September 28, 2001

Friday morning children’s fellowship time.

The time falls back one hour tonight, so Marthame headed over to the school to change the alarm program (the instructions are in English and German). He heard music coming from the old school, now the Bishop Carlson Hall. It sounded like a wedding! He walked in to find Sister Aimee and Abuna Aktham dancing with the children of the parish to contemporary Arabic Christian music. Friday morning is a gathering for the children ages 6-10. They do a Bible story and then have fellowship time together (including dancing, apparently). Abuna Aktham grinned and made Marthame promise not to send the footage to the Patriarch.

Today also marks the first anniversary of the current Intifada - there is much opinion that there is no longer much of an Intifada ("uprising" or "shaking off"), but there seems to be much political weight to be gained from the term, and so it has stuck as the name of the current struggle. Fortunately, things have remained quiet here, even today, but we expect the same cannot be said for much of the West Bank and Gaza.