Israel 2.0

Last summer I came to Israel with a team of High School students from my church.  We had a great experience walking in Jesus’ footsteps as well as seeing all of the Holy Land.   While here we started the conversation about what it would look like to bring families in 2011.  We knew it would be a pretty pricey trip  but we decided to push it anyways because we felt that providing that experience would be of huge value.

So here I am again. I’m currently sitting about 1 block from the beach in Tel Aviv.  Parts of our team are on 3 different airplanes coming here from Ethiopia, London and Dallas.  They are due to start arriving in about six hours.  We had only a couple snafoos in the last week when one passport was discovered to be almost expired and unfortunately a student broke his leg and couldn’t come with us.  The passport problem was resolved the morning of and one of our amazing volunteers said yes when I told him had had 15 minutes to decide if he wanted to come to Israel at our expense.

I’m always very hopeful and prayerful as a trip gets started. I have been doing trips in the Student Ministry world for almost 20 years but this is the first time I’ve done a trip like this aimed at families.  I feel really blessed for those who are coming too as they are all amazing and many which I have great relationships with.

So here we go. 10 days of praying and believing that the Bible will be opened to our team like never before. That this trip would transform faith and make our relationship with God different.  That we might be changed here and go home changed.

On another note I’m totally wiped out.  I hate Jet Lag. I’ve been here 2 nights already and last night I barely slept at all.  This afternoon is going to be rough.   But, I’m making good use of this time and doing some writing.

Shalom