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Voice to the Voiceless

A universal language---Sharon Rogers (below)
and former moderator Jack Rogers at Fairhaven.

Seldom does a dinner invitation turn into an invitation to visit another country, but then this was not an ordinary dinner. The occasion was the Ecumenical Dinner at the 213th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), held in Louisville, the year my husband, Jack, was elected moderator. We were asked to have dinner with representatives of our partner churches invited to attend this assembly.

I could not tell you now what we had to eat, but I cannot forget with whom we ate---Gendhi Ibrahim and Samiha Rizk, representatives from the Evangelical Churches of Egypt. Gendhi and Samiha are ministers in Alexandria, serving the Evangelical Church El Saray, in addition to a popular retreat center, a medical clinic and Fairhaven, a premier educational opportunity for children with disabilities, ministering to Muslim and Christian families whose children are generally excluded from public education.

As it happened, Gendhi was chair of the board of Beit al Salaam, the retreat center where in 1955, Jack participated in a work camp and built a concrete block dining hall in the desert. We discovered during our dinner that the retreat center had grown and now had tremendous outreach on the northern coast of Egypt. We couldn't resist Gendhi's invitation to come and see the camp and be reunited with some of the Egyptian work campers.

Sharon M. Rogers is adjunct faculty in communication disorders at California State University, Fullerton, and a special education consultant. She is the wife of former moderator, Jack Rogers, and a member of Pasadena Presbyterian Church in Pasadena, California.


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