2/15/2010 - Jericho / Yeriho / Jeriho

At 2pm our group left for Jericho!

I had forgotten the stark, amazing contrast between the various cities of Israel. Within highly populated areas such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, there are many high rise buildings and apartments like any city in the United States. But as soon as you leave those crowded areas and head for the smaller cities, the land turns into mountainous rolling hills and desert. Its seriously insane to go from a modern city to a barren wilderness of Bedouins, goats, and camels within 10 minutes or less. I would love to put pictures of the difference in landscape on this blog or on Facebook, but it seems that the internet is too slow, unfortunately. I can try again, but every time the pictures fail to load.

Jericho is within the West Bank, which means that it is not under Israeli authority but rather, Arab authority. I think, and I could be wrong, at this time the West Bank is under the control of Fatah or Hamas. Either way, because it is under authority other than that of Israel, citizens of the West Bank are restricted of free travel in and out of the territory. I cannot imagine being "stuck" in Jericho indefinitely. It was beautiful and lush like an oasis in some parts of the town, but for the most part, it seemed to be extremely dry and oppressively hot. For example, today and the month of February is considered a winter month in Israel. But today, in the winter, it was almost 70F out, if not hotter! If that is winter in Jericho, I don't want to think about summer.

I'm really tired and its 12:30PM here and I need to head to bed. I'll finish this post tomorrow though. Night from Israel!

*2/16/2010*

So when we traveled into Jericho, we got in around 3:00PM and visited the Prophet's house, which is a part of the Living Bread property. It was a small house lost in an oasis of orange trees. You could just reach out and grab one off the tree and eat it. They were super succulent and very juicy... much better than any I've eaten in the States. Actually, the Jericho orange is so tasty that all of Israel relies on Jericho to grow them instead of the surrounding farm areas growing the fruit independently.

After seeing the house, we went to the place where the meeting was to be held. It was basically a wedding or event hall that Living Bread rents out once a week to hold meetings. It was really big! Arab weddings are held there and within the main larger building is a stage with two giant green armchairs for the bride and groom to use during the ceremony. The stage was surrounded by lots of plastic white chairs that the people who came to the meeting sat in. All in all, there may have been arounf 20-30 people present and then 10 children or so. For the past 9 months, the meetings in Jericho have been less advertised and as a result, less people come. In the past, Mike told me that on good days, as many as 500 people would come to a single meeting!!! That would be crazy awesome. But the meetings became more sporadic because Living Bread believed the Christians in Jericho needed to be able to stand on their own in a way and not be entirely dependent on the organization. In addition, milk used to be given out and I think that may have been the main reason people were coming (possibly; I'm not positive) and not to learn about the Bible or Christianity.

When I was there, we worshiped in Arabic for a while and then I went to work with the children with Rachel. She speaks Arabic really well even though she just began to learn a year ago. She was able to communicate our story to the children as I helped with balloons, coloring, and holding the poster board. Not being able to communicate because of the massive language between myself and kids. It was kind of frustrating not being able to understand them whatsoever. With a relatively familiar language, such as Spanish, as an America I can get by with the minimal amount of words that I know, and throw some English in that a Spanish-speaking person would understand. But with Arabic, every single words is completely and totally foreign. I know some words..

• afak - you're welcome
• shukran - thank you
• habibi - my love
• marhaba - welcome
• ma salami - goodbye

And in Hebrew I know the minimal also . . .

• shalom - goodbye, peace, hello, see ya later
• toda - thank you
• meetah - bed
• chamuda - cutie

I had a really nice time playing with the children. They were SO cute! Even with language barriers, a smile is universal. You can never go wrong with a smile and sometimes when that is all you can do, it really means a lot because without words, you're showing interest in the person you're looking at.