... הַקֵּץ בָּא

The end has come. I took my "final exam" for the course today. While I'm really pleased about how much Hebrew I've been able to learn, it seems like just as I'm starting to get a grasp of the language, it's time to leave and I'm going to try to learn more without Hebrew speakers around. We have one last class time tomorrow that will just be about how to continue from here, then I'll leave for Tel Aviv to catch a plane back home. Now it's time to figure out what to tell people when they ask about this summer. There's no way to condense down all the people, all the stories, all the lessons, and the ways that God has used this trip into even an hour presentation. Well, hopefully I'll see all of you pretty soon and you can ask whatever questions you want. This will probably be my last post in Israel. Hope you've enjoyed reading.

So once again it's been quite some time since I wrote last. Things have been busy with class, and we actually just got back from a 3 day 2 night trip to the Galilee where we saw a lot of spots and talked about them (mostly in Hebrew, but sometimes with an English explanation afterward) and also read through some stories in the Bible that happened in the region (in Hebrew). The additional stories have been great to be able to see how much we can understand even with the limitd vocabulary we have.

Last weekend I got to go on a really fun hike in the Galilee/Golan Heights along HaNahal Yehudiyya (the Judith River). I went with Yoel, who is the guy who invited the group from the Carolinas to his house for a Shabbat dinner while they were in Jerusalem, and Steve and Glenn, a couple of Yoel's friends. There's a couple of pictures up on the Even More Pictures from Israel album. It was a lot of fun, with several places to jump into the river and cool off.

Well, we only have one week of class left, so it's time for the final push and try to learn everything I can in the last week. There's a final exam on Thursday that I think is mainly on the book of Jonah, but also includes some verb categorization. Then, next Friday I'll catch a bus to Tel Aviv and then fly out Saturday morning to be home for a few days before heading down to Auburn. The summer is coming to an end, but that means the fall is coming. That is exciting to think about, what with Wesley and seeing all the folks down at Auburn again. Well, I suppose that's all for now.

Memories...

So it's been an interesting week. Monday when I called home I found out that my grandfather had died sometime early Monday morning. Pawpaw was 91 years old, so his death wasn't something completely unexpected, but it still took me somewhat by surprise. I obviously wasn't able to make it to the funeral, and so I missed being around with all the family to hear the stories people had to tell. I know there were some good ones. Not too many years ago some one would be hard pressed to find someone in Marshall county that hadn't heard of Ernest Miller. Just ask my dad about that. I've heard more than a couple of times about how when he and Mom got married, Uncle Hal was planning to "decorate" their car. So, to keep it safe they set out to find someone who didn't know Pawpaw so that word wouldn't get back to Pawpaw and Hal where the car was. It took them awhile to find someone. He helped so many people finance a house through his job at the loan office. Growing up I was always surprised at the number of people that would let him take us fishing or turtle trapping in their ponds. He seemed to know everyone. Pawpaw always used to have his crop of corn and tomatoes every year that he grew in his back yard. I remember Mom, Grandma, and all my aunts sitting around shucking corn to get ready for a big family meal for the Fourth of July, and he would grow so many tomatoes that he would give them away to anyone that came by. You couldn't hardly visit their house without leaving with either a basket of tomatoes or a jar of honey.

Perhaps one of the greatest things that he left behind is a family that all cares for each other so much. Since having moved to Guntersville, I've seen my parents and aunts and uncles give so much of themselves to take care of Pawpaw and Grandma and Pawpaw's two sisters, Cassie and Dessa and any neighbors that need someone to visit every now and again. And the family won't miss a good excuse to get together and have a big family dinner. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter are the three biggest ones, but there's always some sort of reason to have some more each year at some point. Pawpaw cared so much for us, too, and whenever we used to visit when I was growing up, he would find all kinds of little ways to show us. To this day, every time I go in the kitchen door of their house, my eyes always go to the top the refrigerator where he would put a box of Krispy Kreme donuts every time we came to visit.

Even through this though, God has been teaching me while I've been here. Though I wasn't able to be there for Pawpaw's funeral, I was comforted by all the confirmations that had been telling me I am right where God wants me to be. As much as I love my family, if following Christ means a separation from them, then it is worth it. Also, God has been opening my eyes to how big my family really is, for by the grace of God I have brothers and sisters all over this world. I am also so blessed, because I know that, for most members of my earthly family, any separation here, no matter how long it may be, will be a temporary one. I'll have a long time together with Pawpaw yet, and maybe by the time I see him again I'll have as many stories to tell him as he's had to tell me all these years.

As far as things in Israel, I'm now halfway through the course and only have three weeks more in the country. God has sent a few reminders my way to get me to work some on getting some things ready for this fall at Wesley. While the experience here has been incredible, I am really excited about what God has in store back at Auburn. There's also been a little more thought about what in the world I'm going to do after Auburn, and while there's still no clear path, there are a few front runners that, God willing, I would like to do. However, what I keep coming back to, and have been coming back to for the past two and a half years or so, is to trust in God and He will direct my path. I reckon that I'll know what I need to know when I need to know it.

After two weeks

So, sorry I haven't been updating more often. Studying has been taking up a good bit of time lately, but I'll try to be a little more frequent with some updates.
The second week of class we continued to introduce new objects and such in class, but we also began to distinguish more between tenses and looking at sequencing of events. Again, this was all done by demonstration. The teacher would have one of the students get up and act out a series of commands and return to their seat. Then the teacher would tell us in past tense what the student had just done, and then "read their book" to us, in which the would use the sequential past tense to tell the story of what the student had just done. We've also acted out the story of the garden of Eden and Balaaam and his donkey (I got to be Balaam). They have fun ways of introducing vocabulary. One day they chose a king and a servant and prompted the king to ask his servant for a vineyard. It's always fun to see people improvise to do things. We were outside, so the "servant" took a stick and drew lines in the dirt and acted like he was planting seeds. Then the king asked for a wall, so he took rocks and made a ring around the vineyard. Then they had a story where a bad woman (isha ra'a) came to steal from the king, and there was a guard who chased and caught the person, and they asked the king what he wanted to do with her, and he let her go. I could go on, but it gives you a good idea of how they conduct class. It's very interactive, and there are two teachers and one student teacher that play off of each other very well. We've also been memorizing some short six line dialogs that follow the story of Jonah and performing them in class. The drills for homework now focus more on grammatical points, so we're learning more of the verb patterns and how to conjugate verbs.

As far as other things besides class, today was the last Sunday that Sheka Immanuel, a pastor from Nigeria that's been studying over here for the last three years, will be at Jerusalem Baptist Church. He's been leading the Sunday School there, but his classes are finished now so he is heading back home in a week to return to his family and ministry there. Before Brother Al's sermon today, Immanuel told a little about what he wants to do when he returns home. One thing that he wants to do is to start a library. Pastors (and everyone else) have very few resources, and so he wants to use the books he got from seminary and any others that people will donate to start a library. He's looking for books of pretty much any kind: theological books, novels, schoolbooks, Bibles, etc. He also hopes that this can be an outreach, because if a place with these resources is available to everyone, then several Muslims will also make us of the library. His mailing address is

Rev. Sheka Immanuel Bambur
ECWA Good News Church
P.O. Box 619
Jalingo 660001
Taraba State, Nigeria

in case any of you have some extra books that you don't need anymore. Just tell him you know Joe from Alabama that he met in Jerusalem Baptist Church. Please pray for our brother as he goes home to be a light to Nigeria and an anchor to teach sound doctrine in the church.

After Week 1 of Class

So we've been in class for a little over a week now, and already we're starting on reading and writing in Hebrew. I've been surprised how tiring the four hours of classes are, but having to really process everything you hear is pretty taxing on the brain. It's exciting, though, to see the progress we've made in a week. The first week of class focused more on getting used to hearing the language and building vocabulary as we do or handle things in class and refer to them by their Hebrew names. We also had pictures to look at every night that had matching recordings, so that we could continue to build our vocabulary, reinforcing the class, and with minimal English association. We also began to look at the alphabet, again with recordings, and by the end of the week, were reading the words that we had previously heard in our picture lessons. I think learning to read English phonetically has helped make the transition to the phonetics of the Hebrew alphabet, though there are definitely some sounds in Hebrew that don't occur in English.

I've now been to Jerusalem Baptist Church twice, once before I went down to Eilat, and once this past Sunday, and both times the pastor and his family have asked me to eat lunch with them afterwards. The first time I ended up going to a Bible study in Bethlehem with a few Palestinian believers. The Sunday night service is in English, so it's much smaller than their Thursday night study in Arabic. This past time, during the service, my roommate David and I happened to be sitting behind the man who was going to be playing the offertory hymn, and he turned around at one point before the sermon and asked us if we wanted to sing for the offertory. The song was "How Great Thou Art," and we both knew it, so we agreed. Not exactly something I had expected, but it was fun.

Tonight there is a speaker at one of the churches in Jerusalem that I want to go hear, but I need to take a nap and do some studying first, so I'll try to write more soon. And post a couple more pictures, if I have some new ones.

Back to School

So class started yesterday. There's about fifteen of us in the beginning class, and we go for four hours with a small break after every hour. Basically they tell us things in Hebrew and demonstrate until we begin to grasp the meaning and can do what they want us to do. Then they slowly back off on the demonstration and just tell us things. After we seem to grasp what's going on they start to give us other things and build on what we seem to know. It's working pretty well. It's a great way to learn a language. We also have a couple hours or so of homework every night, but class is done by lunchtime, so there's plenty of time for other things. There's an old crusader building on top of a hill near here, so I think I'm going to go check that out today.

**Update**
There's now pictures from the crusader castle on the More Pictures in Israel album. It was really neat. I don't think there's ever been an archaeological excavation there, so there's no barriers and you can explore the whole place. I'll probably make a few more trips up there.

Wow, I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while, but there wasn't any internet access where I was staying in Eilat. God is amazing. I had been praying that I would be able to find a ministry of sorts to help out with, but I hadn't been able to find one in Jerusalem. So, I went down to Eilat to go visit Petra, which was the only thing I had actually planned to do during the time between the tour and the classes. I ended up checking into a Christian owned hostel which also serves as a hub for ministries. A mission team from America checked into the hostel about the same time I did, and they've adopted me into their team. Seth, the team's leader, is an incredible teacher, and we just finished a four night series looking at how the Torah points to the need for a new covenant and to Jesus (The series "just happened" to be on the four nights I was in Eilat). In an even greater "coincidence," they had already planned to stay at the same hostel that I had been staying at in Jerusalem, so I stayed in Eilat an extra day and came up with them this morning to show them where it is. The team is mainly evangelism based, and God has provided incredible opportunities for conversations with people. I almost skipped going to Petra on Wednesday to continue helping them, but I got to thinking that if God used me wanting to go to Petra to hook me up with this mission team, then maybe there was something else in store at Petra. So Wednesday I woke up at 6:00, which was an hour later than I had planned on, and headed to the border crossing. While there I met a couple of girls from France and Switzerland that were also going to Petra for the day, so we shared a taxi up there to cut expenses. Unbeknownst to us though, King Abdullah of Jordan had arranged a conference of Nobel Prize Laureates in Petra that began that same day, so they wouldn't let us into the park for an hour or so after we got there for security reasons. So, the three of us found a local restaurant and sat down to wait. After a while, the conversation turned to why I was in Israel, and then to religious beliefs, and I was able to share my testimony with them. They both asked several questions afterward, and then sat quietly thinking for a while. The name of the restaurant was the Mystic Pizza, and one of them remarked later that it was a "mystic moment." I pray that God continues to work in their hearts. Petra was very neat though. I'll post some pictures later. The "coincidences" have been amazing on this trip. God continues to provide in tremendous ways. The mission team that adopted me is leaving Sunday, which is also when I head to Kibbutz Tzuba to start the Hebrew classes. Tonight, a friend of Seth's has invited us all for Sabbath dinner. It should be a real treat.

Longer post to come soon, but Mom brought to my attention that people, specifically Neil Gunter, might like to see some pictures so here's some links to a couple of albums that I've uploaded

Israeli Scenery and Wildlife

More pictures from Israel

Hope you enjoy!

So this hostel I'm staying at is hidden in an alley and concealed by a vegetable stand. I had to ask a cab driver where it was to find it the first time. But, today when I was coming back from spending some hours at Yad VaShem Holocaust museum I was hungry and ready for something besides granola bars (no offense Ben, I've loved having those around), so I bought an eggplant, a zucchini, and an onion. That came to a grand total of 2 sheckels. That's about 66 cents. I'm really excited about this vegetable stand. I can just buy something on the way in or out to eat, and it's really cheap. God continues to provide in amazing ways. When I was looking at hostels on the internet, it "just so happened" that the one I chose was just a short walk from where we were staying in our hotel with the tour group, and it has a healthy, cheap food source literally right outside it's door. It must be a "coincidence."

So about Yad VaShem. We spent a short time viewing some of the memorials with the group while they were here, but I wanted to go back to see the historical side of it. I guess what crushed me most was very close to the beginning of the museum, where it talked about anti-semetism being spread by the church, blaming the Jews for killing Jesus. It broke my heart to think of hatred being spread in the name of my dear Jewish Messiah who gave His own life freely and said that His disciples would be known by their love. And people wonder why Jews don't believe Jesus is the Messiah when such things have been done in His wonderful name.
Brothers and sisters, we must realize that every moment we live of our lives is a reflection upon our Lord. Another part of the museum that was especially touching that the Holocaust museum in D. C. didn't have was the screens that would play clips from interviews with Holocaust survivors. That's something that you can never capture on a little placard next to a display case.

No photography is allowed inside the buildings at Yad VaShem, but I did write down a quote.

"A country is not just what it does - it is also what it tolerates."
-Kurt Tucholsky

What is it that makes it horrible for the Nazis to have had 6 centers set up to examine and exterminate handicapped children and acceptable that America has hundreds of places that will abort babies? I fear for our country in this age of tolerance.

Well, the first part of the trip is over. The rest of the in depth study tour group flew out of the country about 8 hours ago, and so I'm here in a hostel by the Damascus gate in Jerusalem. It's strange to be on your own after having almost 50 people to talk to all the time. Well, I say "on your own," but I'm not really. God continues to be with me and provide for me.

I suppose today I'm going try and take in a bit more of Jerusalem. I'll probably find a park and start trying to learn the Hebrew alphabet, since I think I'm supposed to know that when I start class on the 22nd. That's all for now I suppose. God is gracious.

It's hard to put into words what this trip has been like. I can tell you where we've been and what we've seen, but it's hard to capture the passion of our leader Todd. I really would almost like to hold off telling the lessons we've been going through until I can tell you in person, so I think that's what I'll do. (By the way, that means you're going to have to come ask me about this) I'll just say that God is showing me my ignorance once again, and I have so much work to do in knowing the Bible. Please pray for me and help keep me committed to learning the scriptures. Anyway, so far we've been to almost every geographical region in the country, from the Negev to the Golan Heights, visiting archaeological sites along the way and learning about the stories in the Bible in the context of it's people and land. The first part of the tour focused more on stories from the Hebrew scriptures, building a foundational basic knowledge of some of the history of the land. Now we have moved into the region around Galilee and are focusing on the ministry of Jesus. Today, we visited the ruins of Gamla, the headquarters of the Zealots during Jesus' day. The Romans came and took them out in September 67 A.D. after they decided they'd had enough of these terrorists in the middle east. If you want a really full account of the story, read the writings of Josephus, who was actually there. Anyway, no one has settled at that site since then, and so the synagogue there is dated to the time of Christ. I was told it's about a day's walk, maybe a bit more, from Capernaum, Jesus hometown during his ministry. So, it is pretty much guaranteed that Jesus taught at that synagogue, because He taught at all the synagogues in the area. That was pretty cool. There's so much more I could say, but again, it's hard to do this justice in just words. I suppose that's a reflection on my vocabulary and use of English, but more than that really I guess I want to at least attempt to present the material in a way that captures the passion behind it. There's also just so much to tell, I can't pick which ones to tell and which ones to leave out. Well, that's all 'til later. May God bless you and keep you, may he make His face to shine upon you and give you peace.

Joe

Wow, where to begin. I've only been in Israel a few days, but I've already seen so much. We left the airport after everyone had accounted for their bags (mine apparently decided it liked Rome pretty well and decided to stay there an extra day, but it caught up to us) and headed for the archaeological site of Tel Gezer. It was given to Solomon by Pharaoh as a dowry for Pharaoh's daughter, but the valuable part of the city that we saw was the illustration of a city gate and standing stones. I'm probably not going to explain now since I need to get to bed somewhat soon. I'll tell whoever wants to know when I get back though. We've also been to some pretty incredible places: where Samson grew up, where David fought Goliath, and today we hiked through a wadi in the Israeli desert near the Sinai peninsula and saw a recreation of the tabernacle. I guess that's all for now.

Joe

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the story behind this trip, let me fill you in on how this came about. Sometime in the fall of 2006 I heard a Biblical scholar named Ray Vander Laan (RVL) doing a seminar in West Point Georgia and was blown away by a combination of his knowledge of the scriptures and my lack thereof. That seminar left me with a desire to know my God better, and as part of that, to know the Bible much better than I do, to be able to read the scriptures in their original languages, and to see the land and the culture in which these stories took place. So after the seminar was over, RVL recommended a place that I could learn Hebrew. There was just this one problem: where he recommended was in Israel, and while I wanted to go there, I didn't see it happening anytime soon. But the thought wouldn't leave me alone, and then I remembered a scholarship that the college of engineering at Auburn has. This scholarship, called the Birdsong Scholarship, is for engineering students to study in other countries, as long as they study something besides engineering. So to shorten the story a bit, I applied for the scholarship and, by the grace of God, I am one of three recipients of the scholarship for this year. What's more, during the first two weeks of my time in Israel I will be accompanying a 2 week in depth Bible study tour with That the World May Know ministries, which RVL founded with Focus on the Family. I am really looking forward to this tour as we will be traveling around Israel, seeing locations where Biblical stories actually took place, and looking at how those stories apply to us as we strive to live out this Christian life. Praise God for this incredible opportunity!