Tennessee Volunteers #3

Hello dear family,
We are hoping and praying that all is well with you. We made quite a few visits again today. More and more we are struck by the kindness and generosity of the people we meet; giving freely with nothing to give. With most of the families we have met, the husbands are either out of work or they work to keep their jobs but they have not been paid for many, many months. They are passionate, well educated and intelligent. We’ve met several families whose land has been taken from them and it is now inaccessible behind the wall separating Palestine from Israel. It was particularly troublesome today to meet one couple whose back yard is only feet from the fence; a beautiful young couple that just want to work and raise their families. The same thing we all want. We listened to their story and our hearts became burdened for them. They have been stripped of work and of honor. There are so many walls here, both spiritual and physical. Pray for these people that all of the walls separating them from freedom will be torn down.

We have been working hard to learn a few key words so we can at least say hello, thank you and good-bye to the people we meet. We have a list with phonetic spellings and have to look at it frequently to make sure we’re saying the right thing at the right time. Truly, the same word said with a different inflection can mean two totally different things. For example, the same word said a slightly different way might mean bathroom or pigeon. That might explain some of the strange looks we get sometimes when we attempt to speak without our translator. The highlight of our vocabulary lesson this evening was when T was teaching our host/leaders how to say goodnight in Arabic. J Thanks T!

We miss you and appreciate you all.