I’m still here… lost somewhere between “fine” and “dandy.”
Last weekend I went to a two-day music concert showcasing 100+ Christian songs written by local Messianic Jews during the last two years. (try saying that sentence ten times in one breath)
It was sponsored by the Messianic Jewish Alliance of Israel – and was quite relaxing for me because I didn’t understand a word of it (everything was in Hebrew).
Music styles ranged across the board, here is a video clip I put together:
And here’s another short video, showcasing a special family. I think they’re special because they’ve been nice to me. For instance, the guy playing the guitar picked me up one weekend here at Nir Oz to take me to his church (about an hour away). I also spent the night at his parents house and his Dad even paid my bus fare back because I had run out of Shekels. Just so happens they are musical too:
I would be remiss if I failed to mention the hospitality of another family, the Gillepsies (name changed to protect privacy, hehe) who let met stay in their home one night during the music conference. They also fed me a scrumptious homemade meal and even later took me out to a Lebanese restaurant and paid my tab! What larks. It was great fun spending time with them and their young daughters…..
In other news, it’s been a long week at work. Here are highlights:
1. A cow tried jumping a fence (I guess) and got the ankle of one of it’s back legs stuck through the top pole of said fence. The end result was a cow hanging upside down by it’s back hoof for who knows how long before getting noticed and helped (by empathetic humans, not the ambivalent cows milling nearby). With me and two others lifting on the cow, we still couldn’t even begin to get it loose enough to release its foot, so we cut the top pole off instead. Poor thing… and here I thought cows could jump higher than the moon.
2. Today a young cow died and I had to drag it out to it’s final resting place. Well, sorta final resting place. I drug it to the spot where they do cow autopsies. Yeah, kinda gross. This one supposedly died because it had a tummy turn, which is where its stomach gets twisted around on itself such that it can’t digest its food. Hope that doesn’t happen to me someday.
3. Several days this week it was cold and rainy – and of course I work outside… but it could be much worse. There is a big open space in front of one row of calves that has turned into a pond. I figure their real estate value has gone up since they now have waterfront views.
4. There is a new volunteer working with me who is from Mexico-way. He doesn’t speak English. The upshoot is, I’ve learned more Española in the last week than Hebrew in the last two months. My Spanglish is coming along quite nicely.
Here is a picture from the “Mexican/American Peace Talks” going on in Israel (taken today after work):
