Jericho

Jerusalem Approaches Video

Valley of Vision - for all you Puritans!

Read Isaiah 22...

We had a chance to have a rooftop view from the city of David. What made that view so powerful was reading places in Scripture where the images used in the text are visible from where we were standing.

The City of David has been described as a valley even though it stands high between two other valleys. Yet the Eastern Hill and the Mount of Olives over power the hill that the City of David rests on, in a way that makes this hill seem like a valley. At the beginning of Isaiah 22, Isaiah says that this is “An oracle concerning the valley of vision”. At the time of this prophecy, the people of Jerusalem are in a state of partying and reckless living. They are on the rooftops of their houses singing and dancing, “full of shoutings” (v. 2). Though they do not realize the dark state that their spiritual lives are in, and the future judgment that Isaiah prophecies. Their vision is blind and thoughtless to what they should see. Even when the siege on the city begins they are ignorant to their self-dependency and disregard of God. They frantically start filling the holes in the wall, breaking down their own homes to do it, they look to their arsenal for any weapons they can protect themselves with, and they bring water into the walls to nourish them in case they are locked up in a siege. All this they left unattended during their times of peace. “But you did not look to him who did it, or see him who planned it long ago” (v. 11). Right now the people of this valley cannot see the vision. They are so focused on their present pleasures that they forget about God, their protector, fountain of living water, shield, rock, and strength. They forget about the sovereign God who controls the situation, and instead turn to their own self-rescue. Isaiah noticed this when he was looking out over the city, and this was his burden in the valley of vision. Jerusalem is a place that is supposed to be of vision. Even though one may be in a valley, if you align yourself to see through God’s eyes the valley will be a place of vision. If our priorities are in order, then God can open our eyes to see the vision from the valley. But, if we are relying on ourselves, living in the moment, and have no regard for reality, our valley will be one of destruction.

One week later....

I must say, the pool of Bethesda was not nearly the coolest part of our day.  Looking back I wish we would have made a video from the roof top view of the stronghold of the city of David or maybe going through the Roman sewer tunnel.  Probably the best option would have been from the steps up to the temple but sorry.  Maybe we will do it another time.  Anyways it was the end of the day and we figured we might as well make a video.  Enjoy what we made and imagine what else we saw.

Our First Trip to the West Bank

Earlier today, Logan looked at me. He said, “What are we doing right now? We are riding public transportation, in Israel, to the West Bank. Three no-nos.” The truth is we were crowded into a large public bus on our way from Jerusalem to Bethlehem in the West Bank.  I would hope that in reading this you would assume that we made it back safe.  We did.  We actually hope to do it again soon.  But why? Soccer.  Now I don’t want it to seem like all we do here is play soccer, I really wish that we could play more. It just so happens that once again we found ourselves making friends through the sport that we love. 

Yesterday we went with about eight people including Mrs. Wright from JUC to a suburb of Bethlehem called Beit Jala.  It is inhabited mostly by Christian Arabs. And one of the last “Christian” towns in the West Bank.  All of us volunteered to help at a Christian based school that was founded after the wall was put up. Jon Burke, a friend of ours, worked at the school a few years ago and told us we had to check it out.

When the wall was put in place Israel basically fenced in the Palestinians and they cannot leave.  Going into the West Bank is easy and they don’t even check passports.  Going out is much harder.  We had to walk through a series of security checkpoints.  Residents of the West Bank cannot enter the rest of Israel or, if they can, only for a few hours once or twice a week.  Because Israel put Palestine in a cage, these kids can no longer attend the school the used to in Jerusalem.  So this sister school opened up in Beit Jala. 

            When we were at the school yesterday we kept asking about coaching a soccer afterschool program.  I was very unsure at first because they kept saying it wasn’t happening.  But eventually we ran into one of the coaches in passing and he told us they had practice the next day and if we wanted to come to show up at the school at 9:30 in the morning.  So this morning we got up at 8:00, had a quick breakfast, slid on some gear, grabbed our passports and hopefully enough money for the bus and then ran outside – only to wait 30 minutes for the bus.  But it eventually came and we, along with a friend from Wheaton Academy, B.B. Taylor, hopped on.  It was here when we started to question what we were doing.  It was a pretty big bus and was crammed full of people (I had to sit on the floor for awhile).  But we trusted that God would keep us safe and he did. 

After some time waiting at the school shooting some hoops, we met the other coach David, and then we piled in a taxi with one of the players Ibrahim, and headed out of Bethlehem to another city in the West Bank, Beit Sahur.  Here we met some more of the players.   They were timid at first, as anyone would expect, we were a bit too, but as time went on it wore off. The complex was in the middle of rocky hills and off a dirt road.  I didn’t know what to expect at first.  What we came to was a little turf field that was a little smaller than a basketball court, fenced in with about three rows of stone bleachers – the best in the West Bank they said.  After a bit of a warm up and some drills we just played 4-v-4 plus keepers with them.  It was so much fun.  This time my team won (although I must admit, Logan scored some pretty nice goals).  The kids were slower and less technical than the people we found in the park but the tight space made the game fun.  It was more serious yet at the same time more laid back.  We would laugh and joke and encourage the kids as they scored or missed easy goals or got scored on.   Everyone spoke good English so we didn’t have to worry about that.  Afterwards we joked around some more and took the taxi back.  We talked with David about doing it again and I hope it works out.  They all seem like wonderful kids. 

            After we got out of the taxi we walked a little ways to the checkpoint.  The road we took runs along a giant concrete wall keeping people out.  As we walked we marveled at some of the art graffitied on the wall.  Some of it was crude as one could expect, but there were a lot of really well done pictures.  Almost all, no, all of the graffiti was political.  It is crazy to be there and hear the other side of the story.  In American I feel like all we hear is the pro-Israel side of the story.  In class we learned about the importance of land in this culture.  In the Bible we can see instances where this is shown.  Think of what God promised Abraham: descendants and land.  As important as an heir is to a father to keep the family going, the family land is just as important.  This still runs true today.  Families have been living on the same land for centuries and most likely much longer.  Many of these Palestinian families want to hold so strongly to their land that they are willing to fight to keep it from being taken from them.  There is a very interesting web of races, cultures, religions, and history.  And I am not sure if there is an answer to it.  I doesn’t seem right to keep people fenced in and the conditions they live in seem much worse than in Jerusalem.  I feel bad for the kids.  But since being here I have already learned a lot.  From people like our favorite shop keeper Shaban who gives us tea and pita whenever we visit him, or the people we have met playing soccer.  I hope to continue to learn about all sides of the story.  And I hope to let soccer continue to take us to places and meet people and hear stories we would not have heard otherwise.

Please pray for Egypt

Luke

To Jack and Kess

A day in Jerusalem...

2/4/11

After 6 days of being here, the coolest thing that I’ve done so far was playing soccer in the park. It was amazing to see Luke and I make friends with people who were totally different than us, and who couldn’t speak the same language. Earlier in the day we had a meeting about different volunteer opportunities we could do. The one that immediately jumped off the page was a school in Jerusalem that needed help with after school club soccer. For some reason I doubted whether I not I should choose this one. It was what I normally would have done in the States and I wasn’t sure if there was another opportunity to get out of my comfort zone at some place at. So I prayed that God would guide my decision. Later that night, Mike the Canadian found a park online where people supposedly play ultimate Frisbee. We tagged along for fun even though we both can’t throw a disc. It took us 45 minutes to walk there and we ended up at a huge park. It was the central park of Jerusalem. It has tons of open fields of grass that even stay lit at night and we saw people playing football there. Luke and I also found a futsol court. It was right next a huge skate park. There were twenty-something’s everyone, hanging out in groups, smoking cigarettes and hookahs, and just relaxing. It was an inner city park. Luke and I wanted to play really bad but it seemed pretty exclusive- even to Arabs let alone us Americans! We watched for awhile and everyone was yelling and screaming most of the time- for fouls, losing the ball, dribbling too much, getting scored on… It was play 2 minutes, argue for 5 minutes. They seemed angry and we couldn’t tell if the two teams were friends or if they were Jews vs. Arabs. Eventually one of the goalies walked off and for a lack of better options they looked at us to see if we could play. So Luke jumped in goal while I held his wallet and my backpack cause we were in an inner city park in Jerusalem at night with twenty-somethings everywhere. Luke was understandably timid at first, letting in a soft goal- no one yelled at him though you could tell that if it was the other guy they would have let him have it. But eventually Luke calmed down and made some good passes- from goalie. They tried him in the field and could see he could play. He was making good passes and setting up other guys for goals. Eventually, the Arab goalie wanted to come out of goal- but his team wouldn’t let him. They screamed at him to get back in the goal, because he was their worst player, and they had just found someone better. They chose Luke over their own friend.

From that point on, I knew we were in. After that game they invited me to play. I passed our valuables off to Mike cause they were heading back to JUC. I jumped on a team who played against Luke’s team- it was winner stays. My team didn’t have the best players but we did have the most even-tempered team, which helped us win. We won a lot of games and eventually Luke joined us as people came and went as they pleased. Our team ran the show all night. We couldn’t understand what our teammates said but we knew they really liked us and were having fun. We stayed on the court for 4 hours- taking any team that came. It looked like people were calling their friends to come to the park cause of how good the games were. As each game passed we got closer with our team, and everyone playing accepted us more. In between games people were shooting on me in goal (cause I was making good saves) trying to score on the American. Everyone was joking around with us and having a good time. They would say to their friends (in Arabic or Hebrew) “Look I know that American kid’s name” “ Luuuke!” We laughed and played all night. By the end of the night, around 1, they were all asking why we were here, how long we were going to stay, and if we would come back again. I told them I’m sure we would be back soon. It was so cool to be able to make friends like that, through soccer, even though we didn’t have a common language between us. Walking back we couldn’t help but smile and think about how soccer transcends language, culture, and national borders. I can’t help but dream about spreading the Gospel through soccer later this semester, in Columbia, and maybe after school…

Logan

The Start Of It All

Hey everybody, sorry for taking too long to get this up so we can keep everyone back home updated on our...fun.  Instead of typical bloggers we thought we would mix it up and follow one of our heros, Matt Chandler, and video blog about our time here in Israel.  To be honest we haven't really thought it through too much but the plan is to do a combination of videos on the go and videos from our room.  This is our first video taken from our room and we hope it will give you a little chance to see what to expect.  Basicly our thoughts and updates about what is going on.  On the other hand, we will also be taking videos from random locations around Jerusalem and on our field studies to give you guys a glimpse of the wonderful time we are having.  Not sure yet how often these will be up but hopefully it will be somewhere around once a week.  Good luck in America.

Luke and Logan