Category personal

Jun 14 2011

British blogger in Israel appeals for sightings of lost bike….

Came back from a nice day out in the old city with friends from work, only to go back to Zion Square in Jerusalem to find the tree where my bike was locked up was empty.

Its been stolen 😦   Was locked onto this tree in between these phoneboxes.   Actually I would of thought it would be easier to saw through the tree than the chain myself.

This is most annoying as I need to it to get to and fro work.  I work in three buildings, normally one in central Jerusalem 4 or 5 days a week, one in Talpiyot 1 day a week, and on rare occasions up in Karmiel (I go up there in a bus to this one)   I usually do an 8 mile/12 km round trip each day to work.

If anyone spots it, its a ‘Vision’- don’t know much about the model number, frame size etc, its just a gents mountain bike that looks like this, blue, with white and red stripes with plenty of scrapes and rust.  The police were not that helpful but I am sure they have plenty of more important things on, and the officer on duty didn’t speak English when I filled in the forms there.

A lot of businesses in Israel have a security camera system linked up to a small computer which records video footage onto a hard drive, I asked a few businesses around if they have any recordings, one of them told me yes, but these only are kept for 24 hours.  There must be loads of security cameras around Zion Square, Jaffa Street and Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem.

As a Christian doing voluntary role in IT system administration and technical support, its essential tool for me to get around, buses are much better and cheaper than in the UK but still eat into budget.

I would be prepared to give a reward to anyone who can help, just would like any info, or anyone seen anyone acting suspicious (with boltcutters!)  as it was taken outside the Leumi bank at the corner of Ben Yehuda Street and Jaffa Street, between 11.30-16.00 on sunday 14th June.   This is a very busy part of town, it would hard to commit any kind of theft without getting seen in day time.

You can email me on jp.hayward@gmail.com or call or text 052 789 7520.

toda raba.

Jun 3 2011

A day in Christian IT work in the Galilee

As I have mentioned before, my job as a volunteer IT support and system administrator for the charity Bridges for Peace means I am normally based in one of two offices in Jerusalem, and on odd occasions I work up in Karmiel, which is a city in the centre of the Galilee.

This means a 180km visit by car or bus when I have to do work up there.  The food bank I work does a huge amount of service in helping the poorest people in this area especially new immigrants to Israel mostly from Russia or some of the other ex-Soviet Union nations.  Every so many months I need to do a trip probably not that different from journeys Jesus did himself.

I have learned since being here this site requires careful planning as its an awful long way if something breaks unexpectedly.

This empty room in the middle of the warehouse seems like a good place to put the server.  This server will replaced later this year as its running Windows 2000 which is very old now and we need a new more reliable system that helps us with our day to day food bank operations up here.   This room is good as it means an easier job of adding some extra wiring here as its close to the network cabinet which is in the cupboard opposite the door.

This rack full of network kit needs a good sort out.   I manage to swap cables around to enable computer network use in some offices that moved around.   We only have 5 staff up here and there will be at least 3 more and there is not enough ports on the 16 port switch here so I have to put in another switch.   The glass door on the cabinet does not shut as the wires are in the way.   I think I can rotate the brackets on the switch at the top 180 degrees so this sits flush better and should make the glass door shut properly.

There is an other switch supplied by Bezeq (Israel’s no.1 telephone company) for several VOIP phones.   Not quite sure how this works as I think they maintain it.

The black things are UPS power back up units to keep equipment running in case of power failure or spikes in the electricity supply, these are a few years old, most of the equipment was set up when this building got running in 2007 and the chances are the batteries are no good as they have a 3 year or so life span.   I want to get a new UPS that has network connectivity so I can see the status of it using my Spiceworks network management software.   These small ‘shoebox’ type UPSes should be able to be refurbished with new batteries and they could be used on regular office PCs in another part of the building.

When I was staying at one of the staff’s place over night, looking out of the balcony, I get to see an Arab bedouin house across the road, and modern (Jewish) flats in the distance.   Here in this city, these two types of communities seem to be get on well it seems.   It does mean you get woken up up by roosters at 5.30am though!

I have to speak to the rest of the IT department to get some more telephones installed, test wiring for network ports and telephones, get 3 more PCs installed and test the spare server.   This trip was mostly about planning to give extra capacity for this site for future expansion as I know the Lord will provide more resources so we can help the most needy people in this area.  I will need to do another visit up here in July I think.

The main thing I was doing, is a careful back up of the main server and applying all the latest updates and patches.   This is always a delicate thing for IT administrators to do, it puts you a big security risk if you don’t bother, and if you do it without carefully planning it can crash the server.    One of the team had their monitor suddenly stop working, so a local computer store (thanks to KSP)  I got a new Samsung 18″ wide screen TFT monitor.

I really like this job as I always have plenty of interesting and varied challenges so work is never boring and I get to know everyone in the organisation.   It also means I can combine this with a weekend seeing some friends who moved from home city of Portsmouth UK to Karmiel Israel, and later visiting the city of Tiberias which is right on the Kinneret, or the Sea of Galilee, and a few significant places of the bible, I will show soon.

A day in my work in the Galilee – The Jesus boat in Ginosar – The Kinneret Lake – Tiberias evening light show – Preaching and miracles of Jesus in Capernaum – Tiberias city centre and Muriels and Maimonidies

May 31 2011

My car accident in Jerusalem

I was with some people coming back from the Mini Israel model village, I was in the front passenger seat of a car (this Renault Clio) and dropped off some friends sat in the back, when there was a bang from another vehicle that struck our driver’s side front wing (fender to you Americans)

In turn this pushed us against this bus putting a small scrape on it.

This silver Peugeot that hit us must of been going some speed as it rolled on its side facing towards us and slid along for some distance.

Fearing the worst we got to the car and remarkably the woman inside got out of the seat on her own, but it took a couple of people to help hold the door open for her to get out.  Its awkward opening a door when a car is on its side!

A few of us and some bystanders pushed this car back the right way up.   The fire service put sand on the road to clean it up.

Our car had front bumper missing, front wings broken (they were plastic) and both tyres flat and rims bent.   The Peugeot had extensive damage from being scraped along the road, and where as the Renault doesn’t look like it has serious chassis damage I expect the steering and suspension is all messed up.   There was oil and petrol leaked out onto the road.  Both cars were declared write offs.

After a police statement was done, and the Magon David ambulance didn’t need to treat anyone, a bit later a breakdown truck driver arrived.

The man asked me to help get the cars loaded, so got into both cars and tried to steer (not so easy with flat tyres and bent up wheels) each straight whilst he used a winch attached the front to be pulled up onto the truck.

But thank the Lord no one was hurt, AT ALL!!

I want to find somewhere locally to get some coffee after this experience, but as it was a Jewish holiday there was nowhere open, so I went to a friend’s house which was a couple of hundred yards away.

Road safety here is quite poor and the styles of driving here worries me, but I was glad God kept us and the woman in the other car safe after this unpleasant experience.

May 14 2011

Nazareth – 11. Churches from A to Z or Alpha to Omega

I am very out of touch with UK at the moment, but I have read the Professor Richard Dawkins is on the telly again, proof that atheists can be just as opinionated and annoying than any religious people.

I am reluctant to believe any figures in the mainstream media the church attendance is declining, when you have some churches like in my home city which have repurposed old buildings that were used (or share with another organisation) for something different, ie: a snooker hall.  I know in Israel there are some secret churches where ex-Muslim people go to in Arab areas which could put them in danger if they got discovered.

There is a lot of different religious buildings in Nazareth.   Churches can be current places of worship or dusty buildings of history.

Monastry ontop of the hill of the city.  This one is called ‘Ecole Jesus the Adolescent – Don Bosco’  I couldn’t go in because of this big electric gate which has no details if it was possible to visit from the public.

Greek church, this one is the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation, its close to the Mary’s well I mentioned previously.

Yes those black clouds turned into rain a few minutes later :o)

I am not sure if this stage outside of the Greek church is for a wedding or Easter service.

One of the tours I was on showed us some churches more hidden away from the main roads:

 

These places have a lot of highly decorative pictures and fittings here.  These are not everyone’s taste, but I wonder how synagogues where in the time of King Solomon as he built the biggest most grandest places for worshipping God as he was very wealthy.

For me, church is the body of people that there, the fabric part of the building isn’t too important.  After a while the churches do get a bit samey in their styles and decoration.  The old ones in Jerusalem are pretty similar, with the main differences being writing which can be in Russian, Armenian or Greek.

Although obscured by a bus, and I can only really see this poster which made me smile, I would really liked to visit this one, but I didn’t spot it until I was on a bus on my way home back to Jerusalem.

I left out the main church in Nazareth, the Basilica church of the Annuciation, for a good reason, next I show this huge church and a few pleasant surprises I saw there…

1. Arrival at the city – 2. Staying in the old city – 3. The modern day Nazarene carpenter – 4. Where Jesus first preached – 5. Religious vehicles in Nazareth – 6. Mary’s Well and the Bath house – 7. The precipice – 8. On top of the Precipice hill – 9. More old city streets and market – 10. The spice shop – 11. Churches from A to Z or Alpha to Omega – 12. The Basilica church – 13. Easter service at the Basilica


May 13 2011

Review of Spiceworks IT management software

A little while ago I did a recording for a podcast called Geeks and God, where I did a review of an IT management software program I use in my work called Spiceworks.

If you would like to listen to this check out: http://geeksandgod.com/episode141

This is my first time doing such a recording so forgive me as I don’t the best speaking voice for this kind of thing 🙂  I did some screen shots to refer to you can see as well.

Many thanks to my friend Ed Ross who has an amazing enthusiasm for recording audio programmes to get the attention of anyone using any kind of media for churches of Christian organisations.

I would seriously recommend anyone puts Spiceworks on a spare PC or virtual machine and see what benefits it can make looking after everyday IT tasks in your organisation.  Its free so you have nothing to lose.

May 8 2011

Megiddo – The end of the world?

Just taking a brief break from Nazareth, I thought I would share an important place on the way up….

This road looks actually quite exciting as it goes along a viaduct into a tunnel in the side of a mountain to Nazareth, but the bus took a left at these lights.

But before I came to here on the bus went through the town of Ha Megiddo, which in the Greek; Armageddon as mentioned in Revelation , the place of the end of the world.

Its mentioned in Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Kings and first Chronicles.  There has been previous battles here.

This is a prison in the town of Megiddo, I think it contains long term offenders, ie: terrorists.

A little while ago, some archeological remains were found underneath (hopefully not from convicts trying to tunnel out!)   showing some very significant history of early Christianity underneath the prison.  Check out this link:- http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Israel+beyond+politics/Megiddo+Prison+dig+yields+rare+3rd-4th+century+Christian+structure+9-Nov-2005.htm

Some people have said that this find is important enough to tear down and move the prison to somewhere else maybe.

These fields look nothing that special, but in the middle is where the last war will be fought it seems.

Petrol station if you want to get fuel, go to the loo, get a can of Tango and a choc-ice before the end of the world.

Revelation 16 : 16 Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.

Now Revelation is a very symbolic book and probably the most difficult part of the bible to understand, but its quite clear this is the place outlined.

Many people I speak to think that Jesus’s return is not far away, I see more people slandering God, Jesus, Israel, Christians and the Jewish people today than in the past, here in Megiddo is a place where you want to be on the right team when that battle happens.

Apr 27 2011

Nazareth – 3. The modern day Nazarene carpenter

Before I came here, I wondered if there were practicing carpenters in this town now like Jesus’s earthly stepfather.

Turns out woodwork is very much part of Nazareth’s businesses today, although it is an Arab city – there are Jews that live in a closeby town called Nazareth Illit (‘Upper’ in Hebrew) which is a modern place only around since the 1950s.

This is one of fourteen carpentry shops, fairly standard sort of methods and tools, with lathes, routers and jigsaws.

Usual kind of woodwork, interior doors, shelves, coffins (!) etc.

The panels on these doors look extremely precisely done.

The wooden nativity sets popular with tourists made of olive wood often seen for sale tend to be made in Bethlehem though.

1. Arrival at the city – 2. Staying in the old city – 3. The modern day Nazarene carpenter – 4. Where Jesus first preached – 5. Religious vehicles in Nazareth – 6. Mary’s Well and the Bath house – 7. The precipice – 8. On top of the Precipice hill – 9. More old city streets and market – 10. The spice shop – 11. Churches from A to Z or Alpha to Omega – 12. The Basilica church – 13. Easter service at the Basilica


Apr 26 2011

Nazareth – 2. Staying in the old city

There are three main Youth Hostels in Nazareth, and they are all very close to each other in Nazareth’s old city.

I stayed here for 1st night, this is the ground floor of a local chap’s house, who happens to be the local policeman, and jolly nice gent he is.   The local station is also quite close by too.

Here I only spotted one other traveler, an Italian called Michael who was very friendly and shared with me half his plate of bread, cheese and olives, and spoke little English.   This place provided free tea and coffee and a shared kitchen, and I have started to become quite fond of Arabic style coffee.

When I was about to leave I spotted some interesting pets crawling around the front yard!  Good job I didn’t head out to the loo too early on the morning as I might of trod on them!

The second and third night I stayed in the Al Atabeh guest house.   This had a quite good sized open court yard, with plenty of outside seating.   This was slightly cheaper, with a large dorm room with bunks for about 10 people.   There is a bar where some food can be ordered but no shared kitchen.

As the other picture shows there was a decent bit of rain here, and in this lounge the roof started to leak with water running down the walls, above the coloured drapes the ceiling is only a flimsy corrugated plastic job.   Leaking roofs are quite a bit problem in Israel, as a lot of them are flat and in not so good condition, so this wasn’t too much of a surprise.

I didn’t like that the showers are awful even by middle east standards, water just goes out under the door into the yard, there was nowhere to hang up your clothes whilst inside to keep them dry and clean, and the lights mysteriously turned off halfway through, this meant I had to wrap a towel around me and get it out and press the light switch, but it wasn’t someone playing pranks, it was just broken, probably wet had got inside the electrics.    I also didn’t like overly political stickers inside the bathrooms.

 

The last hostel above and left is the Fauzi Azar is by far the best, unfortunately I could not get a bed here as it was full.   I did however take advantage of breakfast and two hour tour of the city for 35 Shekels which was terrific!   This grand old house is beautiful and well kept.  It has been voted the best youth hostel in Israel, and its not hard to see why.

Check out:-

www.abusaeedhostel.com

www.alatabeh.com

www.fauziazarinn.com

 

1. Arrival at the city – 2. Staying in the old city – 3. The modern day Nazarene carpenter – 4. Where Jesus first preached – 5. Religious vehicles in Nazareth – 6. Mary’s Well and the Bath house – 7. The precipice – 8. On top of the Precipice hill – 9. More old city streets and market – 10. The spice shop – 11. Churches from A to Z or Alpha to Omega – 12. The Basilica church – 13. Easter service at the Basilica

Apr 25 2011

Nazareth – 1. Arrival at the city

I have always hoped Michael Palin could do journals around the holy land one day, until this happens I try and blog on the places of the life of Jesus myself.  I am tired by the attitudes of the media and fellow Brits who try to slander Israel and accuse it of being a ‘Apartheid’ state amongst other things.  I set out to the central Galilee city of Nazareth, to see what it was like for Jesus to have grown up there, glimpses of places from the bible, how the Arab people there live in the centre of the Galilee and how different it is from Jerusalem.

Just before getting off the bus which took me from Jerusalem, I asked some people next to me if this was the right place to get off, and there didn’t seem to be a proper bus station, just a stop by the main road.   This Arab couple were really friendly and were happy oblige to walk with me from the street through some narrow streets uphill through the old city towards my hostel.

Jesus frequently went to and fro from here or the greater part of Galilee to Jerusalem and Bethlehem.  When you live some distance from your family this must be a lot of effort to travel often.

This provocative message to Christians stands out a junction heading north towards the Synagogue where Jesus first preached.  Behind is the tall turret of the famous huge and grand looking Bisilica Church.   It says “and whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted of him, and in the hereafter he will be one of the losers. – Holy Quran”

I have a better message though: Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14 : 6

I have seen this on some guides before, and all the research I did suggested Nazareth is a safe city to visit, and it is too.  I had a number of worries though to do with the busy time of year.  I booked this trip at rather the last minute as its in between Pesach and Easter, and with two different holidays, the buses are not running for some of those days, Easter making it more busy for Christian visitors, and I had hoped to visit Tiberias but both youth hostels were fully booked, so was one of the main hostels in Nazareth, and I got myself one night booked but not for the other days, this needed a lot of prayer of exactly how to figure out where to stay….

Soon!  Different Youth Hostels, the Spice Mill, Thousands of Arab Israelis Christians in the streets at Easter, the church at Cana for weddings, today’s modern Nazarene carpenters and residents finding hidden wells in the back yards by accident!

1. Arrival at the city – 2. Staying in the old city – 3. The modern day Nazarene carpenter – 4. Where Jesus first preached – 5. Religious vehicles in Nazareth – 6. Mary’s Well and the Bath house – 7. The precipice – 8. On top of the Precipice hill – 9. More old city streets and market – 10. The spice shop – 11. Churches from A to Z or Alpha to Omega – 12. The Basilica church – 13. Easter service at the Basilica

Apr 24 2011

Easter Sunday – Resurrection day at the tomb

My phone woke me up at 4.45am today on Easter Sunday morning, a silly time indeed, but I needed to leave just after 5 to get to the other end of the city for a special event with people churches all over the city starting at 06.00.

Lots of people are queuing outside….

Looks like people lining up for the sales (sunday is a regular work day in Israel) or going to a concert of some kind….

Aha, its starting to become clear now….

This was a special place to celebration of Jesus’ resurrection at the very place mostly likely to have been buried, but most definitely risen!

Really good service from a speaker I have not heard from before, and some great worship music from my (King of Kings) congregation.

It did mean that that leader speaking, the worship band and the tomb itself were hidden from view as there were bushes and trees in front of where I was sitting thought!   I would have a guess that there was about 2000 people crammed into the garden.  About half of the people I would guess are Christian tourists on a short holiday,with the remainder being Israeli believers and foreign Christians like me volunteering in the land.

Finally a quick glimpse of the tomb itself as people are leaving.

This was a memorable day to spend Easter Sunday.  I missed this service last year as I didn’t wake up in time!!

Funnily enough, two years ago I was working for an Israeli software company in Southampton UK, there we were given a chocolate egg by our bosses as an Easter present!  Also Pesach was mentioned as well as the Jewish holiday is the week before Easter.

Next: My journey to Nazareth and Cana to see Jesus’ childhood