Joshua… Alexander the Great… Steve Crawford… we have all entered the Promised Land…

So I’ve gotten a lot of requests via facebook and email to update my blog and shed a little light about my arrival and first few days in Israel.  Well, I decided to go for the gusto and get a completely new, cleaner-looking blog.  So I set one up Monday night, but then all my work got deleted.  I was a little ticked off to try again, and then Jerusalem and homework happened.  Honestly, this is the first time I’ve been able to get back to blogging.  I’ve never done this much homework the first week of school.  Never.  Anyway, enjoy.

Without further ado, I bid you welcome to my new blog.  I figure that starting a new semester in Israel is the perfect time for an upgrade from Blogger to WordPress.  I’m not sure if I totally like the layout or even the title yet, so I may make changes in the future; but fear not, the address will stay the same. 

Wow.  After two years of hearing most of my close friends go on and on and on about Israel, I finally arrived.  It was an intense journey to get to this point, and I’m not just talking about the flight.  All summer long, my family and I waited, and waited, and waited for my passport to show up, and finally, after I had called my congressman for his assistance, three months to the day I applied and nine days before I was supposed to leave, it arrived special delivery FedEx.  Amazing.  But it wasn’t due to any phone calls I made or anything like that.  The passport falls under the category of “every good and perfect gift”, and James 1:17 tells us that all of those come from God.

Saying goodbye to my family was more anticlimactic than I thought it would be.  We prayed, sat around, checked my bags, sat around, and then I went up an escalator and waved goodbye.   Now the flight over here was quite an ordeal.  I’m come to the realization that it is nearly impossible for me to fall asleep on planes.  I don’t know why; I just can’t.  But compound that with the fact that I really wanted to go to sleep because I hadn’t gotten any the night before (stupid directed studies class I had to finish), and you’ve got a recipe for misery.  Add a dash of screaming baby next to me and old man sitting behind me who clutched and shook my seat with a death grip every time he had to go use the facilities (which was a lot), and you’ve discovered what I think purgatory just might be like (if it existed).

There were some bright spots to the trip, though.  The one that sticks out the most was the fact that a fellow IBEXer and I were able to share the gospel with a young Jewish couple during our layover in Newark.  They were curious as to why forty american college students were boarding a plane to Tel Aviv, and my friend and I were able to tell them about the program and the college, and pretty soon they started asking us what we believed, and how it differed from Catholicism.  It was one of those moments where “God hands you the football, and you gotta take it and run with it”, to quote mi padre.  We were able to articulate the difference between salvation by works and by grace, and they left commenting that Judaism seems a lot more like Catholicism than Protestant Christianity.  Well, the seed’s been planted, and I can only pray now that God will bring someone to water it.

Anyway, after the flight on SheolAirlines, we arrived in Tel Aviv, where Abner and Bill and Bill’s hysterical kids picked us up.  To hear Bill give a half-devotional, half-history lesson and point right out the window and say “and Solomon fortified the hills of Gezer right there” was surreal.  Absolutely surreal.We then moved into our cozy acommodations.  Here’s a picture of Peter’s and my room, room #28, which I have dubbed, “The Matchbox.”

 

Dinner was great.  I sat next to Randy Cook and peppered him with questions about the Political happenings and major figures of Israel, while we ate fish and tomatoes and humus.  By the way, Turkish Coffee is vile.  Take it from a coffee connoisseur– it is absolutely wretched.The next day Randy led our Orientation, starting bright and early at 8:00.  Jet lag can be a real beast, I tell you what.  After a few basic “do’s and don’t’s” of Israel and introductions, we took a tour of the Moshav.  We were introduced to the Miklat, the Biblical Gardens, the houses where all the people live, and a bunch of other locations that I’m going to have to re-learn as time goes on.  After lunch, we had our first Land and the Bible Class, taught by Bill.  The combination of the heat (they say we arrived at the height of a Middle Eastern Heat Wave—beat that, all you people in SoCal) and the jet lag caused me to basically not hear a word he said.  But then we had a water fight, which was hard core awesome.

After dinner, we took our group picture.  I wore my “Where’s Waldo” polo shirt to be funny.  Apparently I have a very unique sense of humor, according to some of my fellow IBEXers.  Here’s our picture:

After that, a few of us played with the Shlegel kids for about 2 hours.  They taught us to play “soccer with no ball”, which is basically freeze tag mixed with capture the flag and is played on a soccer field.  The Shlegel boys, Zach, Isaiah, and Eitan remind me so much of the Holland boys it’s not funny.After that, my computer was having trouble with it’s internet connection, so I decided to take it to Abner to see if he could work on it.  I walked back to the dirt soccer field, half-hoping to run into some neon sign that pointed to Abner’s house, but I found Zach Shlegel, and I asked him if he knew where Abner lived.  Zach said he’d take me there.  We walked there, and since it was dark and around 10:30, I asked Zach if he wanted me to walk him back to the soccer field.  His reply made me laugh: “nah, it’s safe here—it’s not like America.”

So that was basically my first day in IBEX.  They’ve kept us pretty busy since, between our visit to Jerusalem on Tuesday, and the massive amount of homework we have, and a bunch of other random stuff.  For example, last night, I, Matt Davis, Garrett Mendenhal, Theo Low, and John Lafferty walked off the Moshav to “Elvis Authentic American Diner,” which pretty much is exactly like it sounds. 

On the way, past “Gimmel Gimmel” (which apparently is Israel’s Hollywood), we saw a chameleon perched on the fence.  I was about to take a picture of it, when John reached out to grab it and it dropped into the underbrush.  I was pretty ticked at John, but the way back we were all singing “Gimmel Gimmel Gimmel Gimmel Gimmel Chameleon…”  Also on the way back, we got into an olive war, in which we were throwing handfuls of olives off the trees at each other.  These things are like rocks if you pick them straight off the tree, and John and Theo can throw like none other. I, on the other hand, can’t throw worth beans.  There was a reason I played offensive line in high school.Today I was told that I’m going to be heading up the worship team.  I was kinda shocked, to be honest, because I’m not that good.  Anyway, we had our first practice tonight because our first chapel and Shabbat our tomorrow evening.Well, it’s late, and I’m really tired, and I’ve got to finish memorizing Psalm 48:1-7 by tomorrow, so I’m going to sign out.

Ani Ohev et Israel.  (“I love Israel”)

Erev Tov.  (“good night”)