July 29, 2002

We’re sharing stories, pictures, and videos in our talks. Fr. Aktham speaks from Zababdeh.

A funny thing happened on our way out of town - at least, it's funny now. Marthame, the Atlanta boy, the home-grown wunderkind, took the wheel and headed us out on the highway. About an hour out of town, he suddenly realized that we should be on I-75, not I-85. At that point, no matter what we did, we had lost at least two more hours.

We headed on through the Blue Ridge Mountains, a beautiful - but slow - drive. We still managed to arrive in time - barely - to meet with some folks for dinner before our talk at University Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. One of their members had contacted us through our friend Fahed Abu-Akel, interested in learning more about the situation of the Palestinian church. Chapel Hill happened to be on our way north, and so we stopped through for the night. It was a good crowd, engaged, but there was one man who appeared to come by himself and spent most of the time just taking notes. Our Middle East-influenced paranoia convinced us that he was with the Mossad (Israel's CIA), and that we won't be able to return in August (perhaps we've been in the Middle East a little too long...).