Yesterday I took a different route home from work, as I wanted to visit three bike shops to get some idea of costs of a cycle to get me to and from work, as I live 6kms (4 miles) away from work, friends and shops.  Seems that around 600NIS (£100) will get me a new simple bike, with used ones fairly scarce amongst cycle businesses, one wanting 450 and another 1000, one did give the option of buying back the bike for half what you pay for it which seems like a sensible idea for volunteers in the country like me.   I am going to leave it for the moment and look at any privately offered ones.   Heck, there is a bike with a flat tyre outside my flat owned by the neighbours that hasn’t looked like it has been ridden in a long time.   The main things I am looking for is cheap to buy and cost of ownership, something simple, as I haven’t really owned a bike since I was a child, and something low cost to fix when it needs mending so has standard type parts etc.   I don’t really have the funds to do this right now but am praying for a source of money of some kind for this.

Anyway on the way home I got thrusted a leaflet outside some shops in Talpiyot by some young lad who looked about 16 or so,  I just gave a quick ‘toda’ and took it from him, he then said something in Hebrew back, when I asked if he could speak English, he just said thanks I took his leaflet as he was counting on this job to make some money, when I looked it was for bedroom furniture, I mention I was volunteering for a charity so I wasnt really his target market, we had a good chat for a few minutes as he was surprised seeing an British person here, lately you probably saw on the news UK/Israel relationships has been strained since the row over a faked passport allegation was in the news this week.  It was good for me as a foreigner to chat to someone genuinely curious why I was here to work for free showing Israel support from Christians.  For those new to my blog, as I have mentioned before I came here not to convert or evangelise but to show love and practical assistance in volunteering here, for me, I have a ‘backroom’ role doing IT support, to provide the main workers with the tools to do their role in providing food, assistance with new immigrants and sponsoring towns being some of the many things Bridges for Peace does.  It was quite a encouragement to see this young lad’s eyes light up at the thought there are foreigners coming to help when the media paints a grim picture of Israel being a much disliked nation amongst a lot of the world.