil. Love each other, as loveless man cannot inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.”
"In the End Days a man will be saved by love, humbleness and kindness. Kindness will open the gates of Heaven; humbleness will lead into Heaven; a man, whose heart is filled with love, will see God."

-St. Gabriel of Georgia
​
Photos taken of Mount Saint Catherine from the summit of Mount Sinai at sunset.

​​Now, more than ever, as Orthodox Christian believers we find ourselves feeling trapped in an increasingly hostile culture. The security and freedom we have known and have taken for granted are steadily disappearing. How do we spiritually prepare ourselves and our families for the difficult times we sense are coming?

This short book points to the Exodus as the answer and pairs quotations from Holy Scripture and the Saints  along with photography of Sinai. It also looks to the Bedouin people and their ancient culture as an example of simplicity. It is our hope that this book will both be spiritually edifying, offering encouragement and practical direction, as well as visually uplifting, capturing the dramatic beauty of Sinai and its people. 
The PDF version of this talk/book is available for download below:

exodustalkweb.pdf


​

From The Prologue from Ochrid, by St. Nikolai Velimirovic:

Volume 4

"You cannot be or become spiritually intelligent in the way that is natural to man in his pre-fallen state unless you first attain purity and freedom from corruption. For our purity has been overlaid by a state of sense-dominated mindlessness, and our original incorruption by the corruption of the flesh." ~ pg. 212, #1.

​"Only those who through their purity have become saints are spiritually intelligent in the way that is natural to man in his pre-fallen state. Mere skill in reasoning does not make a person's intelligence pure, for since the fall our intelligence has been corrupted by evil thoughts. The materialistic and wordy spirit of the wisdom of this world may lead us to speak about ever wider spheres of knowledge, but it renders our thoughts increasingly crude and uncouth. This combination of well-informed talk and crude thought falls far short of real wisdom and contemplation, as well as of undivided and unified knowledge." ~ pg. 212, #2.

"By knowledge of truth understand above all apprehension of truth through grace. Other kinds of knowledge should be regarded as images of intellection or the rational demonstration of facts." ~ pg. 212, #3.

"If you fail to receive grace, it is because of your lack of faith and your negligence; if you find it again, it is because of your faith and your diligence. For faith and diligence always conduce to progress, while their opposites do the reverse." ~  pg. 212, #4.

"Nothing so converts anger into joy and gentleness as courage and mercy. Like a siege-engine, courage shatters enemies attacking the soul from without, mercy those attacking it from within." ~ pg. 214, #13.

"To try to discover the meaning of the commandments through study and reading without actually living in accordance with them is like mistaking the shadow of something for its reality. It is only by participating in the truth that you can share in the meaning of truth. If you search for the meaning without participating in the truth and without having been initiated into it, you will find only a besotted kind of wisdom (cf. 1Corinthians 1:20)." ~ pg. 216, #22.

"Grace-imbued faith, energized by the Spirit through our keeping of the commandments, alone suffices for salvation, provided we sustain it and do not opt for a dead and ineffectual faith rather than for a living effective faith in Christ. To embody and give life to an effective faith in Christ is all we need to do as believers. But nowadays we who call ourselves orthodox believers have in our ignorance imbibed not the faith imbued with grace but a faith that is merely a matter of words, dead and unfeeling." ~ pg. 217, #28.

"The Trinity is simple unity, unqualified and uncompounded. It is three-in-one, for God is three-personed, each person wholly interpenetrating the others without any loss of distinct personal identity." ~ pg. 217, #29.

"God reveals and manifests Himself in all things in a threefold manner. In Himself He is undetermined; but through the Son in the Holy Spirit He sustains and watches over all things. And wherever He expresses Himself, none of the three Persons is manifest or to be perceived apart from or without the other two." ~ pg. 218, #30.

"Passion-embroiled states are foretastes of hell's torments, just as the activity of the virtues is a foretaste of the kingdom of heaven. We must realize that the commandments are activities producing effects, and that virtues are states, just as vices that have taken root are also states." ~ pg. 218, #35.

"As the first fruits of future chastisement are secretly present in the souls of sinners, so the foretaste of future blessings is present and experienced in the hearts of the righteous through the activity of the Spirit. For a life lived virtuously is the kingdom of heaven, just as a passion-embroiled state is hell." ~ pg. 219, #38.

There is a second story here that I now realize is also worthwhile to convey, besides the lives of Sinai saints, and that is the one of the Bedouin of the Jebeliya Tribe. Their way of life makes it starkly apparent what we in the West have largely lost. And that is simplicity, day-to-day trust in God's providence, as well as humble acceptance of suffering if that is God's will. They have an incredible amount of love within their family, that extends even towards us outsiders, and a strong sense of community with their extended family and greater tribe. The love the husband, Hussein, has towards his wife, Hoda, and vice-versa is amazing. He is grateful to God for her and feels she is more precious than any money to him. He fully realizes many people, who are far more wealthy than himself, are unhappy in their family life, while he is extremely happy and grateful for what he has. I have an incredible photo of him interacting with his niece who is disabled with cerebral palsy. It shows the intense love and tenderness between them. But I cannot show it publicly. The photos included in this post are also of his beautiful niece, which I do have permission to share.

I truly believe we, Christian as well as non-Christian, have lost something as a result of our crumbling culture and may not even realize it.
​

In January 2018, after working several days helping the monks of St. Catherine's Monastery harvest olives, one of the monks who we had become friends with, took us up to the hermitage of Sts. Galacteon and Episteme where St. Paisios of Athos had resided. He then brought us to the hermitage of Father Moses, which overlooked the monastery of St. Catherine's. Father Moses had been helping the Bedouin women living in the vicinity of St. Catherine's Monastery for years to get organized and improve their quality control so that their embroidery could be sold overseas. But he had to retire and the Bedouin women were left without help. By the providence of God, we were able to take over with Father Moses' blessing. We began small, working with a particular group of women he was most concerned about.

In January 2020, as we embarked on a hike out of the village of St. Katherine's towards the cave of St. John Climacus, a Bedouin woman with her young children came out from a little cinder-block house on the very edge of the village to ask us to come visit her for tea. We told her we would do so when we returned from hiking to the cave of St. John Climacus. When we did return, we were invited into her sewing room. We were amazed by the exquisite quality of her work. I also immediately felt a very strong connection with her. We purchased as many items as we could and it was my hope to return again, later in 2020. Unfortunately, Covid made that impossible.

I went to Sinai in February 2021, knowing the monastery and all facilities next to it, would be closed. So I made arrangements to stay in the village of St. Katherine. My original intent was to continue to work with the village of women Father Moses had first directed us to, but unfortunately, the interpreter who had been helping us, no longer was able to be involved. So instead, I walked to Hoda's house, the young mother and skilled seamstress, who I had met the year before by the trailhead leading to St. John Climacus' Cave.

She immediately recognized me as I walked to her house and was overjoyed. She told me that she asked her sister, Ada, three days before what might have happened to me, and Ada said, "Maybe she is coming?" It turns out, I began my long journey there on that very day.

Hoda is now my intermediary with all the Bedouin women Father Moses originally organized. We were able to employ the full 150 women community of embroiderers during our 2021 Spring Embroidery Project. Because they had been suffering so much financial hardship due to Covid, they were extremely grateful for the work. Hoda, in particular, is expecting her third child and did not have the money for prenatal care or the needed C-section (will be her third C-section). They have no insurance, so the unexpected income allowed her to get prenatal care and pay for the C-section.

These two trips were my 4th and 5th to Sinai. In every previous trip, I had stayed close to the monastery and my primary focus of activity involved the services and hiking to various holy places. This year, monastery services were unavailable and most of the hiking was closed by Egypt (though I did manage to make a couple of hikes anyway and will share photos later). So my primary focus of activity was with Hoda's family and her community. It actually was a great blessing. I had many fears and anxieties, still, regarding traveling in Egypt, safety, etc. and all of these were completely dispelled after spending so much time in the village of St. Katherine, walking everywhere on foot, and making the second trip completely alone. I felt safer there than I do here in north Texas.

Hoda's sewing room went from barren to crammed full of embroidered handicrafts as a direct result of our help. Glory be to God!

We are waiting on only one more illustration before the completion of the children's book, "St. Paisios the New in Sinai." We have begun work on the next children's book, "St. John Klimakos and the Ladder of Divine Ascent."