"Squeeze the World"

I just looked up Paul's journey to Malta in Acts. The ship took sail shortly after Yom Kippur and hit ground two weeks later. So, taking the different calendars into account, that could have been exaclty this time of the year. I just saw an amazing flash of lightening.

We had planned for today to be a day of visiting the town and the different sites nearby, but several consecutive changed that. We did take some time during a break in the rain to walk along the beach, and that was very lovely. Very windy, but still gorgeous. It's amazing to watch the waves during a storm and imagine Paul or Odyseus weathering the downpour and waves.

A guy who works at the hotel has been constantly showing up and thinks that he is very charming. It's been a little awkward, but we avoid him as much as possible. I nearly cut his fingers off the other day when he was a little tipsy. Intoxication is no excuse for having touched my computer! I actually realized yesterday that I have not been a full day without it, but this only shows my devotion to keeping people informed! And as much as people seem intimidated by it being a Mac, they are constantly drawn to gaze upon it in wonder. Indeed.


Here's the Mediterranean for you!

Well, we just checked into our hotels and our adventures have already begun! It started out with our bus being about ten minutes late to pick us up, which wasn't a problem since we had planned at least thirty minutes of leeway. The bus was full for the first half of the ride, but after stopping by an army base we finally had seats. As we neared Haifa, where we planned to catch a train, we realized that the approximate travel time didn't include extreme traffic jam. The trip which was estimated at an hour ended up lasting over two and a half. After pushing and lunging through the crowd at the train station, we stood next to the rail and tried calling the travel agency to make sure our plane tickets were still available. We had just missed a train to the airport, and the next one would arrive at the station at the same time we were supposed to arrive at the airport. So it was another forty minutes of anxious waiting. When the correct train pulled into the station, the massive amount of soldiers was completely overwhelming, especially since we were still unsure if it was the correct train. We ended up being literally shoved into an overflowing car as the conductor closed the door. So we were standing in the step between the door and several soldiers for about half an hour, occasionally getting nudged by a rifle or watching people playing with ammo magazines. Eep! Most of them got off at the stops before the airport, so we had a moment of luxury in chairs.

We managed to get to the airport alive, and thought that we had everything under control until it came to Israeli security. Every place we had visited, person we had talked to, etc, was under question. Then they scanned and rescanned our possessions as we anxiously watched the status updates on the planes. We explained to the head interrogator all our delay woes, and she ended up arranging someone to escort us through the rest of security. Thanks to her help, we got to the gate with twenty minutes to spare. Hooray! The plane of course delayed as well, apparently because the runways intersect, but the rest of it was rather tame.

*Later*
Man, this place is amazing. We've made friends with a receptionist who has given us several tips for where and how to travel in the area. The hotel is ridiculously luxurious, and you can't even tell that it's Turkey. So, thanks to our new friend, we'll get to investigate the town center and some ruins nearby. The mountains are really pretty, hopefully I'll get some good pictures later.

Somehow, I've been having strange issues updating. Hopefully things will be different today. This last week I helped supervise a school field trip to the Golan. It was a pretty tame one, and not into the "real" Golan. There's a site of refurbished ruins, and it's been fixed up rather well, and not unlike Nazareth Village. The kids got to pick and crush their own olives into olive oil. The picking process was rather hazardous, they had a method of smacking branches with rakes which was not ideal for rowdy fifth and sixth grade boys. We also went to a museum that had a presentation on Gamla, where the last Jewish revolt against Rome began. It's called the "Masada of the north" and has a tragic past to it.

I've been busy entertaining a visitor the last couple days, she's an Australian girl who has been volunteering in the IDF for a few weeks. She's been doing things from packing provisions to picking up ammo along the buffer zone. She usually lives in Ber Sheva, down in the Negev, and I'm considering visiting her down there sometime. I haven't gone anywhere south of the Dead Sea yet and it would be a cool area to explore, especially now that I know someone there.

But, anyway, I'm going to Turkey tomorrow so I might not be able to update for a while. I'll come back bearing pictures!

I uploaded my pictures from my Haifa trip, and they are here for your enjoyment.

Alright, so I took a trip to Haifa yesterday and had QUITE an experience. I was with two girls from the congregation, and one had been to the city before, but wasn't familiar with any of it. The monit (shared taxi) dropped us off as a bus station, and we had no idea where we were going. We knew that we wanted to swim and see the city, so the girls started asking people how to get to "the center." Since Haifa's a big city, everyone had their own idea of what "the center" was, so we ended up boarding a bus that looked right and meeting a lady who told us that she would show us the right place. So, she took us to a street and told us there were good stores, the beach being over ten kilometers away. So we found a nice park and were trying to find our next plan of action when we met a couple from the Phillipines. He had been in Haifa for a year and was showing his lady friend around, so he invited us to see a few sites with them.

A little later, we found ourselves going to a nice garden with a huge Bahai temple on top. That was... interesting. We were given a long list of instructions when we entered (don't drink water, don't chew gum, don't spit, don't touch the water... etc), and there was a big fence on one side blocking several stairways leading to the temple. We got to the fence for a better view and met a man from North Ireland about to ascend. He told us a few things about our inner prisons and we moved on. Our new friends (not including the Bahai guy) took us to a hill for a beautiful view, then he dropped us off in the right area of town, giving us directions toward the beach. The directions included paying for another sheroot (another term for shared taxi) so we opted out and walked, of course getting lost along the way. We came to a place marked "Quiet Beach" and saw that it was quiet because it didn't have the usual accomodations of a beach (bathrooms and sand) but it did have a creepy guy who tried to follow us for a while. After we lost him and asked several other people for directions, we got on the right path and found it. Hooray! Swimming in the Mediterranean was pretty amazing, and it was absolutely gorgeous. I'm having some internet issues again but hopefully I'll get my pictures up soon.
After our time at the beach we grabbed falafel and realized that we needed to get back home somehow. Some taxi drivers tried to rip us off, then we ended up grabbing a bus back to the station, which is where I realized that my wallet was not with me. Then we were rushing frantically about the place and the coordinator of the station told us to go back to Tiberias, and he'd call about it later. So we went back, and I sat next to a soldier who tried to convince me to learn Russian, then I waited at the station for the phone call. The results came in negative, and I am still mourning the loss of my wallet.

Enough talk of that, I'd rather not dwell on it. The rest of the trip was great and I shall not let my memories be tarnished by the situation. Today, T and I took the bus to Nazareth to help out for a day. It was fun to revisit and see everyone again. Things seem to be picking up again and if we get more rain it will turn all green and pretty in the spring. Again, the trip back was the most exciting part. The bus was insanely late, so we were standing in the middle of downtown Nazareth for about fifteen minutes during the last night of Ramadan. Oy. I've never actually gone onto "the Ave" during Apple Blossom, but this seemed to be the Middle Eastern version of it. The most unnerving thing was that little Arab boys were running between cars shooting each other with pellet guns. I still find it a little uncomfortable when soldiers walk by with guns, so this was just crazy. Also, firecrackers were being let off up and down the streets, giving a nice war-zone atmosphere to the whole scene. I don't get how a society can allow it, especially in their situation.

Tomorrow I have time off, so I plan on devoting it to Hebrew studies and catching up on my sleep, with some socializing on the side. Oh yeah, and fixing my connection. Blarg.

For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.
--Ephesians 2:18-21 ESV

Today was an all-church meeting for the Galilee region. It was great to see believers from Nazareth to Haifa all together for worship, food and fellowship. It felt like home since we met in the open air of a new growth forest with the weather being equivalent to an early Septemberish Wenatchee Valley. There were always two pastors in front, one speaking Hebrew and the other Arabic, as translators were scattered. There were large areas for English and Russian translations, and then the less represented languages sat clustered around their own translator. We had worship in both Hebrew and Arabic, but then we sang all together in our own language "King of Kings, Lord of Lords" (I don't know if there's an official name for it). It's an underrated song for it's simplicity, but hearing the different voices in unison was pretty amazing. The message was appropiately about Identity.

After the service was a huge potluck, then denominational tug-of-war which was all good. I actually missed the tug-of-war because I was exploring the forest more. I think only in Israel do forests include cacti and olive trees. There were some pretty impressive ant colonies and I almost considered dissecting a cactus, but I didn't have any band-aids on hand. Afterwards, I was invited to a day-trip for Haifa tomorrow, which I'm pretty excited about. The only other opportunity I've had to visit Haifa was near the beginning of the war, so I've only had a glimpse of it.

So I started working at the school in Tiberias yesterday. There are less than twenty students, ranging from first grade to sixth, all fluent Hebrew speakers. Some of them are immigrant families, and there are even a couple Russian girls. Anyway, yesterday my big job was cleaning and defrosting the refrigerator, and I organized three bookshelves. Today, though, I started the morning out playing tennis with the kids, and of course I was put with the troubled boys, meaning that I spent the whole time trying to convince them to hit it to me and not over the fence. So that was pretty exhausting, then after two hours of that we went back to the school, and I cleaned the bathrooms, did a lot of photocopying and organized more books.

There is a boy there with some mental disabilities who I will be helping, his mother comes to the school with him to supervise but I'll try to relieve some of the work from her, and I'll be helping the students learn English. The principal also offered for me to teach a class now and then, but we'll see what happens. So far it's been good, and once I can remember their names and communicate sufficiently, it'll get even better.

The main difficulty right now is actually transportation, but I think I might start using the bus on occasion. That way I'm not burdening them and I can do shopping in Tiberias after school gets out. Plus I can work on my Hebrew while traveling, which is next to impossible when stuffed into a van.

Next week I'm planning a trip out of the country with a friend, possibly to Bulgaria. I'd like to thank the anonymous donors back home, you make these things possible and it is such a blessing. I wish I could tell you how much it means. I am so blessed to have so many wonderful friends and such a great community back home. I miss you all!

We had the first rains today. There were several different downpours starting from early afternoon to evening. It was pretty exciting because each one was a cloud burst with hardly any transition at all. Everything would be calm, then rain would smash everywhere, then it would be still and shiny again. Other than watching rain, I finally got internet hooked up to my place and I have been so happy! Unfortunately, there seems to be a strange filter on the service which has been making downloads and uploads difficult, so I'm not sure what to do with that. I'd like to take a break from the constant misunderstandings in phone calls, but I really would like the service I was expecting from them. Such a difficult life... sort of :)

EDIT:Here are my pictures from Jerusalem!

I am exhausted, but the trip was great. The crew was made up of 2 Brits, 2 Yanks, 1 Fin, 1 Fin-Israeli, 1 Romanian Israeli, 1 Colombian and an Israeli hitchhiker we picked up on the way. She seemed to think that we were all crazy, but she was grateful enough for people willing to take her all the way to Jerusalem. The car ride was beautiful, we drove next to the Jordan Valley most of the way and then the ascent into Jerusalem is absolutely striking, especially at night when the lights stretch across the hills. I wish I could have captured it all with my camera, but even then it's something you have to experience yourself.

The conference itself was great. I heard my first authentic New Yawk accent while waiting to get in. Even at a conference of international Christians, all lines in Israel are the same. Shuffle and lean or you're sifted to the back. There was more diversity than anything I've been to, in people as well as performance. Most of the time was spent in music and dancing, and the costumes and styles were gorgeous. The PM made a video appearance and there were a few other bits of ceremony, but those were glossed over by the crowd. They said that 250 Holocaust survivors were in attendance, and I met one afterwards. Actually, we took her home, too. She was an amazing lady with an incredible amount of energy and a wit to match our English driver.

After the conference (of which I shall be posting pictures, but I'm having difficulty with the whole "monthly limit." I think I'm going to make another account, but I haven't been able to get around to it quite yet.) We went racing around Jerusalem while the driver pointed out various pieces of interest. We walked around the Artists' Colony (beautiful!) and tried to get into the Old City but all the entrances were blocked because of Ramadan. We ended up on the Mount of Olives and saw a great view of the city. It was about midnight then and we stopped for dinner (ha!) at a little place outside Jericho. The rest of the journey was a blur of bouncing around in the back of the Jeep, but the whole time was a great experience, and it's been a superb Succot!

I guess I'm going to Jerusalem tomorrow! There's a gathering of international believers from across Israel and I'll be there! I'm not sure about all the details, but from what I've heard it sounds like it will be quite an experience, so I'm excited. Hopefully I'll get some great pictures of it all.

This morning I walked around AQVNT and got some shots of the succahs. It was a little hard since some of them are back behind houses, but at least this can give you an idea of the place. Flickr

This week we are celebrating the festival of Succot, the feast of booths. Though it's first decreed in Leviticus, Deuteronomy 16:13-17 has a better description of the event. It's a very social time for Israelis, as people enjoy potlucks at each other's house and eat in the sukkas. Since Jews don't exactly celebrate Christmas, it's the holiday where most go all out decorating, and the day before cars were driving by with palm branches on the roofs like we do with christmas trees.

For some geographical context, this is a harvest holiday, so the whole idea of celebrating and feasting together is very welcome! It's also nearing the end of the dry season, so there are often many ties to water when it's mentioned in the Bible. It was the last day of Succot when Jesus proclaimed "if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water." (John 7:37-8) And most of Israel is gathered together in Jerusalem celebrating during that time, so it was probably quite a scene.

Enough recycling bible study material. I went to a meal last night that included a short discussion, then I visited the local messianic congregation this morning, then there was a study in Isaiah tonight, and I'll probably visit the Nazareth Nazarene church tomorrow morning. I'll probably get a lot more throughout the week as I visit other people and their sukkahs.

Other than eating, I've mostly been busy with trying to learn Hebrew (I almost have the aleph-bet down) and getting to know my way around the place. Once I'm able to hook my own computer to the internet, I'll upload some pictures to show you more. I've only ventured into Tiberias once since I moved, but I think I'm going to like the place. It's much better now that it's cooling somewhat and it isn't quite as humid. It's so strange to be so hot in October, I'm still wearing tank-tops and sweating. Also, I chopped up an Israeli salad yesterday with a dull knife and I was rather proud of myself, though I would much prefer a sharp knife because it's a lot of chopping. In all, it's been a rather pleasant time!

Things are heating up in Gaza, this time between Palestinians. It's depressing, but as I'm looking through the news, it seems like I'm safer here than going to school in the States. Even in the Amish country. I just don't get it.

Anyways, I've moved into AQVNT and I've broken my Yom Kippur fast with french toast and a banana. I'm glad that I was here for it. I guess it's tradition for people to pull their lawn chairs into the middle of the street and sit there hanging out all night. Since nobody's supposed to be driving after sun down, I guess you might as well. Some families in the community have a different tradition of walking down the stretch of highway next to AQVNT. It was a fun time and I got to meet a bunch of people. I'm looking forward to just hanging out in the neighborhood and taking nice walks around the place. Here's a great quote from last night:

girl: "Daddy, he's English!"
mom: "yes dear, that's why he talks funny."

I just knew some people who would appreciate that :)