Category Christianity

Aug 24 2009

prayer around Knesset

In view of the news about Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu appearing to side with the US about stopping building work in some of some of the disputed land, and I forgot to do my one hour prayer slot at work on tuesday, I decided to go prayer walking around the government buildings. I live not far from there but today I thought about taking a different route and went via a main road past one of the museums, after a mile or so I saw some very attractive gardens with neatly trimmed hedges next to the stone perimeter walls of the Knesset and there is a smell of lavender from the bushes, a glimpse of the days of Solomon in some ways. There was a road turning off here directly to the Knesset buildings themselves and approaching some booths with a barrier across the road, seeing a park on the left hand side I was not familiar with I ventured into there. Although its dark and not easy to see, I suddenly saw a family in a tent there, or to be more exact two or three tents with a large canvas over all of them, and a man and his two sons sitting outside. There were various cardboard signs in Hebrew and some in broken English they had been thrown out of their house by the government. I asked the man if he knew English, he called for his son who got his friend from another tent close by who looked about 15. This boy was telling me they had been living here for 2 months as their house was seized without saying any reason why. They didn’t say much why this was, I think they were living before in Jerusalem and not in any of the parts of the West Bank or in East Jerusalem. I asked if maybe I could get someone to interview them as this might made a good story for our magazine, the man said he would be ok with this. I went away sad for them, a little confused of why this community of people were living in a park. I told them Christians would be praying for them.

I went and finished my praying for Mr Netanyahu and the government and headed off back home.

Around the government building and in the hedges I have seen some spools of cassette tape wrapped around trees, I have seen this a fair bit back in Portsmouth, but there’s quite a bit of it around this city, I have been told its some kind of occultic practice, I don’t know who does it, but I always make a point of praying over it and breaking it.

Aug 23 2009

learning experiences

Learning experiences

If anything, my 6 months in Israel is a big learning experience. In many different ways, I am learning the culture here, that people don’t queue for the shops and if the guy in the car in front of you hasnt notice the lights have gone green its quite acceptable to lean on the horn, but also having to expand my technical skillsets with learning how the computer network runs and troubleshooting a dead server at work, and supporting users on Macs something I havent done before. My own laptop keeps overheating, so have several times replaced the fan and put some new thermal paste on the ships but its still not working quite right.

I still havent figured out a way to learn Hebrew yet, as don’t have money to do proper lessons. Its hard shopping when I need a 5 shekel coin to release a trolley and I have to ask someone for change, or looking at items on the shelves which a lot don’t have English labels so I have absolutely no clue what they are.   Would welcome any suggestions on this.   Probably something I could put on my iPodI could listen as it takes me 35 minutes to get to work.

Jul 27 2009

prayer walking places

Before I left, I used to go walking along the seafront in Southsea, head out of my house and turn left and go as far as the rock gardens on South Parade Pier, or turn right and head around Old Portsmouth and Gunwharf. At the moment Rehavia Park is my blank canvas for speaking to the Lord on thanking him, giving him praise or asking for help at the moment. Walking in the park is nice as its usually full of families often having barbeques or people out with their dogs or jogging.

Jul 23 2009

The Shuk

Now, somehow I thought I visited this market before on my previous two trips to Israel, but I was mistaken as was confusing this with the more general sort of market held in the old city. This was different as this market is just food.

It was sunday midday and I was going to head to church about 5pm, the market is hugely hectic and full of shoppers looking for bargains, and young men pushing around trolleys of fruit and vegetables on to the shelves. To me this is the most fun part of weekly shopping.

Things here are just not what you expect. One man had what appeared to have large hand operated meat mincers, I am not sure if this was for mashing up baby food or for butchers for producing meat products. Behind him were various odd looking mostly rusty metal parts, maybe he was repairing and recondition these contraptions. Another sight was some workmen using an angle grinder to cut through some kind of redundant plumbing fitting on the wall, but without much regard for the safety of nearby shoppers the sparks off the tools where flying all over path and all over some meat put out in the stand close by. Some cheeky pigeons swoop down and start scoffing some of the tubs of corn, nuts, cereal and dried fruit sold for people to buy and and weigh themselves before the owner of the shop looks up from his newspaper and they are suddenly gone.

I want to get myself a falafel, but this particular counter doesn’t have them, instead I got some kind of shwarma a sandwich with omelette, fish and some kind of spicey sauce, and a malt drink, the 50 something man tells me to sit down on a small round table as he will bring it over, as he turns around his cigarette ash blows into my face, yuk. The food is really good though. He then flings the cigarette but carelessly into the middle of the market road where it just misses a box full of mostly paper rubbish.

I got a kilo of plums, some pita breads, and best bargain of all a large half of a water melon, this item was just one Shekel (16 pence) Its funny in this country its generally cheaper to buy fruit and vegetables than to get a microwave meal. I really like the fact that prepackaged food is not really that easy to get hold of so everyone is encouraged to eat decent stuff here.

May 30 2009

God and work part II

….continued

After the contract at the hospital finished I started to wonder at the great opportunities God has given me in the last few years and what would happen next, I was determined to stick to a contract and not a permanent role due to some other projects I was looking at later that year.

My current employer as of April 2009 is Tandberg Television. The company is round the corner from Nice Systems who I was at last year, TTV are makers of television broadcasting solutions and were acquired recently by Swedish telecoms giants Ericsson. Its a great place to work and I have 9 other Christians who I meet with on tuesday lunch breaks. Things are good.