Refections onEzekiel 36  #2

"Even the whole house of Israel" is the extent of His people Israel "that the Sovereign LORD calls upon "the mountains and hills, to the ravines and valleys" to prepare to welcome and nurture.

What a privilege it is for us to actively participate in this cause of welcoming and offering some measure of provision to God's returning people.  We are hearing that in the next five years Israel is expecting to bring in another 500,000 aliya making Jews.  Hallelujah!

Our center employs one such young man, born in Azerbaijan, married to a Russian Jewess, who made aliya about 3 years ago with their family of four.  Both husband and wife are enterprizing young people in their mid thirties; she a seamstress creating wedding gowns, and he an administrator overseeing the Adoption Program at KAC here in Karmiel.  They anticipate the time when they will be ready to establish their own fabric store around the work as a seamstress.  His mind contains several other entrepreneurial options; he is taking a course, in business administration, taught of course, in Hebrew, a language he has been working to master for only three year.

Another young man (extreme left), a German, married to a Jewish woman from the UK, has become a work friend.  He is a fine artist painter, but also a trained stone mason who took on the job of building a warehouse workshop wall for KAC's new venture into home repair and maintenance.  He, together with labour supplied by yours truly and a young 20 something also from Wpg. spent two weeks constructing a brick wall to house the new shop.  His wife, also a creative, artistic person, teaches English and dance wherever she finds the opportunity to do so.

We have also made friends with a mid 40's man, born in New York and raised in various parts of the US, who made aliya some 14 years ago.  He is a meteorologist, but works here teaching English.  He is also a great tour guide; he demonstrated this one Sunday taking us to Mt. Carmel, the mountains on which Elijah brought the people together for God to demonstrate His sovereignty over the Ba'al prophets, and break the drought that had gripped the land for three years.  He had worked in the smaller of the two Druze villages along the Carmel ridge that drops into the sea at Haifa, so these Druze villages become alive through his guiding.

The list goes on; the point is that the knowledge that God is bringing His people back to His land is no longer just the romantic notion it was for us back home, but it is being fleshed out by friends and stories of extreme difficulty experienced by those very hard working people who choose to make aliya.