Merry Christmas!

Hello All!

We are enjoying the Christmas spirit here in Eilat, blue skies, 60 degrees, no snow :)

Eat your heart out!

We continue to stay here at The Shelter and take on a 5-6 hour shift each day, including some cleaning, checking in guests, keeping the hot water pot full and the tea/sugar supply up, and doing some random chore like Trevor's favorite 'poop patrol' (picking up the stray dogs' poop outside the hostel.) All in all, the job is very stress free, as is the rest of our day when we are 'off'. Today we enjoyed a trip to Timna Park, about 40 minutes north of Eilat. We hiked around the desert and enjoyed lunch on a high cliff overlooking the valley and some other cliffs in the distance. It was wonderful to be in silence, with the exception to 2 Israeli helicopters doing border patrol near the Egypt border. Trevor enjoyed watching their maneuvers. After the hike, we took a tour of the 'tabernacle'. This is a life size version of the tabernacle from that God commanded the Israelites to build in the Old Testament. Walking through it and receiving explanations about things really gave us a good picture of what things looked like and how the system worked. Amazing to see all the symbolism that each part has when looking at it through the eyes of a believer in 'Yeshua Hamashiach', or Jesus the Messiah.

Speaking of Jesus, we went to 'congregation' on Saturday ('Shabbat'). Congregation is what Messianic Jews call church. Shabbat is the day of rest, or Saturday. The first day of the week is Sunday, which takes some getting used to! Anyway, in the church service on Saturday, the kids put on a Christmas pageant (not something often seen in a congregation here in Israel, apparently)! It was really well done, but showed us that children's Christmas pageants around the world are very similar! Kids running everywhere, excited to be in their costumes, etc. It was really cute.

Another random sight we have seen lots here in Israel: lots of young soldiers, all carrying their AK47's around. Even if they are not in uniform they have a gun strapped to their back! We asked someone what the deal is...is it a status symbol or something? First of all, there is mandatory service for all 'youth' after they graduate for high school, 2 years for girls, 3 for boys. Turns out that if your gun gets stolen, you are put in jail for 8 years! And your gun must be kept behind 2 locked doors if you leave it anywhere. So, instead of risking it, they just carry it around. We watched a guy get out of his car to go to the ATM machine today, and he stopped to get his gun out of his car before running to the ATM! Not something you see in every day America!

Now to fill you in on our plans for Christmas: we will head tomorrow (the 24th) by bus up to Jerusalem where we will stay until the 27th. We have met many people who have come to stay at the shelter who are working/living in Jerusalem and have told us that it's OK to go there. So we will enjoy Christmas in the Holy City, something we are both looking forward to! WE will do our best to stay safe while there!

Have a wonderful Christmas and blessed time with your families and friends in the next few days!

Love,

Alison and Trevor