Update

Wow, these past two days have been filled with lots of awesome worship, teaching, and fellowship. I haven't written because I've been so tired... But I'll try to give some updates now. Believe it or not, I always have an extremely hard time making myself sit down to write these updates; they're a real test of diligence for me! Haha. Once I sit down to get my thoughts out, I feel fine, but getting to that place, and making the time to get my days onto here is hard. I want to be able to keep you all informed though as to how I'm doing on a daily basis, as well as be able to look back later and see, in detail, the significance of this trip. All that said, here are my past two days (Tues 2.23 & Wed 2.24):

Yesterday was a blast! My team of Living Bread staff and volunteers joined up with Global Celebration, Georgian Banov's ministry. We left our house around 12 and were in Jericho within a half an hour and met up with his team. In total, Georgian had 42 people with him and our group had 10. It was so much fun worshiping with such a large group, in addition to all of the refugees who joined us for the meeting. We gave out food coupons; 250 total and those were only given to fathers, young men, and some mothers (meaning that there were a LOT of people!!). I was asked by Karen to take as many pictures as possible, as was Kat. We clicked away the entire afternoon and between the two of us ended up with tons and tons of great shots! I had a lot of fun using my camera for something significant like taking pictures for Karen. I was able to transfer them to the ministry's computer, so she might use some for who knows what down the road. It was really awesome to have a specific job assigned to me yesterday. Also, I was asked to watch all of the unused instruments, bags, and sound equipment for the team, and to keep all the adorable kids off of the stage.

Us Living Breaders took Georgian's team up to the Mount of Temptations and had a great worship time together. We all payed half price, 25 NIS, took a few cable cars up the mountain, and sang together. I had a lot of fun haggling in the gift shop with an employee who was trying to charge one woman $42 for a 2GB Sandisk memory card.. I ended up being able to get it down to $25, which was still a bit pricey, but better than before. I didn't realize how exhilarating bargaining is! Watch out Israel! After that we went back to the Prophet's House and enjoyed the oranges off the trees, the spring, and some delicious falafel.

Next was the service! We sang for a long time and continually alternated between English and Arabic. In such free worship though, language becomes insignificant because everyone is having so much fun dancing and praising God. Haha... No one discussed cultural standards or taboos before the service, and a lot of guys from Georgian's team ended up dancing with the women of Hamas and Fatah! OH MAN! That really made me laugh because even at significant events, such as weddings, the men and women are perpetually segregated and do not dance with one another, and here we all were, a bunch of white foreigners, all joined together breaking taboos and dancing with one another. Oh well, right? No one seemed to be offended and everything worked out beautifully. Towards the end however, when the food coupons were being divvied out, some of those present became very demanding. Some of the women were forcefully into bumping me and I got shoved quite a bit haha... But we got out soon thereafter and everything was ok. Actually, never mind. When we were packing all the sound and camera equipment, I carried out a single guitar and tripod, and one of or staff thought I also had a camera. Well, I didn't and it ended up being quite a scare because everyone thought we had left it behind. The "missing" camera though was just inside, sitting there untouched. Whoops! We backed everything into the van, piled in, and drove home. During dinner and after, Karen shared part of her testimony with Kat and I for nearly 2 hours! I had so much fun listening to her and was undone by all her experiences; coming close to death, being pursued by the mafia, coming to Christ, losing all of the media equipment... The list goes on and on. Talking to her and hearing the unwavering faith she has developed as a response to all of her trials was a phenomenal blessing to me.

We had the same type of meeting this PM with Georgian's team, except it took place in Jerusalem at the church. We congregated at 5 and worshiped until around 7:45. Again, it was a really good time and I got to take pictures!!