To Whom we go to build an new church building?

[Alfred Samuel]

Please help if you can.
If know somebody who can help; let me know.

Suez Evangelical Presbyterian Church Request:

Suez is one of Egypt 27 governorates. It is on the Red Sea. Suez Canal is named after its name. Its population is about 900000 (reaching almost a million). Christians are about 40000 forty thousands. It is a strong Islamic influence. It has five major districts with several new cities surrounding them.

Churches at Suez:
There are five Coptic Orthodox churches, two Catholics, one Christ church, one Faith Church, one Brethren church, and one Anglican (Episcopal) church where we worship temporarily. So you can notice the small number of churches serving the number of Christians.

Evangelical Presbyterian Church at Suez:
The Lord helped us to plant a new church at Suez. Started out of three people we reached to more than a hundred worshiping regularly and we are visiting more than 250 families. But we have no building. Can you imagine that a governorate of that size has no building for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (biggest of the protestant community in Egypt), while in some villages in upper-Egypt we have more than a church building? Evangelical Presbyterians are worshiping at Suez since 1942.

We applied to the authorities to allocate a piece of land to build a church building. The high authorities allocated the piece of the land in 1980 and by the time the previous church leadership went, the local authorities used the piece of land to plant a public garden or park, and the original land for parks or gardens are left empty tell now. There are many pieces of land can be allocated for church.

When I came to serve Suez five years ago; I discussed this matter with the governor of Suez, who is the same tell now. He asked the church to apply again. He considered it as a new request. We completed every thing required for allocation a piece of land to be building a new church. We presented the complete file five times. We reached to the president himself three times. Monthly we follow up the subject with the authorities. We received no reply. We are tired. We feel that they do not want to give us our right to worship according to the constitution and human rights. We asked them; if we do not have the right; to tell us in writing that we do not have the right to be allocated a piece of land to build a church. They refused, saying we are the country of freedom and democracy.

We do not think that Egypt has a freedom and democracy. We feel that we are persecuted. They do not give us our rights. We need somebody to help us. We love our country and we want to play our role. We registered the Evangelical Society with the government to serve the community.

We face difficulties with the government to allocate a piece of land and a permission to build a church. Former church workers applied to have a church building more than thirty years ago and still no positive reply. We applied five years ago to have a piece of land to build a church building and still waiting for reply.

With Love and Prayer
Sharing together the expanding of His Kingdom
Alfred F. Samuel
Pastor