Part VIII :: Nile Union Academy in Egypt
If you are planning on volunteering or teaching at Nile Union Academy in Gabal Asfar, Egypt, this chapter may be relevant to you. I recommend reading the entire story, however.
This was not our first trip to Egypt. I skipped my law school graduation to travel around Egypt back in 2013. Not too many people were traveling to Egypt at that time. During that period, my wife and I got to witness the hordes of Egyptians in Tahrir Square ousting President Morsi. We were staying at a hostel in the center of the action. From the rooftop veranda, we saw military helicopters flying over the city. Little did we know that my wife was pregnant at this time and that my new career in law would soon be exchanged for one in mission work.
This time things were a lot calmer. Egypt was now back on the tourist radar. As our plane landed in Cairo, I felt the same kind of excitement that I felt when we had landed in our home of Ukraine. It was thrilling to call Egypt home. As a child, I had always wanted to visit Egypt. I never, ever dreamed I would actually live there.
There was a part of me that wanted to believe that God had blessed me since I was working for him. Part of me wanted to believe that God was guiding me to somehow be a worthy missionary. I did not feel worthy at the time. As I read about fruitless missionaries, I strongly felt that these words applied to me. Yet, this would be a chance for me to prove myself and to use the gifts that God had given me to do well. I guess that’s the thing about a works-based religion. Everything is about proving one’s self, doing a good enough job, and earning salvation in any way possible (except through Jesus’s Sacrifice of course). It’s not about the heart, but about how you get others to believe just like you. Oh, how desperately I wanted a star in my crown!
Oh, how I wanted that shiny shimmering star. I think that some people get to the point where they will do anything for that first star. If you can’t get into Heaven without at least one star, and if Heaven is eternal bliss—paradise—then should not one literally do anything to get that first fiery celestial orb? Oh, what a monstrous God we must serve.
As I listened to the principal tell us that we should make it a goal to convert at least one student, I knew that just had to be me. That was my goal for the year. It wasn’t to ride another camel, climb Mt. Sinai, be a better teacher, learn about Egyptian culture, or learn the Arabic language. No, it was to get that first delicious star. As I saw the students arrive to register for the 2018 school year, I knew that I was going to guide one of them (and myself) to the promised land, just like a modern-day Moses. What a task! I taught four English classes at NUA. It was a far cry from what I was doing in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to teaching, I would be finishing my master’s degree in teaching. Looking back on my time in Ukraine, I found that I enjoyed teaching and that I hoped to make some kind of living from it.
Teaching at NUA was not a lucrative endeavor. In fact, it was like every other missionary experience in terms of pay. We didn’t go to get rich. I think that it paid about $25-30 each per month. The big thing for us was having our room and board covered. We had a cute little apartment at the edge of the school with a gate and a small yard. It wasn’t fancy at all, but we both liked it. It got a good amount of light and was private.
Like all of our previous missionary jobs, we did not fundraise or ask for any kind of donation. In fact, one day I felt guilty about getting any kind of financial help and asked the principal to not pay us. He was surprised at this, but I figured that it was probably something that everyone did. I felt that the money could be better used by the school.
While at the Egyptian school, I consumed Ellen White’s books during my free time. I reread a lot of her classics, including Desire of Ages and the Conflict of the Ages series. I felt a bit disconnected from other missionaries. At the time I didn’t know if it was due to my age, having a daughter, or something else. I realized that there were others older than me who were popular and well-received. And others were parents, too. I later realized it was likely because I was a first-generation Adventist. I was awkward in matters of religion. I found religion to be like a club. Some belong, and others don’’t. It’s just like in every other aspect of life and no different or special in that regard.
Looking at myself as a teacher, I believe I failed. I was very lax with discipline and the students steamrolled me. I had written a book about my experience at NUA, but also unpublished that due to how my beliefs had changed (it was another book chock full of Ellen White quotes related to my disastrous year as a teacher). Let’s just say that Egyptian students can be a handful. It’s a whole different culture. There were constant fights in the classroom, students playing cards while I taught, speaking over me, and leaving to spend the class period in the restroom or in the halls. I was at a complete loss when it came to discipline and I felt that nothing worked. I never yelled at them, and I felt that showing Christ’s love would compel them to behave.
I weaved religion into my classes. I wanted my senior class to learn Fanny
Bolton’s classic, Steps to Christ. For my youngest students, I coupled the learning of English with Gracelink cartoons about Jesus and his disciples. I aimed to win hearts and minds to Jesus and Ellen White and gain those beautiful first stars. Like a conquering Pharaoh, I imagined leaving Egypt proud of the fact that I had assured my entrance into the pearly gates of the celestial city of New Jerusalem.
My students seemed to like me quite well. Being that I never sent them to the principal's office or yelled at them, they could do anything and everything they wanted in my class. At the time it perplexed me and I felt woefully inadequate. I believed that I was probably a laughing stock to the other teachers. Another, much younger American teacher ran away with one of her students and later married him (there was a no dating policy for missionaries). Shortly after this, for no apparent reason, the principal and his family left in the night. Our school was without a principal and a head teacher. Chaos began.
The second half of the year tested our marriage. We were completely
overworked. For some reason the school started giving us our stipend and I said
nothing about it. I felt guilty about it but was too tired to care. The school seemed to be falling apart, and in the chaos of it, I was given an extra class. I now taught more than any other missionary—even though I had a child. Being that I was, in my eyes, the worst teacher there, it seemed even harder.
One of the celebrated life-long missionaries and school benefactors flew in from Australia to check on the school, as he did from time to time. He was an ex-vice principal and talked about possibly returning to his role. He gave me a book and told me that I should use it. I told him I would think about it. Protected from the Egyptian sun under the shade of a tree, I casually read through the book. “Would my seniors even understand this book?” I asked myself. It was one of those books that were full of literary language. The class would fight against it, as they had with other educational endeavors. There was no way to sugarcoat it: the level of English in the book was far too advanced for my seniors.
I continued to turn the pages, wondering what was so great about this book. “Why was this book suggested to me?” I asked. I thought back to how I had read that Ellen White shunned literature of all kinds. I had been trying to elevate their minds to the level of the Lord, not bring them down to everyday life themes. I had read how Ellen stated that fiction books would destroy a person’s spirituality, fever the imagination, unfit the mind for usefulness and dwarf the intellect, wean the soul from prayer, disqualify the soul for any spiritual exercise, spoil people for anything useful, and unfit women for being good mothers. Surely, this would not be the proper course for my students! Yet, I was confused. On one hand, the church matriarch had a vendetta against all things fiction. I should just continue with Steps to Christ and forget about this whole thing. Yet, on the other hand, this vice principal fellow had previous success with these students, and would likely be the school principal the next year. Here I was, just a stupid
missionary who wasn’t a great teacher and still had a lot to learn about this religion. I was determined to do right. Oh Lord, send me a sign (right?).
Then, I caught something as I was flipping through those pages. Something about the young men engaged in sexual acts. Was the hot Egyptian sun getting to me? Could I be seeing this right? I felt shame at even looking at the book, and I quickly closed it. I didn’t want anything to do with it, and I slid it into my backpack. At that moment I knew that there was no way I would speak to my seniors about such topics.
Yuck! I imagined Ellen White shaking her rod and writing that vice principal a letter if she was still alive. I guess I would be sticking with the Fanny Bolton book.
Later, I approached my wife and told her about the book. I didn’t really know what to say. I just felt dirty about it. It didn’t make sense to me. I felt with all the stigma over sexual abuse that happens with children and kids, those topics were just not the kind you would even bring up in class. The school didn’t even have a sexual education program. I wondered if I was being tested somehow. Perhaps the vice principal was feeling me out somehow? Needless to say, I returned the book to the library.
A couple of weeks later, I was asked if I used the book. I told the VP that it was too advanced for my students. I didn’t dare mention the sex scenes. The VP replied that if I took it slowly and let the students take turns reading, they would get it. No thanks.
Later on, I would read about how many Adventist academies are hotbeds of sexual abuse. A lot of it is hidden. Sadly, some accounts speak of administrators coercing people to remain silent about such abuse because it “makes the church look bad.” While Ellen White states that we should protect the image of the church at all costs, the truth is, if something is truly God’s, He will protect it. All abuse needs to be brought out into the light. There is no excuse to hide the abuse that happens against children (See “I Was A Seventh Day Adventist Episode 4: Church Skeletons” on Spotify). In addition, the book was culturally inappropriate to teach to a mixed-gender middle eastern class.
Even the far reaches of the land of pharaohs and pyramids were not out of reach for news about Bill Hughes and his visits to Countryside. I was glad to not have to be present to try to avoid his sermons. Being far away felt good. Yet, after the exhaustion from teaching and being apart from my wife, we decided that we would throw in the towel after the school year. A good percentage of teachers had left early and when one would leave, the workload for the few of us who remained compounded.
We had thought about where we wanted to live, and we both were keen on
returning to Ukraine. Yet, we wanted to visit family first. There were some things that we, and especially the ladies, missed about the United States. As we were all getting older, it made sense to stop for a while and spend some time. Our daughter wanted to be with family on her birthday and we thought spending Christmas there would also be nice. Therefore, we decided we would spend about four months with the in-laws before we moved back to Ukraine.
I marked off each day on the calendar as the end drew closer. I, along with the interim principal and the skeleton staff worked our asses off to keep that school running like a well-oiled machine. It was falling apart like one of my father-in-law’s old beater cars. Although I loved living in Egypt, I felt that I was not able to visit the interesting parts as much as I would have liked. I was ready for a break. I looked in the mirror and saw a man who had aged far too fast for one year. My wife and I noticed that our hair had started to go grey during this period. The school year had literally sucked the life out of us. In addition to teaching, I was also attending graduate school classes and writing reports, maintaining a 4.0 average, and trying to coordinate a business back in the United States. Add to that raising a daughter and running a household, and you can see why I was so parched.
When the holy Sabbath came around, we were so exhausted that we could
barely even muster the strength or desire to drag our weary bodies to the chapel.
Sometimes I would go alone while my wife spent some much-needed family time with our daughter. I wondered, if the Sabbath is truly a holy day, and the best day of the week, why is it so exhausting? Is this truly a day of rest, or have we lost touch with what rest means?
What is rest? I thought of how the principal would try to let the students swim on the hottest days. Sometimes the heat would be over 110F and the students would want to swim in the outdoor pool. Yet, the powers at the local conference forbade Sabbath swimming. “Parents, above everything take care of your children upon the Sabbath. Do not suffer them to violate God’s holy day by playing in the house or out-of-doors. You may just as well break the Sabbath yourselves as to let your children do it, and when you suffer your children to wander about and suffer them to play upon the Sabbath, God looks upon you as Sabbathbreakers” (Ellen White, Review and Herald, Sept. 19, 1854).
As a result, the students would disperse into the dorms to sleep away the
heat. Swimming on the Sabbath had long been an issue in various churches I had been to, and it was a focal point of many debates over the years. The more traditional and fundamentalist Adventists eschewed the idea of swimming on the Sabbath. Ellen White had rules for virtually every aspect of life, and the idea of swimming on the Sabbath was also something she had something to say about. Writing in the third volume of Selected Messages, Ellen stated that the Sabbath is “no day for pleasure-seeking, swimming, or ball playing.” Teachers would supervise the students after church and make sure that they did not make their way to the basketball area or the football (soccer) field. Many of the students didn’t understand it. I never understood how policing the choices of how a person finds pleasure is a Godly thing. Even now, I think that the Seventh-day Adventist
form of Sabbath observance, with its strict rules against what to listen to, what to watch, where to be, and what to do, is more in line with the Pharisees than with Jesus. To tell children that they can not find relief from the heat when relief is there, right in front of them, is sadistic. I wondered what the “Lord of the Sabbath” would have said if children would have came to Him and asked, “may we find relief from the sun?” For some reason, in the traditionalist Adventist mind, walking in nature is seen as a fine Sabbath activity, but once nature becomes wet, it’s a sin. In my mind, this appears to be the worshiping of a day.
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