Forty-four days, twelve hours, seven minutes and 35 seconds!

Until I come home. This is what my mom wrote on my facebook wall yesterday and it made me laugh, but ah! The end is coming so soon.

I have evening shift today. The only thing that I like about evening shift is my mornings off. I can’t even describe how it feels to wake up early and go to breakfast; and then to come back full and tired, crawl back in a warm bed, and fall back asleep. It’s like getting two nights sleep! Reading back over that, yes it does sound like the epitome of laziness … but it just sounds that way. It really isn’t. 🙂

There have been a lot of goodbyes in recent weeks. My roommate Heidi returned to Finland; Eri left for his new volunteer position in Tel Aviv – and even though that is relatively close, it is still a breaking up of the old group; Yu also left for more travels around the world before returning to Japan. So they are gone. A new couple from the Czech Republic came last week, in perfect timing too, for Felipe and Noemi are leaving in a week or two, and they can replace them – as far as work goes. By the time I leave it shall be an almost entirely new group and I don’t think I like it – this yo-yoing of volunteers makes for too much uncomfortable change.

Many things have happened since I’ve last written; the days are beginning to feel a little blurred together as I look back and think of what I should write. How can one really write of the evenings the volunteers spend together, making pancakes and talking with the hilarious confusion of multiple languages? Or of the little conversations we have while working, the funny things we laugh about that wouldn’t be funny to anyone else? Or lingering long over dinner with IBEX or moshav people? Ice-cream runs, movie nights, bible study, corporate prayer…these things can’t be transfered to paper (or cyberspace) with any real meaning, I feel… something is lost for the reader that only firsthand participation could really understand. But at any rate, these things are happening, and being treasured up in my heart.

I went with IBEX on their last field trip. Today, being Wednesday, they are out again. I did their Shephelah trip, and it was wonderful to experience it again, especially with a different teacher. Bill took us places I hadn’t been before, (like Gath! I am so excited I finally went there!) and they didn’t go places that my group went, on this particular field trip. It was a fine day out, and because of all the rain, the valleys were  green and fertile; with the sun warming us through we traveled through the Sorek, Elah, and Guvrin Valleys. I’m not sure if it will work, but the link below is a video one of the IBEX boys made that pretty much sums up the day. One of the best parts of the whole trip was the field of red poppies in the Elah valley; the workers there wanted us to pick them, so new ones would grow. A few of us gathered handfuls of the bright red flowers, and I am proud to say mine are still on my desk in my water bottle, a dash of color to brighten my room.

One thing I’ve been contemplating (and not understanding) is God’s blessing me to come here again. When we’re reading the story of Samson, and looking out into the Sorek Valley, and seeing where Zorah and Eshtaol would be, I am amazed! When I’m sitting in the 185, complaining to myself about the new and more complicated bus system, I stop myself, wondering that I am even here to complain about it! When I’m sitting in church, a host of Jewish believers raising their voices to praise Yeshua their Messiah, I am so excited to be a part of it. God help me to use everything here I am learning for only His purpose and will;  God help me not to waste the short time I have here, but to use every moment, to soak in every moment, and to come back to Washington the same, and different, and better for having been here.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1340721045532&ref=mf