Cana, Nazareth, and the West Bank (Palestine)

Today started well as we travelled from Tiberius to Cana, stopped to visit the historical site of the wedding at Cana. My first picture is of one of the large jars they unearthed that they believe was one of the jars that held the water that was changed to wine. It was HUGE, much larger than I had in my mind. Then went on to Nazareth. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? You bet, Jesus home town, and Young Life is starting here! This is where we started ‘working’, and work did not stop until just now as we pulled into Bethlehem at 10:30pm. In Nazareth we went to the Nazareth Baptist School which is the only acknowledged evangelical school in Israel. 1000 students attend this school with mostly Muslims and ethnic Christians attending. This is a place where we have begun some Young Life work and started exploring ways to partner with this school. Nazareth is also the place that we will most likely send our new staff person and his family to live in the next year as our Middle East Initiative Director. We met with the head master of the school, Botrus , who is a Arab Israeli Palestinian Christian (say that four times, and it starts to give you an idea of how crazy things are here). He understands what Young Life could bring to his school, with incarnational ministry training, we met for about 2 hours sharing and dreaming about what this would look like.

We jumped in the car with Botrus and went up to the Precipice, this is the historical site in Luke 4 where Jesus is rejected in Nazareth and the crowd try and throw him off a cliff, but Jesus avoids them by walking straight through the crowd. This is actually quite a large hill, more a mountain, and we spent some time up there with Botrus praying and dreaming as we overlooked the Jezerell valley (where the battle of Armageddon will take place). (see picture)

We left there and started our journey into the West Bank and Palestine. The political dynamics here make things very confusing and ever changing. Our guide that is with us is a Palestinian Christian so it is very interesting to get his perspective on the situation. (I will try and remember to tell you the story he told us about when he was an interpreter for a documentary on the #1 wanted person in Palestine Authority army in 2002, wow) It is jaw dropping to be driving down the road and look to the left side and see a Jewish settlement with neatly built buildings, very organized, and then look to the left (over a 30ft wall) and see refugee camps with large black water drums on top, and basically a slum. You drive through an Israeli check point, and then 4 miles later you get stopped by a Palestinian Authority solider (who this evening boarded our little van, singled two of us out, took our passports and drummed us with questions, came back 5 minutes later and sent us on our way with a smile). It is hard to put into words the stark ethnic and religious divisions here as both sides walk so close to each other with big guns and big walls, and no answers.

We came into Palestine today because our best Young Life work is happening here. I won’t name towns or people, but these friends are amazing. Arab Palestinian Christians living in the West Bank and reaching out to teenagers, doing incarnational ministry the Young Life way. We walked the streets with about 10 leaders, meeting kids, shaking hands with locals, and finally eating a great dinner together finishing with a commissioning prayer over their ministry. We then drove down to Jerusalem passing through two more check points coming back into Israel, then, back through another check point, back into the West Bank and to Bethlehem. (I didn’t know Bethlehem was in the West Bank until I got here). Tomorrow we will meet with some key leaders here and visit another school we are partnering with.

It continues to be an incredible time with the International South Team as we drive together we read scriptures about things we have seen and places we have been. In the next 2 days we will visit Jericho where I will give a little message about Zacchaeus, and then in the north part of Jerusalem speaking about the healing at the 5 pools.

Tired and Blessed!

Jamie