Nazareth to Home

I am finally home. I'm still convinced that time passes at a different speed in Israel compared to home. Which is great for having packed days where lots happen but not so great when you are waiting for something and time seems to drag out. Now I'm home i feel like I've been away for months, but the journey home seemed to pass in a moment but carry the effects of several days.
I'm disappointed that I didn't get more chance to write or upload pictures but free time has been rare, the computer has been in high demand (especially for watching the must see Turkish soap opera) and was broken down for the second week. And the hope of being able to pop to an internet cafe occasionally was overly optimistic. So sadly I have a lot of news I could write, but I'll try to keep it short(ish).

The first week

My last post ended at the end of the first day with us having briefly met the kids and introduced ourselves. We had also met the vicar in Charge Asseess Fruad (spelling may not be accurate) an amazing vicar who sings, jokes, plays guitar and works like a duracel bunny.

Tuesday began with morning worship and Bible study all based around a life of prayer. Most of the songs were in Arabic so we just La La La'd our way through them (until we discovered 'La' is Arabic for 'No') and tried to work them out from the actions. Our favorite song was in English and went

Read your Bible pray everyday, pray everyday, pray everyday
Read your Bible pray everyday and you'll grow, grow grow
and you'll grow, grow grow
and you'll grow, grow grow
Read your Bible pray everyday and you'll grow, grow grow

Don't read your Bible forget to pray, forget to pray, forget to pray
Don't read your Bible forget to pray and you'll shrink, shrink, shrink
and you'll shrink, shrink, shrink
and you'll shrink, shrink, shrink
Read your Bible pray everyday and you'll grow, grow grow
Don't read your Bible forget to pray and you'll shrink, shrink, shrink

Then was the section of the day that we were in charge of - stations, I helped man the craft station, but we also had sport and dance/drama. I put my drawing skills to use with a picture of spider-man to encourage the kids who didn't want to take part. But then made them cry when I could only choose one child to give it to. We ran three sessions so every child had a chance to take part and then it was time for lunch. (very nice food).

In the afternoon we went swimming for three hours. This was the highlight of the week as far as I was concerned, because this was when we got to know the kids. There was lots of splashing and some very basic chatting in the little English that the children knew. But it was a lot of fun

The evening finished with another worship session and uni with the kids.

The rest of the week continued much the same, with singing, games, crafts, uno, and learning to say Yella! (come on) and Hallas! (enough!)

On the Tuesday instead of going to the swimming pool they brought lots of huge inflatable bouncy castle slides and pools to the church which was exciting.

Finally on Friday we said a sad goodbye to the kids and packed them back onto buses to their home towns. We all felt that we had spent a great week with the kids and were ready for a rest.

Gallilea
On Saturday we became tourists again and toured around the sea of Gallilee, the highlights included a boat ride on the sea of gallilee, a baptism for one of the members of the team, and being thrown out of the mount of beatitudes for eating. All exciting things, but I personally felt that I'd seen enough churches/giftshops that were built over something that once used to be where Jesus did something and was ready to get back to work.
The Old Bath House Nazareth

Sunday afternoon brought an interesting highlight, a visit to a shop called cactus in Nazareth. Nazareth is now a reasonable sized city tightly packed into the sides of a bowl shaped valley. For a long time it was believed that Nazareth at the time of Jesus was a small town and Jesus came from a poor working class family of carpenters. (Sunday school 101 right?) But the Greek Orthodox owners of cactus stumbled onto an interesting find in their bassment that turned the idea of Nazareth as a small town over. They found a roman bath house. So now it appears that Nazareth may have been a city in 0 A.D. Add to that the fact that 'carpenter' could have been translated 'master builder' and suddenly Jesus becomes middle class. Scary.

This was a great place to see. After seeing many pretty places that are built over Jesus places, to see the remains of somewhere Jesus could have grown up was very exciting.

Coming soon Week Two - Teenagers and The journey home...

Nazareth Day 2

Yesterday was our first full day in Nazareth.

The morning was spent with planning and a little bit of hanging around followed by lunch - the food here is really good. I'm even chancing the humous occasionally. Then we eventually started meeting children and playing games. We introduced ourselves with a song.

We are the Team
The Team Highway
We come to you
from the UK

I'm from Leeds
My name is Matt
I love Aston Villa
and own a cat

I come from Barstanc
My name is Will
We're Grahme and Cat
We live on a hill

My name is Rachel
I love to cook
Lawrence on guitar
And Fran Likes Books

We are the team...

of course we still had to be introduced in Arabic, but it was good fun all the same.

Today we will be having a Bible study, going swimming, and our group are organising the activities. Everything is going well, although Will my room-mate here is not feeling very well.

Jericho to Nazareth

Well I am now in Israel. At this moment I am in the St Margarets Hostel in Nazareth and tomorrow afternoon about 70 children will arrive from across Israel for their Summer holiday youth camp. For the last two days I have been getting acclimatised to the country and seeing some of the sights, so a bit of a tourist start. I've stayed at Jericho, passing through several checkpoints on the way. Jericho is now quite a quiet place but was once a significant holiday destination, and the hotel we stayed in was wonderful, and had a great pool. The weather was so hot. Stepping outside was like opening an oven door.

On our first full day here we went to the dead sea for a bit of floating and smelly mud, and the place where the dead see scrolls, as well as some praying and getting to know my team; Will, Graeme and Cat who are a married couple from Wales, Fran and Matt who are both from Yeadon but hadn't met until now, and me and Rachel, who are also from Leeds and go to the same church. It's a really interesting team, lots of talent and really nice people.

Yesterday we had a 5am start to walk through the desert. The desert wasn't what I expected at all. actually a lot hasn't been what I expected, I thought there would be towns unchanged for 2000 years, that Jerusalem would be a tightly wound net of little alleys full of markets and that the desert would be flat plains full of sand and nothing else. In reality nothing much lasts unchanged for 2000 years, Jerusalem in a metropolis of modern roads and the desert is hills, mountains and valleys of rocks with the occasional stream and quite a lot of greenery.

The desert walk ended at a Greek orthodox monastery who are well known for their hospitality, so we were welcomed in and offered a much needed drink of some pleasant cordial. The monastery is built into the wall of a steep valley cut away by the winter streams and is a beautiful place. after meeting one of the monks we walked up the far side of the valley and returned to our taxis. The walk had been tiring and hot and one of our team was very ill on the way. But it was an adventure. I was wrecked for the rest of the day, so when we went on to see Bethlehem's churches It was all going over my head.

Today we split into our teams, about twenty of us headed for Jerusalem, and me and my team headed for Nazareth, where we have arrived in the most beautiful building. The chaos/children's work starts tomorrow afternoon and will be practically non-stop from 8:30 to 10:00 till Friday, and then it will start again on Monday with a different age group.

The strangest experience of today was the drive to Nazareth, going through a security check and a soldier gets on the bus, just to have a look around. "hello" he says, (though his face says "don't mess"), "hello" we say back and take a quick glance at his AK47. He gets off the bus and we carry on. Several hours later on the balcony of St Margarets overlooking Nazareth city I thought to myself, how would I have felt if someone had got on a Leeds bus with a machine gun. Imagine the panic. But here I accept it as a normal part of Israel life, and so does everyone else.

The main prayer points at the moment are that the teams would get on well, the children on the summer camps would be able to get here, and that the members of the Jerusalem team who are sick would recover.

Not a bomber

Turns out the West Jerusalem suicide bomber was no such thing. It was in fact a bulldozer attack. Again I say this does not effect my journey because it is miles away from where I will be. Far more dangerous to me will be the drive to the airport in an unfamiliar and slightly crazy VW car and only a couple hours sleep.
Though I am looking forward to trying sixth gear. In the words of Jeremy Clarkson, "lets get out of 5th gear, and into Top Gear"

Last day in England (hopefully)

It is my last day at work today until I go away. It has been a fairly gentle day, most of the staff know that I am going and have praised me for my bravery (though I think they overestimate the challenge as I know Highway Projects would not let us go anywhere dangerous).

Todays fly in the ointment was the news of a suicide bomb attack in West Jerusalem and I am just awaiting news from HP to see if there are any changes in plans.

The bombing took place in Rehavia West Jerusalem. We were never going to go to West Jerusalem anyway as it is already known to not be the safest place, but we do have placements in East Jerusalem (old city) and I am wondering if they will continue, and if we will still have a chance to visit the old city.

My own placement is in Nazereth, and unless the trip is cancelled entirely I don't forsee any need to make changes in those plans.

you can see the BBC news report on the bombing here

One day to go

I'm still in the uk.

but tomorrow night (Thursday morning) i will be helping drive down to London to catch the late night plane to Israel. All very exciting.

You can see a bit about the project HERE

Today I have the normal issues of the uk - my biggest issue being that my car looks like it wil fail its MOT. or cost a fortune to repair. The garage is currently examening it very closely to see if they can repair the power steering. I'm not feeling very hopeful at the moment. This isn't good news to me. I can't really afford to pay for it to be fixed, and I'm retisent to scrap it or sell it because it was bought with inheritence money. If it does fail I can't do anything with it until the MOT has run out because of being away.

Apart from that everything is now sorted for going. New hat, new luggage, suncream, passport located and put in my bag.