broadsiding 101. no extra charge for the vomit.

Don't worry everyone. My vocabulary is improving immensely.
I know that the word, "mazeh?!" followed by rapid Hebrew and fist shaking from the Orthodox man pointing at my t-shirt means to turn around. Fast. Actually, mazeh (excuse my phonetics) means, "what is this/that?"...but that's the basic picture of what it looks like to be doing evangelism here. Fight or flight in a sense.

When we hit the streets and pass out tracts, we don't like to trick people into talking to us, so we're quite honest about who we are and what we believe: Elochim yehudim mishochim (we are Messianic Jews). So we wear t-shirts that say something catchy (or offensive to those who do not believe that Yeshua is the Messiah).. the shirts pretty much generate conversation and are also a good way of sending out the message, "We are different"

...and you thought being different in junior high was hard.

You know, a lot of my life I really wrestled with the idea of being Messianic. I attended a private Christian school for k-8; I spent most of my summers at an all-girls Christian summer camp; I was involved with YL for a bit in high school; I was really involved with Campus Christian Fellowship at Truman... all of these were all great opportunities for fostering spiritual growth and gaining understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, but aside from my home-life and being sort of involved at my home-congregation, there wasn't a whole lot of opportunity to see what it looked like to be Messianic- to be embracing my Jewish identity while following hard after the Lord.

I think it's just been really incredible to be here, even though we get spit at (yum) vommited on (I don't think they did that on command.. it was just unfortunate) sworn at (I don't know the curses for that yet, so I'm fairly oblivious) and one of my friends was even pushed into the street. It can be ruthless.

But the joy.

Seriously, the joy in getting to sit with an old man named Jacob and share with him that he can have life anew in Yeshua; the joy in waking up and having a quiet time on a roof of a building that over looks the mediterranean sea; the joy in running down the streets of Tel Aviv at night with friends, Israeli air in our lungs; the joy and satisfaction in being able to say confidently, "ani lo kapit" (I am not a spoon)...basically it makes the hard stuff worth it.

Am so thankful to be in community with other Jewish believers. We're all really really different. Pretty much can only think that the Lord has something incredible in mind when he threw all of us together for the summer.

Am looking forward to seeing the Lord do good work here.

Jerusalem tomorrow. Yessssssssss.


Rachel