The Monastery of St. Simon

This is part 1 of my touristy activities today. I signed up with a school group to go on a tour to the Monastery of St. Simon. When we were on our way, I started to suspect I had been here before. But when I came 7 years ago, it was for an evening service, not a tour. So this was nice.

I won't give the entire story in this post, but you can read about it here. It is quite a good story, and I encourage you to read it. Our tour guide was a short man, who described himself as an uneducated garbage collector (he doesn't have his certificate, or high school diploma). He was very kind, and shared how the Lord Jesus saved him from drugs and alcohol. He said that while he is very poor in this world, he knows that Jesus Christ has riches in the next world. Here's a short video of the guide:

The main church is set in a natural amphitheatre. The garbage collectors of the area hauled out the rubble to reveal this beautiful cave. It seats 20,000 people:

And taken from halfway up:

All over the monastery there are carvings in the limestone. The story goes that a Polish man named Mario, who is not an artist, has done the work by the grace of God. He stayed in the monastary for something like 8 years and now he lives in Cairo with his Egyptian wife. In the next couple pictures, there is another church with carvings all along the back wall, and other carvings on the outside of the mountain. All of these depict scenes from Bible stories.

This carving is not actually a carving. The story goes that as the rubble from the amphitheater was being cleared away, this picture of a mother and baby (Mary and Jesus, of course) miraculously appeared.

And this picture depicts the miracle of Mokkatam Mountain, and how the Christians in Egypt prayed for the mountain to move and it did.