First full day of camp

This is why we came! Yesterday the kids arrived in the late afternoon to a Baptist run camp outside of Tel Aviv in Petah Tikvah. It's actually a very modest camp that looks a lot like a park in Orange County. There's not much development out here except for the signs that the camp has lost space over the recent years. A baseball field replaced an open field where a lot of the older campers remember playing. Seriously, I've never seen men's fast pitch softball but they play it here! And believe it or not, the wireless internet connect is in a dugout on one of the fields (No, I'm not sitting in the dugout with the baseball team... they are on a different field).

The weather has been hot and more on the humid side than Jerusalem. But we have heard there is quite the heatwave in Southern California so I guess we're blessed to have cooler weather here. I would say this though... this is cool compared to India....

Most of the kids speak English but of course they fake not understanding to manipulate our students! And we see right through it! The camp is a mixture of kids that come from Palestinian homes in Nazareth and Jerusalem and kids that come from Messianic homes. But even with that said, the stories of their lives are important to listen to. Some who live in Jerusalem are isolated because they live in a Kibbutz (a small community-work like living arrangement). Others might not venture outside of their respective ethnically divided areas. On top of all this, we have some kids from Darfur, Sudan ... children of refugees who escaped the civil war there. But the kids are sitting (as Kay and I are doing our students' laundry) listening to a message from the Bible on reconciliation. How do we love each other when there is so much history of mistrust and even hate on both sides?

I had the opportunity to converse with some of the young counselors who are here as well working with Musalaha. Even their discussions expressed how difficult it is to reach some agreement due to the nature of the conflict. Yet, there seemed to be at least the willingness to explore the other side's point of view. When they asked me what I thought, I told them that it's on the shoulders of every younger generation to give thought and to incarnate (flesh out) a new picture of what brotherhood in Christ is to look like. Other generations had to do this and now it's our turn. We can't back away from this or get tired of speaking about it even though there is no change. This is our vocation, what God has called us all to.

Please continue to pray for our students. The kids keep them up late and then get up early so they are not getting as much rest as they did before. Their health and rest is important if they are going to keep this up until Friday. Also pray for these kids' hearts. They have to make a lot of space for others. Finally, please continue to pray that the rest of our support as a team comes in. We still so desperately want to be at full support as a team. But now that I'm here in the middle of this, I'm convinced that God has invited us to be a part of something very unique in a situation where many people have lost hope. If you asked our students, they are not naively optimistic when they the next generation has hope that Christ can heal wounds with true biblical reconciliation.... Thanks for being such supporters of what we're doing! We have even more stories to tell now!

Shalom,

Jon (for the team)