Dec 28 2009

prophecy from Isaiah as seen in late 2009

some of my fellow believers here (Jewish believers in Jesus and regular gentile Christians) often talk about prophecy and how the stage is being set for Jesus’s return here. To be honest I try to be realistic and don’t go nuts how about who the anti-Christ is, etc, but these events will happen over a longish period of time, and every now and then something mentioned in the bible can be frighteningly similar to what I see with my own eyes here.

In this instance, in a bible group I go to there is a young woman who joins us and she works with elderly Jews who are holocaust survivors. She is German. This doesnt seem to be an issue to these people in the home, they know that she is at least two generations away, and the number of people who think the events that happened in 1939-45 where a good thing in Germany is extremely small.

One of the leaders of our class told me that this girl here in this land is something foretold in Isaiah. Tonight I looked this up to see for myself.

Isaiah 60 : 14 The sons of your oppressors will come bowing before you; all who despise you will bow down at your feet and will call you the City of the LORD, Zion of the Holy One of Israel.

Dec 27 2009

Time to go home :o(

My 6 months volunteer in Israel is up in less than two weeks.

My flight home is 9th of January, which means I need to go and get a new job. This isn’t a particularly good time to find employment at the moment and I havent had any response to any applications I have sent in so far.

I am look forward to meeting up with friends and family but I am sure I am going to pine for warmer temperatures, stony hills, rocky clad biblical looking buildings and somewhat faster, frenetic, unpredictable and often a little chaotic atmosphere that is Jerusalem.

At home I really would need an all new challenge of some kind, partly because I am approaching my mid 30s and am single, and fit awkwardly between youth & students and the married couples which most of my friends are these days. That’s not to say I mope around all the time wanting to get married, if it something I said I don’t think about regularly I would be lying. But I am passionate about seeing God becoming accessible to ordinary people and I am seeking some kind of challenge. Being single of course does give me a lot flexibility to things that would otherwise be impossible, so I am making the most of that time, whatever period that may be.

This could be back in the regular work place doing IT support, my job of doing support technical issues with staff in businesses, is something the fits be perfectly not just because of my computer skills I have used in the workplace, but more also with the fact God has placed my in several normal secular companies with other Christians where we can meet up and pray and encourage each other, one of these three groups was one I set up myself. I don’t go about pushing my faith in peoples faces, its more of case I just try and do my work well and be discrete, polite and professional in my manner and my faith in Jesus seems to rub off on people it seems. I could be in a different town perhaps.

I could go back. With flights to Israel are a hundred quid or so (providing they don’t charge extra for baggage, using the toilet or breathing, as some budget airlines have shown to do) I could continue my role here, my visa runs until May (my sister has a baby this time and I am going to a close friends wedding in Spain then as well) and there is no replacement for me at BFP. For me to stay I would need to get some proper sponsorship and I have had some kind people donate me funds but its not always been consistent, and I have been living off my last two pay cheques from my last paid job, the refund of my unused car insurance and a few other (got paid to fix other volunteers laptops) things. My time here hasnt been a holiday, it has been stressful often, and requires a lot of prayer which God has been amazingly faithful, even with some things happened this week. I have got to stay in a town frequently threatened by terrorism and see Arab people turn replace Islam with the love and acceptance of Jesus, things you would never experience on a tour or see accurately portrayed in television.

If you are a believer whether you know me as a friend or just bumped into this page somehow, I would like to ask if you can pray.

Please pray God can provide me with the right steps of what to do next. The Lord has pointed me in the direction of doing this volunteer work in terms of lots of different steps and has provided for me faithfully each way.

I am tired of guesswork, I need God to give me a very clear answer what to do next.

Yes I should listen to the quiet voice God mentions in the bible. I have a rubbish attention span and get things lost on all my imagination and plenty of other distractions. Even if I try and sit on the Mount of Olives my mind will wander, its why I spend a lot of time walking both here in Israel and back at home. Therefore I really need something explicitly clear of what to do next.

Its a case of if I should get a normal paid job or stick to being here a bit longer. In all honesty, there’s places (more of Galilee, Megido, Nazareth, Golan Heights, etc) I still want to visit here in Israel and have some great friendships with people which have matured to the point where its going to be painful to say goodbye.

Thanks for your time.

Dec 23 2009

Journey to the Red Sea – part two

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After arriving in Eilat, I seem to have left my proper map of the city in my flat, and the freebie map I got from Hertz Israel from somewhere showed Eilat quite decently but nothing that showed the Youth Hostel.

Eilat is safe place and generally free of political problems (apart from there was one bombing about 3 years ago though) and is something akin to Brighton in the UK as a weekend holiday resort with funfairs and bars on the beach, but also with some Vegas style themed hotels springing up a few places along the coast. This one here is strongly influenced by the dome of the rock from Jerusalem.

I took a look at the beach and the shopping mall overlooking the Red Sea, this place is definitely something of a chill out place and you can see why its a popular holiday resort with Israelis from all over the holy land, there is a small airport but I am not sure which places fly there.

There is a bar and restaurant on a pier, so from here you can see four countries, from Israel to Egypt and Jordan and in the distance Saudi Arabia. Underneath the pier you can see some workmen where doing some welding work to the steel bars underneath.

I gave my room mate a quick call, it was then I was told that my airline (BMI) were ceasing flights to Israel after an article in local Israeli news and I would have to change my return flights home. Anyway he gave me the correct street to get to, and although I got to the wrong road at first and knocked on a bomb shelter next to a shop, which a young man was using to practice playing his drums down there, he pointed me to the next street that I had overlooked to find the shelter.

The Shelter! This place is well known amongst Christians that have been in Israel for sometime, as the owner of the hostel is a Jewish believer in Jesus, so are quite a few of the people that just come and hang out there. There is a regular bible study in the lounge often with some of the staff there, its optional though, and the hostel doesn’t proselytize any visitors that come there.

I like youth hostels as a single chap who likes traveling as you can meeting people from all over the world and swap stories of where you have been or quick find some new friends to go out somewhere. It was quite dark by now and there wasn’t a lot of people around when I arrived, I went round the corner to get myself a falafel and sat in the lounge and spent a quiet evening chatting to Canadian and Swedish people and the staff there.

In terms of the Youth Hostel’s ratings its pretty good as far as hostels go, although the bathroom could of been a bit better with no soap or paper towels in the toilets, the showers were ok thought. I was in a small dorm room with 5 beds, two bunks and an extra bed. I didn’t sleep very well the whole of this trip to be honest, there was always something to disturb me some how. During this first night I got woken up by some thoughtless person who arrived late at night, mumbled things in Hebrew and moved his stuff around the room whilst myself and a Canadian chap were trying to sleep. Thought the next day he had some kind of nocturnal OCD habits or something. The small size of the room gave not much space to put shoes, bags and clothes for all occupants.

Anyway I was getting more excited at seeing Jordan, Petra, the Nabutean desert, and tropical fish aquarium in the next few days…

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Dec 21 2009

Journey to the Red Sea – part one

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I had a small amount of holiday left and I had wanted to check out some other parts of the country and visit Jordan, so after a few attempts at trying find a time me and some friends from BFP turned out not to work due to various people recently leaving, meaning various departments got much smaller thus people not able to get time off. With me my department (IT) was also about going to go from four to one in a few weeks, so the week with American thanksgiving day was the now or never time to go. This day off for all staff gave me the advantage I could use all two and half days of holiday and the weekend to do some kind of epic trip.

Eilat is a city right at the bottom of the country, Israel tapers off at the bottom into a sharp point that stabs the top of the Red Sea, tightly wedged between Egypt and Jordan. A good tip someone gave me is not to drink much before going as that the bus journey has no toilet onboard and there is just one stop in the middle of the desert highway, oh, and the journey is 4 hours 45 minutes.

I debated going after work, but this meant I would have to do the journey in the dark and that ride is long but could be quite spectacular during the middle of the day, so the ended up going on the Wednesday. I took a bit of a risk and didn’t buy a ticket in advance as I couldn’t find an option to buy a ticket online, in turns out egged.co.il is quite poor, the English part of the side is basic, and you can buy tickets online only on the main Hebrew section.

Getting the ticket was pretty easy and the journey was pretty comfortable, getting out of Jerusalem into the outskirts of Talpiyot took a while, after a while we were traveling parallel with the Dead Sea. I started to seen the sign posts for the Ramon Crater which I visited back in September. This time I got to see some large modern hotel complexes that are on the shores of the Dead Sea, I think this is for a more specialised type of tourism for people coming for health treatment as the mineral rich mud from the dead sea can treat everything from acne to psoriasis, so people can come and dip in the unique 30% salinity water that is the lowest place on earth.

The journey is long, I didn’t speak to anyone along the way, I did notice another British man next to me, he was busy listening to his ipod and I was listening to mine, mainly I had the sound track to Indiana Jones just to add to the excitement of the trip to Petra in a few days time. After a good while we got to a petrol station for a half an hour break, there was a burger place, and shops to get coffee, ice cream and sweets and use the toilet.

I remembered on the BBC web site there was a tragedy last year as a bus crashed on a bend killing several people, because the bus driver foolishly overtook on a blind corner, but rather shockingly, and being used to often poor driving here in this part of the world, this road is a single carriageway almost the whole length down to the sea I also witnessed us do overtaking on some parts of the road with not so clear views of roads on curves. (if you look on a map there is only about two proper roads that head down in to funnel shaped lower half of Israel that is the Negev desert)

On the second half of the journey I got to see more geology wonders of the desert, strange coloured puddles by the side of the road that were green, it appears there were copper mining here as well. Just at the approach to Eilat itself is a large salt factory which the signs showed were for making salt for general cooking use, there were large piles of the fine white stuff. When disembarking the bus and spending five minutes walking around the block twice looking for the toilets before finding they were underground via some small steps that weren’t that noticeable. Heading down the main road I can immediately see a strange pyramid shaped cinema (ironically the border for Egypt is just 6kms away 🙂 ) shopping malls with neon signs in Hebrew and the panoramic view of the Red Sea with Eilat being at the top.

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Dec 13 2009

Hannukah!

Its hannukah, a Jewish festival that lasts a whole week as opposed to just the one main day for Christmas.

This week I will going to a couple of events, I am not sure what to expect apart from I know it involves eating a lot of doughnuts.

I will be celebrating a simple kind of Christmas when I get home in January.

Nov 23 2009

off to Mount of Olives again..

this time made sure had decent batteries for my real camera, rather have to take pictures with the somewhat ropey camera on my phone.

Must of walked a good 10 miles today, as went as far into East Jerusalem next to the wall that divides into the west bank.

This time as well as see the massive Jewish cemetery and the Moslem one that closer to old walls, also saw Christian graves and went up further more away from the general tourist areas. There is some truly breathtaking views here. Now I know why it is the Mount of Olives, there are plenty of Olive trees on this bit!!

Some very cute and friendly Arab children whose house overlooks the Mount of Olives. I am facing northwards here.

Nov 17 2009

Africans at Kotel / Wedding around road works

Someone told me recently that there are lots of Africans coming to visit Israel, apparently its because countries like Nigeria, the government gave Moslem people free trips to Mecca, as most Moslem people try to make a pilgrimage there at least once during their life. The Christian people thought thats not fair, can’t we have a free trip to Jerusalem to see the home of our faith? So this was agreed and now large numbers of Nigerian Christians have been coming since.

I spotted a brightly dressed group here:

Above if you look carefully on the right there is some wedding pictures taken place, its a good job you can still get nice photos against the backdrop of the old walls despite the mess around the streets with the electric light rail system being built.

Nov 17 2009

Smoke on the horizon / Arab hand carts

Was at the Kotel (Western Wall) last weekend, I noticed and some other people were a bit alarmed to see smoke in the distance by the Mount of Olives. Checked the news later, didnt see any thing about any possible terrorist activity or anything else bad.

Have noticed lately that quite a few mostly Arab people use these brightly coloured blue and green hand carts to carry their wares up and down the stairs around the old city, the steps have sloped stones in the middle. The back of the carts have a tyre draping down from a piece of rope, think this is to stop the cart from running away if the person operates it lets go by accident.

Nov 16 2009

Ethiopian bar

Went to meet up with a friend in an Ethiopian bar. In between a shoe shop and a 1 shekel store on Jaffa Street is a fairly unassuming alley way…Didn’t manage to get a pic of the front of the bar sadly. The Ethiopian community make up a small percentage of various many different Jewish groups that are here in Jerusalem. Sadly many of them don’t have good knowledge of Hebrew so may have difficulty getting work.

The bar itself feels basic but people are friendly, beer is cheap (Goldstar is 10 shekels) There is Ethiopian Reggae music always playing here, food is available. Below is a kind of thick pancake with some beef and mushrooms and a small amount of very hot chilli.

Also below is a poster of some music event here. Notice on the left is writing in Amharic (not to be confused with Aramaic which was used along with Hebrew during the time of Jesus) this is a Semitic language used by the Ethiopian and Eritrean people. It looks like a little like something you see by Aztecs, although its a left-to-right language like Western or European tongues, as opposed to right-to-left fashion Hebrew, Arabic and Persian uses. Incidentally I found Windows XP doesn’t support Amharic in a normal fashion but Vista and 7 does.