Walking the Wall

What a place...so much contrast - welcoming and open-armed, walled and closed in, joyous smiles and underlying struggle for hope. Joey and I are staying in a flat that belongs to a lovely muslim man, Majdi. He is a shop-keeper, and grew up here in Bethlehem. He is looking out for us amazingly and has welcomed us with much joy. 

We are glad to have a flat where it's just the two of us - a small luxury in our lifestyle.  Adjusting already to the call to prayer in the middle of the night. Slept through it last night (with the use of handy-dandy earplugs-a must have). 

We are going to be going to different villages with some local people who are helping us, as well as Palestinian refugee camps. We will also spend time in Jerusalem later this week...

Today we went on a prayer walk around the wall - it is intense - We are keeping open ears to what God is saying, and listening to the people we meet. May hope and love flow in this land.

LOVE, Joey (Zuzu for short in Arabic) and Christy

Bethlehem

We arrived in Tel Aviv last night and took a bus to Bethlehem (about an hour). We made it through the checkpoint without any trouble.

We will be here in Bethlehem for two weeks. The team is staying in flats and the two of us have our own flat for the first time in 4 months - yay! We are being hosted by a lovely shopkeeper named Majdi.

It is pleasantly warm today and we have done a lot of walking. We went to Bethlehem University for a presentation of a traditional Palestinian wedding which was quite fun!

All is well - we are very happy to be here!
LOVE,
Joseph and Christy

Middle East

3 days until we leave for Israel and Palestine where we will be for 5 weeks.
We have finished the lecture phase of the DTS, which is great! We are looking forward to something new.

Will be in touch and be putting photos on the blog.

Lots of Blessings!
Joseph and Christy

Prayer for Northern Ireland

A lot has been happening in Northern Ireland.
 There has been an increase in dissident sectarian activity in the last couple of weeks, with numerous car-bombings. A cross-community worker had a pipe bomb thrown through her house window last night in Belfast. No one has been injured, thankfully. Please pray for peace and for forgiveness, understanding and reconciliation to increase in great measure.

We are leaving in less than two weeks for Israel/Palestine.
There are 13 of us all together; Joey and I and two others are leading the team. We have been quite busy planning and getting ready for this, while also attending our DTS lectures. This week is about story-telling, telling stories from the Bible, especially to people from oral cultures. It has been really interesting and opens up the Bible a lot!
(http://www.gods-story.org/sts/)

We appreciate you and we pray
for increased blessings in your lives,
Love,
Joseph and Christy

Gratefulness

Reading a book called "Ruthless Trust" A Ragamuffins Path to God by Brennan Manning - It's a really good book! Here's a quote that stands out,

"To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives- the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections-that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for. Let's not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God"

-Henri Nouwen

Thanks be to God!

Happy Easter - it is so good to celebrate the love of Jesus today!
It has been a great week. We had a visiting brother from Ghana and we just prayed for everyone the whole week - such a good time.

We had a giving day which people gave whatever they could and felt moved to. People were giving their laptops to others whose computers had crashed, money for outreach costs, favorite posessions...
It is more blessed to give than to receive!

Here's a photo of a Seder meal we were invited to last night at the Brother's house - an Ecumenical group of men who are single for life by choice and live in intentional community.  They invited people from around Belfast from different groups to be a part of this - a beautiful time of unity with Catholics, Protestants, people from different parts of the world who are in Belfast at the moment.

One of the men who was there is a Chinese man named Owen who gave his life to the Lord 2 weeks ago. One of the Brothers presented the gospel to him after a few months of getting to know him and Owen said, "Why hasn't any one ever told me this before?"
Thanks you Jesus for your love that reaches all of mankind...

A lovely day of celebration today for all of creation!

Blessings and love,

Joey and Christy