Have you ever tried to count your blessings? you should…it’s going to be impossible…but it is good to sit and focus on all the amazing things that the Lord has done for you. That’s what this is going to be about. But just my recent blessings…mostly from today. But I am going to have to back up a little so that you will be able to get the whole picture. Man…God is good!!!
Ok…so as most of you know the Lord blessed us last week with our friends being here. That alone is a huge blessing. While we were on the tour bus with them we met a guy named yoel. He is from the states and has been living here in
Jerusalem
for over a year. Paul, laura and I got to talk to him a lot on the bus and we told him what we were doing and he said that he would love to hang out with us after the group left. So we got his number and planned to call him after we had a few days of rest.
So after a few days…we started getting restless…pretty much going crazy. we walked around town seeing stuff and then just hung out at our hostel. We needed something…something to do. So we called yoel. He was at work, but he gave us the number of a ministry here in
Jerusalem
that works with the homeless. So we called the ministry…but the guy said to call tomorrow. Grrr…one more day of sitting around…nothing to do…going insane. So this morning I get up ready to go…call the ministry and he wants to meet us at
12:30
…and yoel wanted to meet us at
4:00
. we were excited…we had plans…wahoo!!!! So we show up at the
Jaffa
gate at
12:30
and wait. We wait and we wait and we wait. Nothing. There was a guy there though that we asked if he was the person we were waiting for…he said no…but he did offer 500 camels for me. I politely turned him down and we thought that was a good time to leave. It was already past one. So we didn’t think he was going to show up. We left and started back towards the hostel..but we knew the ministry was somewhere along the way…so we looked for it. And after walking a few min. we found it. We walked inside and the guy was upstairs and he invited us up. So we went upstairs and he explained the ministry…they prepare food and take it to the homeless. And on Fridays they have a soup kitchen. Then he told us that a group just got here and they will be working there. He showed us the card…and they are from adventures in missions. So we are going to try to meet up with them…hopefully in the next few days.
He is going to let us know how we can be a part of that ministry. So please be in prayer about the ministry and our part in it.
After we left there we went to find the place to meet yoel. When we met up with him he said that he would take us to the market. When we got there he started explaining everything to us…then we saw these beautiful strawberries…and he said…”do you want some? I will buy them for you.” We really don’t say no anymore when people are wanting to bless us..especially with food… so we said yes. We were really excited. Then he said… “what else do you want? I would love to buy some food for you guys.” So he just started getting us all of this wonderful food…dried fruit, nuts and then he bought us ground beef and said we could make hamburgers at his house. We were so excited. He took us back to his house, but told us that he had a retreat at
6 pm.
It was already about 5pm. So we started cooking the meat…and while we were cooking we hung out with 2 of his roommates…tali and paul. They were also making food…vegan ice cream and salad. It turned out that we were all going to have dinner together. yoel went to his retreat at
6pm
…which by the way is him in his room alone with God for a couple of days….amazing….and laura, paul and I ate and had dinner with his roommates. Tali had invited a non-believer over and then another one of their friends showed up…so it was like a party. We had so much fun. Lots of laughing, telling each others stories, communion…so amazing…, and lots of prayer…very powerful prayer. It hit me in the middle of dinner that I was sitting with family and I had just met these people less than 2 hrs. before that. The night was truly a gift from God…before we left we got their information and are going to be able to hang out with them more before we leave.
So… I wish there was some way that I could write this so that you could understand what today has meant to me…but there is just no way to describe it. These people that the Lord sent us to have no idea what they did for us today. They took us in, bought us food, spent time with us talking and laughing and most of all they prayed for us. They shared their lives with us and they don’t even know us. This is Jesus. This is who He is.
So yeah…I just want to praise Him for how faithful He is. For Him knowing our needs better than we do and taking care of that for us in the most remarkable ways. I am so blessed….so blessed.
Shalom
