U.S. congressmen have nominated Coptic Christian ministry leader Maggie Gobran for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. Affectionately known as Mama Maggie, the former Cairo university lecturer is living out Christian ministry by caring for the destitute people of Cairo’s teeming slums.
Born into a prominent middle-class Egyptian family, Gobran was a computer science professor at Cairo’s American University until she paid a life-transforming visit to the city’s slums. The result was Stephen’s Children Ministry, the charity she founded in 1989 to assist Christian and Muslim children alike and also aid impoverished rural communities in Upper Egypt.
At last year’s Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit meeting near Chicago, the soft-spoken Gobran said: “You know, we don’t choose where to be born, but we do choose either to be sinners or saints. To be nobody or heroes. If you want to be a hero, do what God wants you to do.”
The current upsurge in Islamic fundamentalism is making it hard for this Christian charity to operate, and especially to help needy Muslim children. For more on Gobran’s ministry, go to www.stephenschildren.org.
