The Nightwatch Team from Succat Hallel

This is Nicole, Ruben and Lindy. These 3 are the core team that hold down the hours from 12am to 6am at the house of prayer in Jerusalem...and they're not always sleeping... :)


this is me with the nitewatch team


In this one we were trying to do the "N" and "W" for nightwatch with our hands...not only was it backwards anyway, but we look a little ridiculous.


...looking Middle Eastern with our Old City scarves...Lindy, Melissa and me (we joke that the "old city scarf" look is the telltale sign of Jerusalem Syndrome...hehehe. and we ARE NOT there..)


....because we can look normal in our scarves also...right??


or you can just look like ZORO...

and some MORE happenings...

This was Tony's "surprise" Birthday on Nov 2nd at Cup O' Joe's....

"the mayor" went around the table greeting everyone after he was mostly surprised when he arrived

Other random happenings...

this was a wedding of good friends in Jerusalem, Joel and Laura. Congrats!!!




















the guys....










and the girls....










and THEN there was a costume party...on Rehov Rashba ...the dudes place...called the RashBash :)

Happy Birthday Rachel!!!

This is Rachel and it's her birthday today - well actually my blog says the 12th even though i'm writing this on the 11th, which is actually the day. Computers - or maybe confused jerusalem time....anyway, she's in PA at the moment, but her inevitable return to Jeru will be in January (finally).















yeah for aroma!!

Sunset over Jerusalem

here's some pics of sunsets I captured from the top of a building in the center of Jerusalem..







and this was just a few days ago...


going...


gone...

pictures of the desert

i love camels. they always look like they are smiling...




just a bunch of jackasses... heh heh


shaun, one of our grafted members, tried petting a camel...

in baghdad...

hey... so my brother, Matthew (US Army Intelligence), is in Baghdad at the moment - just got there 2 weeks ago after spending a year in Germany and a month in Kuwait getting accostomed to the desert...(you can see pics of us in Germany here, http://embloggage.blogspot.com/2006/08/deutschland.html).

so he's going to be spending an official year in Iraq. please remember to keep him and all the soldiers in your prayers. he's already going out on his missions, into local houses with a translator, gathering information and drinking large amounts of arabic coffee or tea.

anyway it's going to be a long year - thanks for the prayers!!

here's an excerpt from his last update...

On a serious note, it was quite interesting observing the city streets and the standard of living as we convoyed to our destination. It’s just so saddening. The place is so poverty stricken and obviously war-torn. It’s a mess. The cute little kids (whether they r future insurgents or not) run outside and wave to us, give us a thumbs up, and of course scream (no they don’t ask politely. It’s not part of their culture) for candy! So many of them don’t even have shoes. Trash is strewn about everywhere. Stagnant puddles of nasty muddy water cut through the trash here and there. People drive donkey-pulled carts with like 5 people on the back. Everything just looks so poor it’s hard to describe. Next time I’m out I’m gonna bring my camera. Maybe that can catch somewhat of a glimpse of things here. It’s hard to swallow the fact that the work I do, if successful, will save a few Iraqi lives, but only for a little while longer. The issues here are so deep rooted, complex, and seemingly hopeless. These poor people fear for their lives every day that the bad guys whether it’s shia on sunni or sunni on shia will target them next. Death in the most gruesome of forms is so commonplace for these people to experience and hear, read, or talk about.