Category Christianity

Mar 25 2010

bike shopping and chatting with local in Talpiyot

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.

Mar 22 2010

Back in Jerusalem for a second season…

Whilst waiting to catch my flight, I caught sight of the Harrods logo on of the aircraft hangers outside the window at Luton airport.  Interesting, I didn’t know Mr Alfayed or the world famous department store would have any interest in the aviation business.  Luton being a city north west of London has a busy medium volume of flights to various bits of Europe as well as domestic parts of the UK including Scotland and the Channel Islands.

Flying with Easyjet was ok.  The flight itself wasnt particulary cheap as it was only slightly cheaper than my flight with BMI last year, and the next cheapest would of been with Turkish airlines and had to spend a good few hours changing planes in Istanbul.  Bearing in mind as a budget airline you dont get food, drinks, TV/movies, choice of seat etc, this is no big deal when flying to Paris or Amsterdam as its only 1 hour and 15 minutes for these sorts of routes, however here being 4 hours, it gets annoying paying for #4 for a very small cake and some coffee.  I brought some food to take on the plane however when I was about to say goodbye to my parents, the announcement on the tannoy system was you were strictly allowed on bag to carry on, so I gave part of my lunch to my parents, and just carried my laptop with me and two large books loose.

When getting on the plane I noticed overhead luggage space was very tight, it seems most of the other passengers took no notice of the announcement, mostly a necessity with people needing things for very young children and religious Jews who always carry boxes to put their hats in, as well as many people with laptops meant shoving your belongings wherever they could fit often some distance away from your seat.

Tel Aviv Ben Gurion airport has this nice Roman Mosaic hung on the wall of the new airport that was built in 2004.   Some people have said TLV is one of the best airports in the world, with its modern bright interior with familiar white Jerusalem stone everywhere, big water fountain at the interest, free (unlike Heathrow) wireless internet and big choice of shops I am inclined to agree here.

The next step was getting on a Sherut bus (12 seater Mercedes van) directly to my new flat.  This was quite simple and I do like this cheap and easy direct to your door method, with the exception of driving very fast in between some road humps around the discrict of Talpyiot which made me feel a bit sick.

Anyway its nice to be back, in a much nicer apartment and in a different part of town.

More soon…..

Mar 15 2010

Dividing wall in Jerusalem

This wall here is the one put in a few years ago between west and east Jerusalem, it runs all the way around the outside of the Palestinian territories.   To many it looks like an icon of oppression, and people make comparisons between the wall in Berlin that used to divide Germany until 1989, or think its similar to the Apartheid movement in South Africa.


Look at the graffiti and you can see people wanting to show help to the people that live beyond this wall.   But, if you live in Israel in the early 2000s or even before then when bombings of cars, coffee shops and shopping malls happened once or twice a month, where people live in fear of terrorism then something needed to be done.  Giving a neighbouring authority that has a large scale terrorist infrastructure ability to come and cause death and destruction should not be allowed in.   Like a good farmer that needs to protect his chickens from a murderous neighbour like a fox, this is what the wall is for, although its a shame this affects the Palestinians who only want to live their daily lives without affecting anyone.

Some other roadblocks put in place for the safety of everyone have been relaxed in order to give Palestinians more freedom, but then things like this happen. (link)

Many people wont like me saying this but as the wall has meant terrorist attacks in Jerusalem do not seem happen hardly ever now, the wall is a good thing, and has saved the lives of many Jews, Arabs and visiting foreigners.

Please don’t comment on this article, all will be deleted.

Mar 3 2010

Jerusalem part 2 starts March…

part 2 of my travels in volunteering for Bridges for Peace, a Christian charity that helps poor Jewish people in Israel, is almost here.

I am flying to Tel Aviv from Luton on 16th of March.  At the moment I have this ‘what the heck have I just done’ type feeling as flight was quite a bit more (£270) than I thought it would be with Easyjet, being not much less than a regular non-budget airline I flew with last year, and that I have less than two weeks to plan everything else and go..

If you click here you can see some figures of what I need in financial support for this year.   This is a voluntary role, I get an allowance (not a salary, I am still a volunteer) in some of my costs like rent and bills, but need probably about an extra £300 a month to live, I have to buy one more flight, as I am coming home in May to go to a friend’s wedding in Spain then see my sister and her new baby than head back.

My writings here only account for about 20% of the places I have been to into middle east, I intend to write plenty more.  Of course if there are certain sights and places you would like to read more on, feel free to ask.

I would of course appreciate prayer as well, I have a great many challenges coming up soon..

Feb 9 2010

The Golden Gate and strange graffiti?

In mid-December, I took a walk through an Arab cemetery right next to the Golden Gate outside the main walls of the old city of Jerusalem.  Its one of the oldest of the gates as some special significance as its meant to be where Jesus will go through when he returns to this city.

Ezekiel 44 :  1-3 mentions this site.  Thinking about it logically, it has been bricked up and a cemetery has been built in front making it unclean from a Jewish law point of view, but this would not stop the Messiah from returning back here.   The ground goes up some stepped layers with some trees in front meaning it would not be possible to get a car or horse to go in a straight line from the road from here.

I need to go back here and find out what exactly lies on the inside of this gate.

100_3098 100_3099
You can see the iron railings at the bottom that go around this gate.

While I was here there was some graffiti scribbled in some European language on the wall.   I took some pictures of it with the intention of doing some research on what it might be, I do not know if its modern or old.  Google’s recently improved translator website thought would be good for this, as you can put in some writing of unknown tongue and it takes a guess of what the language is.

The top middle part of the text I wrote here.

vakaiekaa
ralawana
bihmaiviai
kamey
tagivetavia
qaranivav
22/5

Google tells me this is Finnish, perhaps its just some people’s names but it could not provide me with a translation.   If you have sharp eyes and can make out the text better, feel free to comment and have another attempt at what this could be.

My photographs of the wall  got the suspicion of some Israeli policeman walking across the path, mainly as I was the only the person in the whole ground and they asked to search by rucksack and look at my passport, they then spoke in Hebrew on a radio to headquarters, probably to check the number on my visa was legitimate, they then let me go.   This might seem like a nuisance to have to go through to, but its something you get used to and quite necessary in this part of the world.

Feb 9 2010

Church in a pub

On Sunday morning went to my usual church then went out for lunch, usual quite relaxing day.  The talk in the morning was part of a series on distractions which is something that causes more problems with things for me than I can think of.

In the evening I went to the Isambard Kingdom Brunel pub (a Wetherspoons pub named after the famous industrial engineer who lived in my city of Portsmouth, UK) and met up with Mark Rodel reverend of another church in Portsmouth who has a blog and in addition to running his own church likes to meet up with anyone in this pub most Sunday evenings for a chance to relax and have a beer and chat to another small crowd.   Something different from regular church or cell group, (which is a mid-week church meeting someone’s house in a informal closer knit group for regular church people) but this is different as provides a chance for people with casual questions about Christianity and church in a familiar public environment.

For me I think many Christians don’t always visualise the fact church can seem very scary place for many people that have never been before to church, have fallen away, or are just plain shy, and this is a good place to get to know people and get questions answered on many things on church life.  Jesus spent a lot of time in public places speaking, so its only natural that fellow believers could sometimes get together in a place most people are familiar with and invite people to come and chat about whatever they wish.  Mark uses a few unusual visual cues to illustrate things from the bible and this week he got us to make some paper boats to float on a washing up bowl of water he borrowed from the bar.

Anyway there was just about 7 of us from different churches around the city, it was nice getting to know different people from quite a few backgrounds.   Will try come along semi regularly while I am still here in the UK.

Feb 5 2010

Journey to the Red Sea – part five; Petra Spectacular!!

Hope that two serialised stories of this and Bethlehem running together doesn’t get too confusing!!

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8

This is part of the trip I was most looking forward to, the scene from Indiana Jones and the last Crusade, even before I left Jerusalem, I bought a CD off ebay of the official soundtrack and put it on my ipod and have got a little bit obsessed in repeatedly playing the tracks whilst on my voyage around the Red Sea.

I spent the whole day looking around Petra, the temples built into the side of rocks, the mountains, the various different ruins of all kinds, there is absolutely loads to see here, you need a couple of days to see it all.

Odd looking Swiss cheese style rocks and caves are everywhere, and one cave has been turned into a quite inviting looking lounge with comfy looking cushions and furnishings.

The cops. The mounted Jordanian police look every bit as cool as the Canadian Mounties

Young Arab men like to races these chariots at quite high speeds around Petra

Towards the end I saw some other British people I got chatting with on top of a hill which which took a while to get up you can see almost over towards the Dead Sea, in fact my phone (which doesn’t have roaming enabled and wont get a JO network, shows Cellcom IL with 5 bars).  There was one girl who had been working in Dubai and got a long weekend off because of the fact it was a Islamic holiday, the other two chaps were two friends that had been travelling around the middle east and were on the last few days and travelled over from Cairo, so it was nice to chat about my discoveries about the holy land and the others who had been in a modern rich Arab city and in the famous ancient capital of Egypt.

At the top of this hill was a tent with a Bedouin chap living there who was playing an Arab style guitar like instrument, and provided us some tea, he told us that his tent was his permanent home, although was selling some souvenirs didn’t seem that concerned about trying to sell us anything, he like a lot Jordanians I had met was genuinely very hospitable to visitors.   All four of us where chatting for sometime, but I noticed it about 4:20pm which meant it would start getting dark just before 5, so we ought to start leaving as getting down the hill was long, windy and undoubtedly extremely dangerous in darkness.   The park shuts at dark according to the main gate, however perhaps in a moment of wanting to live just a bit dangerously, we just carried on chatting and drinking tea, by 4.45 it was most definitely dark, this didn’t bother us as one of the British chaps had a ‘headlight’, a torch on a stretchy band he was wearing on his head so he went down the steep steps first.

We were negotiating our way out of the Roman style pillar stones in the middle of the park and it was now in complete darkness, the girl (argh – wrote you folks emails on a bit of a paper which I have now lost..) said she had to meet the man who was taking her home in a car park near a restaurant.  One of the chaps took her back there, as she was going to go alone which would not of been wise, later I met up with the boys by the pathway that weaved around the main temple.

Close to the entrance there were two men and pick up truck around a horse which was lying on its side, it was obvious the animal was quite distressed, considering I have seen people whip their donkeys to get them up hills with tourists, this animals are worked extremely hard, having said that I am guessing good horses and donkeys are expensive and I guess this was a vet in the truck come to provide assistance to the animal there, the boys from Egypt were hoping to get a quick cheeky snap of us by the main temple in darkness, but one of the staff saw us and told us we should of exited the park over 45 minutes ago.  We said our goodbyes, as I suggested we go for a pizza in the main high street but they wanted to go home and get an early night.

Next, yet another rude awakening, a hasty scramble to get to Wadi Rum..

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8

Feb 2 2010

Bethlehem – journey to birthplace of Christ part III – The pools of King Solomon

Parts 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

After the chapel and the grotto park, the bus took us to another biblical location:-


The pools of King Solomon, there are three of them in fact, some background can be found here.  The bible mentions these in Ecclesiastes 2 It was a nice warm December day and you can imagine this being used as a storage for water which was so precious both back in Old Testament times and also today.    The police drove past in a rather nice new model VW Golf GTI, this vehicle decked in stripes in the usual familiar Palestinian green.  They asked one of the other members of the group to not sit on the wall as they seem quite protective of this ancient site.  (I had already got off the wall by then)   The actual pools are also guarded by fencing, although there is a small abandoned shed inside with graffiti on it.

Almost opposite these buildings there was this strange very new building, presumably built by the Palestinian government, its a conference centre and looks quite nice, but its not finished.   The main structure is all done, but there are no windows, doors or any kind of fittings, the neatly built steps and pathways are covered in weeds.  Its never been used.  I am guessing it was built no earlier that 1990s.  There is no sign of any nearby disturbance or damage, ie: signs of war.   I don’t think Israel is to blame for problems here with this or other PA government buildings.

Found some interesting information on some of PA’s infrastructure.   In preparation for planning to be an independent state, the Palestinian authority have an international telephone code of +970, Israel is +972, but either code can be used to call cities such as Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nabulus, Jericho as the telephone exchanges are still part of Israel, but some Islamic nations (Iran, Syria etc)  bar calls to Israel that have the +972 code, necessitating the +970 code.

It was then back the the coach to take us to the main thing that was centre point to Bethlehem.

Right: Looking out of a large multistorey car park onto Bethlehem’s bus station

Left: Christmas in full swing in a shop inside the multistorey car park.

More soon….

Parts 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

Feb 2 2010

things to do in 2010…

Its now February and haven’t really fully thought about what I want to achieve this year.

Originally not long before I came back to the UK I wanted to get settled in my career and buy my own house, but this is to be shelved as God wants me back in Jerusalem to volunteer for a second season.

1/ Return to Israel and carry over keep the IT systems simple, reliable and effective for a Christian charity in Jerusalem.

2/ Visit sites and learn more about biblical history, not just Israel, I would also like to visit Malta, Turkey and Greece someday.  I am single chap, so I may as well make the most of be flexible to do things, as maybe that might not be so possible in the future.

3/ Spend less time on Facebook as it just eats lots of time, its nice to know what friends are doing and plan events and things but I dont really care about a lot of the extras.

4/ Cook more and learn to do Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Asian type food.

5/ Learn to deal better with my bank stuff, get money into an account that is better suited for overseas working, as my Lloyds TSB bank account charge loads for using debit card and ATM use.

6/ Get some extra IT qualifications, for this year to better serve my employer and for my future.

7/ Renew friendships with different people both in UK and Israel.   Also going to a wedding of a good friend who is getting married in Spain which I will visit in May.

8/ Get fitter, I am average weight (12 stone) for my 5ft 10 height, and I do a lot of walking, mainly going around town in Portsmouth and Jerusalem, but I get out of breath running, not sure why.   Really its a case of some how do some kind of physio or exercise to get strength back in my arm.

9/ Be better at bible study, I am a lot of below average on biblical knowledge compared to most Christians.

This year has a few sacrifices, I have had to sell my car as its just sitting here and rather let it depreciate in value and find somewhere else to store it again, this is sad as I do really enjoy driving, especially going through the woods to see a friend in Haslemere, close to Guildford, or when I was work driving around the New Forest.  Of course, being away from friends and family is another, but I will home in May for a short time whilst I see my sister as her baby is expected then and the above break in Spain.