In The Wilderness III

Our Birthday tradition. We all squish onto the bed and open presents.

Here we are in the UK again. It's been a wild ride. After serving in Israel for almost three years life, (God) threw us a curveball. Things were not as they should be and we had to leave our home on the Mount of Blessing.

Here are some challenges we faced and overcame:

1. We thought that living in community would be the greatest challenge. As it happens, living in community was great, and we enjoyed every moment of it.

2. We ended up being 10 people living in a static caravan for almost 2 years. I think we did pretty well on that one.

3. We also learned that talking about things doesn't always resolve anything. Sometimes it makes it worse. And sometimes nothing changes.

   
   

At the time of leaving it was hard, but a bit exciting as we had the opportunity to go to America for three months. We left HaYovel on the 25 of December, that night being the first day of Hanukkah. That was a sad night. We were staying with our friends at another ministry helping them out for five weeks doing building work until we flew out to America.

After America we headed back to Israel and then after having to return our visas, we ended up having to leave Israel and come back to the UK. Needless to say it was a bit of a shock. But our time in Israel ended up being spent with our good friends on the Mount of Blessing and that was a great encouragement to both families. I might write about that at some other time.

Helping with work around the house. Here they are digging a trench for the new water pipe.

Pete’s parents have very kindly taken us in, and so we are staying with them until God opens something else up. It has been a really special time, the children are enjoying playing cards with them at night, and spending time with them. We are also helping by doing some things around the house. Pete is helping put cladding on parts of the house, and we have been doing gardening and some other bits and pieces.

When we arrived we immediately started pushing doors to see if there would be other accommodation available at some point in the future. We could see a need for us to have a house to have families over for more traditional Shabbat meals, and become a bit of a ‘hub’ for Israel focused things. Both options that we looked at seemed to be a definite “no”, so we dropped that for the time being. As the days turned into weeks I definitely got the sense that this is a time to put everything down and focus on the things that mostly don’t get attention. Ourselves, our children, our hearts.

We found a second hand swimming pool to keep the children occupied in the warm weather.

The second weekend of us being back I had the opportunity to have a weekend away with a few of my friends. What a treat that was. One of the ladies had gone to a counsellor with her husband as they had a good marriage, but were struggling on a few points. Funnily enough it was also a South African/British couple. So I signed us up the next week, this was definitely something we needed to do to strengthen our marriage. Pete had taken some hard knocks from his time in Israel, and I need to look deeper in my heart to deal with some ugly things lurking in there. As we looked back to the last three years we realised that it was definitely a time of squeezing, and now it was time to deal with all the stuff that has come out.

The house we stayed in for our ladies weekend. Lovely old stone house with beautiful views and very quiet countryside.

So now the struggle comes when one has to slow down. I don’t like slowing down. I am a busy person, and I think I generally deal with things better when I am doing something. Pete ended up working for 3 days one week for the guy whom he used to employ, but the next week he was really struggling, and couldn’t work the next day. So looking at the situation, we believe that this is really a time for us to stop, slow down, and deal with each issue that comes up. And to be built up stronger than before.

The difficult question now is if we will really be heading back to Israel after this!? I look back on our previous ‘homeless wilderness’ journey. We were not sure if we were going to get back there, but if we did we were heading to HaYovel, so that is easier. Now, we don’t know if we will go back, and if so, what do we go back to? But that is not really the question either. We are reading a fabulous book called ‘Inside Out” by Dr. Larry Crabb, and what I take from the last section I read is that it doesn’t matter whether we go or not. We can’t demand that God does what WE want Him to do, we can only desire it and pray for it, but ultimately God is God and He does what He wants. So currently that is one thing I am working on. But it is hard, and I find myself occasionally bursting into tears. I miss my home, my friends, Israel. It is exceedingly hard to not be there right now. It is such a strange thing when my desire is to run to the bombshelter with everyone else. But that is not where we are, and I have to accept that and rest in what He has here for us right now.

These are Cornish Daisies. They are beautiful and make a gorgeous show in rock walls. Tehy make they brown of the stone walls seem cheery.