I could of called this list 20… or 101 reasons……   I didn’t want to stick to a particular number, here is many blessings I’ve experienced in the 52 months I spent volunteering in Jerusalem:-

Things I’ve discovered:-

• Bus drivers don’t let you sit down before the start driving off
• Using rep training means I can better represent this country to those not aware of Israel’s background
• The Shuk is the most fun way of shopping
• Understanding different types of anti semitism in other ways, some more discreet, not just from the Nazis and Islamic world
• Seeing Barry and Batya Segal play Hebrew worship music live at my church
• Finding that cooking chicken is dead easy when you have a slow cooker.
• Sitting in garden during lunch break observing blackbirds, green parrots, woodpeckers and jays, and also an elderly bad tempered black Persian cat known as Mr Fluffy
• Going on a Zealous young adults group around different parts of the country
• Visiting Nazareth and Capernaum and imagining Jesus spent 17 years of his life in mostly secular work and bible study before doing ministry at 30
• Going hiking in the Galilee, Golan, Mount Hermon or the desert.
• Fixing an iPhone with a smashed screen with $15 worth of parts from ebay and watching instructions on Youtube from some else who did it
• Hebrew worship music
• Praying at the Kotel, aka the Western Wall
• Watching how firemen use special tools on opening the doors of a rental car in the Galilee when someone locked the keys inside
• Having my elbow healed from a tibular break after falling over onto snow in the UK
• Floating in the Dead Sea
• Seeing local Israeli live bands, then they recognise you as you have been to 3 of their gigs
• Teaching friends how not to get ripped off by crooked taxi drivers
• Sitting by the edge of the Kinneret
• Learning Hebrew, mostly only enough to know how to buy stuff in shops, and read the signs in the bus station
• Hanging out with friends drinking wine on my balcony
• Sitting on Ben Yehuda with an Arab believer friend who loves Jewish people
• Cycling to work past famous places
• Watching Jerusalem’s first formula F1 race
• Independence day parties
• Got to know an Iranian believer who loves Israel on Facebook, and now praying him for to be released from prison, his crime is being a believer
• Learning how to build a whole email infrastructure from scratch with a free certification from Google
• Spying on Google, yep I saw the outside of their offices in Haifa from a train
• Seeing flowers in the ponds and waterfalls of the Golan
• Listening to street musicians
• Sliding down the snow at Mount Hermon
• Falafel, nuff said
• Giving away an old laptop computer refurbished out of bits of two broken ones, to an Ethiopian community centre
• Playing chess in coffee shops with friends
• Visiting a friend in Switzerland who I met at my church here in Jerusalem
• Watching the view from the Tayelet of most of Jerusalem
• Then also watching the view from the Mount of Olives
• Observing Yom Kippur and then getting something to eat to break the fast
• Crossing over into Jordan and visiting Petra with the Indiana Jones music on my ipod
• Inviting a American Messianic Jewish friend to sleep on my couch who I only knew from his writings in the internet
• Seeing exotic coloured fish through a glass window into the Red Sea
• Humous, the chilli or lemon stuff is the best
• And of course, Shabbat, hosting or being hosted by others.