Spencer County coach John Howie reflects on his summer mission trip to Egypt
By John Herndon, 110forChrist.com
TAYLORSVILLE, Ky. – John Howie has always been a relationship-first, game-second kind of basketball coach.
It might be the one trait, above all others, that has turned Howie’s Spencer County girls’ basketball program into a perennial Eighth Region contender and has earned him numerous accolades as one of Kentucky’s best.
And that same trait is what made John Howie’s second cross-cultural mission trip a success.
Howie, along with his daughter Alyssa, joined 13 full-time staff members from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes on a 10-day mission to Egypt, sharing their love of sports and, most of all, the love of Jesus Christ in a nation where the state religion is Islam and only 5 to 15 percent of the population adheres to Christianity, according to Wikipedia.
“We never had any issues,” Howie said last week. “I never felt unsafe. The people were very friendly and very respectful.”
And Howie’s group made every effort to respect the laws, customs and religion of the host country.
“There were 15 of us that went and split up into three groups,” he said. “It was kind of like three different ministries going on. One was kind of a ministry of a sports camp. You couldn’t say anything (about Christianity). You couldn’t even breathe a word of Jesus or anything like that.
“Another group of five were mentoring coaches. It wasn’t just about coaching sports but about coaching to lead people to Christ.
“The third group was the group my daughter and I were in and it was part of a group of kids that went to a lot of different camps, soccer camps, and traveled. We would work with them and then went to a kids’ camp for four days.”
And through it all, it was about building relationships.
“We had a group of kids that got to know us ebery day for the four days,” Howie said. “THen we had places we went to for just two hours at a time and there would be anywhere from 15 to 50 kids in a group in a soccer academy. Everything we did was in academies like a soccer academy or basketball academy. We spent most of the week going to different academies. It was just an unbelievable.”
Howie said the Egyptian children got a kick out of watching him play soccer, which is the country’s most popular sport. “I was a beginner but went through the drills and they could laugh,” he said. “But one of the girls in our group (Beth Massey) was a very high level soccer player. She is from Oldham County and she played at Georgetown (College). … When she went through the drills and was very good and the children were like ‘Wow!’”
Howie had gone out of the country before, traveling to Ghana with some members of his Lady Bears basketball team in 2019. Also on that trip was former Spencer County FCA leader Roxane Perry, who also traveled to Egypt and is now a full-time member of the organization.
“This trip was completely different,” Howie said. “In Ghana, the poverty was extreme. We didn’t see the poverty we saw in Ghana. It was like being in Louisville or Taylorsville or Lawrenceburg. The kids had everything. They were like middle class. In Cairo, it was like having camp with our kids, not knowing what their background was but just loving them.
“The two things in Cairo were the Muslim part. You didn’t know if they were from a Muslim family, so you had to be careful some place. And the other for me, I was in awe of beking around locations you read about in the Bible. You saw The Pyramids.It was different.”
Howie’s group was noticeably different in from the persons who called the historic country home. “Definitely,” he smiled. “People noticed you. They were very nice. There were a lot of places where the people would run up and want to take their picture with us. Seeing the younger girls’ reactions to our younger girls was almost movie star-like.”
But there were major cultural differences, even with other Christians. Howie said his group visited a Coptic church. “The guys could walk on the altar,” he said. “This was a Christian church. But the girls had to go to a different entrance and put on a skirt.”
Most of all the influence of Islam was so great. Howie said that four times a day the calls would go out from the mosques for the people to pray. With the camps, the rules were clear regarding whether the FCA group could talk about Christ or not.
“When I went to Ghana, I could have walked the streets (talking about Christ,” Howie smiled.
But just like the trip four years ago, the trip to Egypt was about relationships.
“At the end of the day, children are children,” he said. “They love people who love them and just to see them through sports get to know you and have a relationship with you and allow you to preach the gospel and teach them.
“I shared the gospel more in 10 days than I have in my whole life. In some ways, that is very embarrassing. But I am also so thankful we were given that opportunity. Children are just special.”
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