Here is our last blog form our last night is Israel!!!!
We have spent the last week doing last things-last 3 Hebrew lessons, dad's last 2 visits with his patient Michael, last visits with Ruth Fazal, David Pileggi in Jerusalem, and Rick and Daphne Weinecke in the desert.
On the way to Arad (about 2 hours drive) we saw the most beautiful sunset so far.

 

Also this week we had an outing with my Hebrew teacher to
"Yad Va Shem -a Memorial and a Name" This is taken from Isaiah 56:5 which says;

"to them I will give within my temple and it's walls, a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an evrlasting name that will endure forever"

It is quite an experience to go there with a Jewish person who lost family in WW2.
You can't take pictures inside but outside there is a boxcar that was used to take millions of people to the death camps in Poland.

 

 

 

There is also a tree planted in the Avenue of the Righteous in memory of Corrie Ten Boom and her family who hid Jews from the Germans in Holland and all except Corrie lost their lives in the concentration camps. She wrote an amazing book called " The Hiding Place", about her experiences in the camp, and about the fate of the Dutch Jews.

 

 

 

 

The last weekend we also did some new things with a group from southern Ontario called Return
Minsistries. They sponsor Jewish people from North America who want to return to Israel. Right now they have 7 young people who are returning and going directly into the army-IDF-Israel Defense Force, one of whom is the girl we sponsored, named Keren. We sent you a picture of her a few weeks ago. Together we went to the heartland of Biblical history to the hills of Samaria.
It was to these mountains that Abraham first came when he was called by God to go to a country that God would show him in 1700 BCE.

"I will make you a great nation---and I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse; and all the peoples of the earth will be blessed by you.
So Abram went---through the land as far as the great tree of Moreh (teacher in Hebrew) at Shechem (present day Nablus). The LORD said "to your offspring I will give this land". So he built an altar there to the LORD" Genesis 12:1-7

Here in the present day Elon Moreh settlement --a great tree.

Across the valley can be seen 2 famous mountains, mount Gerazim on the left( Mount of Blessing Har Bracha in Hebrew),  and Mount Ebal on the right (Mount of Cursing), with the town of Shechem in the valley.


 

 

It was in this town that;

• Joseph was put into a pit by his brothers and sold to Egyptian traders
• Joseph's bones were brought back from Egypt 400 years later and buried. in the middle of the picture below in the left corner of the U-shaped building is the white domb of his tomb

 

 

• Joshua set half the people of Israel on Mount Gerazim and half on Mount Ebal and read the whole Torah and they said "as for me and my house we will serve the LORD" Joshua 24
• Here Joshua built an altar which was found in 1980. You can only go there with military escort due to surveillance towers now on the top of the mountain. Below is a drawing of it.

 

 

 

• It was in Shechem that Jesus met the Samaritan woman  at the well and forgave her for her promiscupous life. Below you can see the red dombed church with 2 towers sticking up from it, commemorating that event.

 

 

The last day we spent harvesting grapes with the Waller family. they have 11 children and they come every year to help harvest grapes, olives and pomegranates. They bring with them 75-150 people, who live in caravans with 3 tiered canvas bunkbeds and eat ouside under a canvas tarp for 6 weeks. They are inspired by verses in Jeremiah 31:5 and Isaiah 61:5

"Once again you shall plant vines on the mountains of Samaria"
"Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks and the sons of the foreigner shall be your ploughmen and your vinedressers" 

So in this area after 2000 years of the land being desolate this prophcy is coming true and we got to be a part of it!!! 

Read Amos 9:13-15

On the way home we stopped to see Jerusalem at night from the Mount of Olives.



 


Thank you for being interested in our journey, and for the beautiful notebook you gave Mom for her birthday in which we have recorded all our adventures, thoughts and inspirations.
Love Mom and Dad