Arrival

Thinking of loved ones back home and our fun and busy summer!

Thursday 8/15/19  We left for Jerusalem in the afternoon and arrived Friday around dinner time.  Our flight were fine; I didn't sleep much, but that's to be expected.  The tradition is that when the plane touches down in Tel Aviv, everyone applauds, but just then I felt a wave of homesickness for my three sweet daughters in Utah, so I was clapping and crying at the same time!  



The director of the Jerusalem Center, Eran Hayet met us at the airport with his daugher Hadas, who is Lisa's age.  This was a very kind gesture that made us feel very special.  (Especially later on when we were the welcoming committee for others and realized how tiring it can be to wait in the airport for up to an hour on your feet!)  We and all our luggage made it back to the Jerusalem Center, which instantly felt like we never left!  I keep feeling like I am in a dream here,  and then the next instant it feels like the intervening 2 years in Utah were just a dream.  



We spoke for about 15 minutes with the Skinners, whom we are replacing.  Then we stayed in a different apartment for a few days while our real apartment was being prepared.  The temporary apartment was very nice and updated.  It had a mini-fridge and microwave, so we ate pita and veggies and yogurt for a few days.  We arrived in plum season, yay!

The next day was Saturday, Sabbath.  It was amazing as always.  Taking the sacrament and singing hymns about Jesus Christ really make the Holy Land feel holy to me.  Our friends John and Heather Howell are here with 4 of their 5 sons, and they all bike to church every week as well as lead and teach in the branch.  We were delighted to see Sahar Qumsiyeh visiting our branch from Idaho.  She was the Relief Society president when we first came to Jerusalem 9 years ago and a dear friend and now author. 
 
I ate lunch with Sahar and our friend Raghad, then enjoyed a nice potluck hosted by the four service couples from the center: the Lifferths, Hiltons, Earnshaws, and Morrisons.  These couples do so much to make us and the students feel comfortable here as well as coordinate outreach and tours of the building.  




8/20/19 We settled in to our real apartment on Monday night, and we welcomed the rest of the team on Tuesday.  The Belnaps, Pierces, and Properzis arrived from Utah, Ashkelon, and Italy, and we are all sorting out apartments and measuring cups and new phones this week.

 Amanda got to practice on the amazing organ today.  She is very motivated to play the beautiful organ here, and maybe she will have the chance to play in church in a few months.  We had a google hangout with the kids back home on the weekend, and that helped a lot to see that they are doing okay.  



8/23/19  We went to Palmahim beach for the afternoon with the Belnaps, and we enjoyed bobbing with the warm waves.  We stopped at McDonalds on the way back, where the choices were mini-burgers or huge burgers.  And you could choose either chicken nuggets or corn schnitzel, with traditional chopped cucumber salad on the side.

Thursday we had a new student Orientation at the Anglican School, then we went to the Mehane Yehuda Shuk, a busy, covered street market.  Sunday, which is like a Saturday, we visited the Citadel of David for some amazing views and an overview of thousands of years of history.
It must be more humid here because we are all looking a little extra glamorous!

Emily's teacher from three years ago just happened to spot us as we were walking by and ran over to say hello!  What are the chances?



8/28/19 Everything is fine here, the girls started school 2 days ago, and they each have a few classmates they knew from before.  They ride a shuttle to school with the other 9 students from the center, for a total of 11!  Amanda has been helpful in monitoring behavior on the bus and keeping track of booster seats for little ones.   Both Amanda and Emily have been zooming through the books in the kids library here.  They are waiting anxiously for the school library to open, but that may not happen for weeks.  

 

We celebrated the birthday of one of our Jerusalem cousins!  Passiflora flavored ice cream is actually really amazing!

Our world is a little upside-down at the moment, but all is well!  No comfort in the growth zone, no growth in the comfort zone, right?

Mini-post Quotes and Musings

Quote from Blood Brothers: the Dramatic Story of a Palestinian Christian working for Peace in Israel
by Elias Chacour

[Telling family stories] "was Father's most effective way of teaching us two things.  First, we should love and respect our Galilean soil, for our people had long struggled to survive here.  We were rooted like the poppies and wild, blue irises that thrust up among the rocks.  Our family had tilled this land, had worshiped here longer than anyone could remember.  And second, our lives were bound together with the other people who inhabited Palestine--the Jews.  We had suffered together under the Romans, Persians, Crusaders and Turks, and had learned to share the simple elements of human existence--faith, reverence for life, hospitality.  These, Father said, were the things that caused people to live happily together."  p. 38



Quote from The Full Cup podcast by Craig Berthold (you can find it on Apple play or Spotify)

"The God who loves in freedom is not afraid, and therefore can risk vulnerability
absorb the full horror of another's pain without self-destruction.  God has the power to be compassionate without fear; human beings now as in the time of Jesus tend to think of power as refusal to risk compassion.  But God's power looks not like imperious Caesar, but like Jesus on the cross."
Quote by William C. Placher  Narratives of a Vulnerable God

Letter of the Day

We have been working on reviewing the Hebrew and Arabic alphabets to get ready for our next trip to Jerusalem in ...gulp... one month from today! (this was written a while before I posted it - now there are 2 weeks left!)

If you ever wanted to learn a little bit about Hebrew or Arabic, check out my  Letter of the Day pdf file.  I put this together to help me refresh what I used to know about Hebrew and Arabic.  Each day introduces a new letter and shows how to use it in a few relevant words.

To learn with this file, print out one page and explore it as a family in a casual setting, like over lunch.  You can practice writing the letters with your pretzel sticks or spaghetti noodles, and make it fun.  After looking at it together, maybe tape the pages to a wall so your kids can review when they are curious again.

Hebrew has only 22 letters!  Okay, it's actually 26 if you count letters that make a different sound when you put a dot inside. And some letters have a different final form, so that's technically 31 letter forms to learn, plus there are about 9 vowel-related markings... but nothing to be scared about!  Where there's a will, there's a way!

Here's a catchy song to help you with the Hebrew Alphabet!

Arabic is now on Duolingo! Arabic has 28 letters and a half-dozen vowel-related markings.   Here's an Arabic Alphabet song with a nice tune, and here is another alphabet song that uses the alphabet tune you're used to.  Here is a video that shows how the Arabic letters look and sound at the beginning of common words.  One thing that worries people about Arabic is that the letters connect like cursive, so many letters look different when they are in the middle or end of a word.

Here's that pdf Letter of the Day file again:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EKGbQSJ2i2f6qTHiKzDrmNgKtT6oZd9Z/view?usp=sharing

Good luck, and even if you start and don't get all the way through the end, at least you'll be forming a few new dendrites for your troubles!