Sounds of Galilee

3/19/2011
Sounds of Galilee




Here Jesus asked "Who do you think I am?"
Peter said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the
living God" Matt: 16:13-20

 Although I have often read about the Holy Land, the area in which Jesus did his ministry and which we have been staying, and I’ve even seen pictures of the Holy Land, until the other day I had never heard the sounds of it. From the noisy streets of Tel Aviv, Nazareth and Haifa to the night sounds of frogs and birds along the Sea of Galilee to the variety of languages spoken here, I have heard a rich variety of sound. Hearing these sounds fills in the gaps for me about the feel of the Holy Land. The picture of this place is more complete for me now because of these sounds. It’s like giving a black and white picture some color. I’d not thought before about how the sounds of a place can give you a feel for it until I awoke at the Sea of Galilee the other morning and heard the birds chirping. That’s when the peaceful feel of this place came alive.

Pastor Duane

Hope


We have been really busy the past few days. There really is no way to describe the feeling here. Even though I have read and studied the Bible, I was not prepared for the impact of being here, in the places where it all happened, the places where our Lord and Savior walked. The beauty of this land goes beyond the descriptions we read, or the photos we see. The area of the Galilee is green, lush, fruitful and full of fruit trees, banana trees, apple trees, bamboo and Eucalyptus. The flowers are fragrant and plentiful. Green grasses are growing on all the hills in a multitude of shades throughout the large boulders and cliffs.
 

Today we traveled to the village of Ibillin in the northern part of the Galilee. This village is 90% Palestinian and 10% Christian. We visited Mar Ellias Chacour school in Ibillin. ElliaAbu Ghanimas director of Mar Ellias Educational Center. This school is for both the Palestinian and Christian children from the grades of 1- 12. The incredible part of this school is that the Palestinians are Muslim and they are Christians and Druze. There is no way to tell them apart from each other. They were laughing and behaving like any high school students with the exception that they are very polite, and openly eager to talk to us. They joked around with each other and smiles and laughter are everywhere. They walk arm in arm in a peaceful existence of friendship, respect and trust. I look at the students attending this school and it gives me hope that these young people will be the ones to change the condition of the people in the Holy Land.

Children are still the hope for change in the world.

God has been good to me, I am where Jesus walked.

Gilligan






Residence at Ginosar Kibbutz

 Our tour guide for the Ginosar Kibbutz was Adva which in Hebrew means “Ripple” like a ripple in the water. She grew up at Ginosar and explained what it was like. She lived in the baby house which meant that at 6 weeks of age she was taken away from her family and raised in a house with 12 other babies in a baby house chaperoned by one nanny. She lived with all the other children in such a house until high school when she went to live in a smaller group of 6 to 7 young people both boys and girls in the same suite. They grew up side by side like brothers and sisters. Each day they would go to their parents’ home about 4 pm and return to the baby house at 7pm so that their parents could go to bed because they would have to be up and working at 5am. Adva talked about the fact that she was still part of the Kibbutz and said that she did not put her children into the baby houses when they were small. Although she had a pleasant childhood living with lots of other kids and doing mischievous things such as rigging a bucket to dump over the guard when she did her rounds, she said that she missed her parents and wanted to have access to them when she had had a bad day. She said that she realized when she became a nanny after high school for one of the baby houses that it is the parents who actually form the values of the child. She recounted that she had spent a whole year working with one boy on his table manners only to find out that his father was the cause of the impoliteness of his son. So during the 1970s and 1980s things started to change on the kibbutz and it was no longer required to send kids to the baby houses. Kristi Kuhnau 03/19-2011