Shalom My Brothers and Sisters!
What an exciting week it has been. I just said goodbye two days ago to my dad who is now safely home in Florida after his two week adventure here in Israel. I am so proud of him and am blessed by all of the stories of his experiences working on an IDF military base with the soldiers. It takes a special man to use his only vacation time to work for the military in a foreign country! Dad made many friends and the relationships he formed with the soldiers will never be forgotten. He’ll have plenty of stories to tell his grandchildren someday!
I got to take dad on the Israel tour of a lifetime! Remember our taxi driver named Kojak? Well Kojak took dad and I all over the Northern part of Israel on Friday. We went to Jericho, the Judean Desert, Mt Gilboa (Where King Saul died) Mt Tabor (Where the Transfiguration of Jesus took place) the Sea of Galilee, the Mt of Beattitudes (Where Jesus taught the sermon on the Mt in Matthew 5-7) Nazareth, Cana and the border of Jordan! It was amazing to read the stories from the Bible as I sat next to my dad and looked out over these amazing places. I will never forget that my dad followed me halfway across the world to spend time with me and even became a soldier for two weeks in the process. It helped heal my heart.
Work has been going amazingly well. Mandy and I have made such progress with the patients that we feel attached to them as much as they are attached to us. Today as I was walking a patient down the sidewalk, an elderly lady I had never seen before scowled at me and tried to give me a hard time. I went and situated the patient I was walking and decided to go back and force myself to befriend the old lady that had treated me harshly! I walked up to her and said, “Shalom, my name is Erin and I don’t know what I did to upset you but I want to be your friend.” She was so thrown off by that that she started smiling, laughed even and said, “Well, now I feel terrible for treating you that way… I guess I was just looking for someone to get upset at.” So I sat down next to her (her name is Esther) and we became great friends! Esther is a Holocaust survivor and is alone. She just came to the hospital a few days ago so she is adjusting and is having a hard time. We ended up talking for a half an hour. By the time I said goodbye we were chatting away and she apologized profusely for being mean. I told her that she and I have a lot in common because I am alone here too since I don’t have family living in Israel… she’s not the only one that could use a friend! She appreciated that and we made an agreement to talk everyday at the same time. Please pray for Esther and I as God opens up the doors for me to reach out to this precious lady.
My heart goes out to all of the hurricane victims I have been hearing about on the news. A fact you may never hear about is that Israel is sending medical volunteers to help aid in relief efforts. Yeah, let’s see if the media will report on that!
Ministry is going well… there is quite a revival among the young people of Israel. They are hungry. Hungry for answers to their questions, hungry for God. I wish more than anything that I could record an evening in central Jerusalem as Mandy and I discuss Yeshua with other people our age. I so desire for you to see how hungry this generation is. It’s so different from the states. Here the young people come face to face with the threat of terror. Life is precious and not taken for granted. Please pray for Mandy and I as we continue to spend every evening ministering to the young people of Jerusalem.
Dad and I had many conversations during his visits to Jerusalem. One of them was about how there are so many more gray areas in life than we want to realize. Often when we are in familiar surroundings we formulate opinions on the rest of the world and think we know it all. But once we leave our comforts and dive into another culture, we realize that there is so much more to life than what we thought. Yeah, we hear lots of sermons about taking a step of faith and doing something different… but how many of us actually do it? And I am not talking about doing what’s expected, but doing the unexpected. There’s more to life and the black and white becomes a bit more gray when you take a dive into a foreign setting.
I want to remind you all to visit my site for updates, pictures and plenty of comments from family and friends! It’s a place you can all interact with one another and stay involved with what’s going on in Israel! http://braveandunafraid.blogspot.com/
Also, if you’d like the mailing address to the hospital, would like to make a donation toward this mission or have any questions, please email my mom at kcmather3@aol.com
I’d like to leave you with some scripture:
Matthew 5:13-14
“You are the salt of the earth, but of the salt loses it’s flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden…”
This is Erin reporting LIVE from Jerusalem and loving every single second of it with an uncontrollable passion…
