Friday June 8th Labels on baking items: Bright White Wheat Flour, White Sugar, Soda Bicarbonate, Picture of Brownies…All directions in Hebrew! Chocolate Chips. This I can relate to!

Can’t wait for the brownies and chocolate chip cookies for dessert tonight. I Love that every Friday night we have a party!!! Celebrating our God and the family He has made us!! Shabbot is here again!

Missing my kids and my farm sooo much today. Tears over everything.

The Bella children are precious and lovely and just plain kids. They are soft, loving and competitive. They all have an opinion and no individual can do anything without three or four others giving their 2 cents! We are learning each other’s life language. Their family habits and routines are foreign to me…literally!

This is harder and easier than I ever thought. Listening to the Holy Spirit. Rest when He says rest and run when He says run!

The first few days were just jet lag, and resting and getting up to the time zone we are in!

Then dreams of having no job (big issue for me) figuring out we will not have a job till we hear from God. This is His time and we must be doing/being as He directs!

Ok? Ok! Move and float with Him. Floating on the waves of the Mediterranean, floating in the pool. Floating thru the constant movement and noise of family life!

Started a schedule of sorts! Steve is using the private pool to teach the Bellas to swim. They hit the floor each am sliding into their suits and head to the pool! They love it and Steve is a patient and competent teacher!

Devotions and down to the lessons before Shabbat preperation!

Wow, that was a fast week!

Pam [email protected]

Pam and Steve at the Netanya coast

 

Hi Dear Friends!

Life has been so full! We have not been able to correspond as we have been on the road and when we got back our internet service was down! Here’s a condensed catsup

6/2/2012 On the drive to Jerusalem you can see the wreckage of vehicles that were ambushed by Arab forces in the early days of the nation. Those were hard days as the people of Jerusalem were cut off and without supply. Rations were dangerously low and a heroic effort was made to quietly cut a road in the wilderness to bring relief to the people under siege in Jerusalem.

We had lunch with Shabbi, a crotchety but generous man who provided us abundantly at his hillside farm about twenty minutes from Jerusalem. Everyone has a story. Shabbi is on the edge of discovering the relief from shame and grief that Yeshua can bring.

We crowded into our Jerusalem camp site, the two bedroom apartment of Micha’el, a lively, enthusiastic Messianic Jew who has a powerful ministry in music and has been a witness in the Orthodox community.

6/3/2012 We went to “The House of Painter”, an agency where Una’s brother Doron works. It is a school for troubled youth. Some live in residence halls and some live with their families. Pam and I teamed up with Una and the kids to transplant hundreds of starts of tomatoes, cactus and peppers. The kids worked well as a team and consensus was it was a fun experience. The students sell the plants for fund raising and to learn responsibility. Doron was overjoyed with our work and wants us back. From hesitation to total openness!

We worshiped at The King of Kings Congregation. Both Pam and I did some nodding as we had worked hard earlier and were still working through jet lag. Afterwards we shared dinner out with Pastor Wayne and Anne Hilsten and their friend Brian from Nashville. Wayne is willing to do an interview with me for my book, Riverfront Property!

6/4/2012 We met Hadas an opera singer who lives near Micha’el. She is willing to rent a room to Pam and I. She is not a believer but enjoys friends that are. She is happy to have us come and we pray her heart will be open.

We have been helping the kids with home schooling – Bible memory, math, writing, etc. Steve is giving swim lessons. They are all very bright. We need to get a regular routine going and we adults will be talking tonight about schedules that bring predictability as well as flexibility.

Shared a delightful dinner with Yoel and Laura in their beautiful apartment. He is a tour guide. They shared their faith in Yeshua, their love story of meeting and marrying in their forties. We are all part of an amazing love story!

6/5/2012 Steve went to a Business workshop at The King of Kings Congregation in Jerusalem called, Preparing for business and retailing challenges in the 21st century. It was a wonderful relationally centered approach for working with clients and work staff. After the workshop he had the opportunity to meet with Pastor Wayne and a few of his leaders in their prayer tower which has a wonderful vantage of the city. Steve was grateful for the favor he felt as he prayed and shared with them. An exciting vision is being realized for them as the congregation and other believing business people are buying up shops in the Klal mall in down town Jerusalem. They have bought out two brothels and replaced them with Christian businesses. Ps 50:2, “From Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth. “

We journeyed to Ashkelon to meet Una’s parents. Both Pam and I felt tender hearted toward them. They force feed us with food on the hour. The most beautiful part came when Una’s mom asked when Steve started to read the Bible. It gave an open door for sharing Yeshua. We recounted our experience with Him and our confidence in Him with humility and gentleness. They listened! They have come a long way as a few years ago they were unwilling to have a Christian in their home. Pray for Yeshua’s beautiful Spirit to convince them of His goodness!

6/6/2012 Steve had a swim in the morning while Pam rested. She is recovering from sinus congestion. After home schooling we splashed in the Mediterranean and threw a Frisbee and kicked a soccer ball on the beach, a good day of rest. The Bella’s friend Jamie is visiting. She is a professional basketball player and gave lessons this afternoon to Lou.. All the kids are beginning soccer next door on the beautiful astro-turf field.

We are getting cultural lessons about acceptable ways to share Yeshua. These lonely Jewish folks are still reeling from WWII and the haolacost. They wear the pain of a ‘God’ abandoned people or so many think. They are hardened to words like ‘Christ, church, Jesus. But are drawn to love, compassion, true joy and words about Yeshua, Congregation, and a hope in a loving God! We as gentiles have so much to learn, we must not make fun or mock only love and let Holy Spirit lead!

Yeshua is the reality. Everything else is shadow. Keep us in your prayers!

Steve and Pam Johnson

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our first full day, a “down” day, for simply relaxing, playing and doing relationship as we get through the adjustment of travel. Horsing around with the Bella kids in the pool and playing soccer on the beautiful field next door.

Leonardo, Una, Pam and I had an evening picnic at the ruins of Caesarea. It is a seacoast port that Herod built to honor Caesar, the place the evangelist Philip settled, where Cornelius’ household saw a wash of the Holy Spirit and where Paul was imprisoned for the good news. What an inspiring wonder to walk among the stones that have witnessed lives over thousands of years! While we were sharing our meal on the grass we saw a lovely wedding on the stones above us.

We finished the day with a Bach concert in the evening. A friend, Micha’el, got the tickets for us. What made this a remarkable evangelistic wonder was that that the audience who came for a cultural event heard the gospel translated from German into Hebrew: “You overcame the sharpness of death. You open the kingdom of heaven to all believers.” The audience had the words of life sung over them. Pam and Una prayed through the concert that those words would open their hearts to receive the Messiah spoken through the skilled singers and musicians! What a feast!

As I sit overlooking the Mediterranean from our lovely third floor apartment I imagine the ships of Hiram tugging cedar logs from Lebanon for Solomon’s great temple. It makes me thing also of the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31:14, “She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar.”

We are excited about a new website that our friend Chuck Peters set up for us! It still needs development but we are up and running with a blog. See it at https://landingstripenterprises.com/

Thank you for your prayers, dear Friends! They will be imperative for the supernatural things we must see for the dear people of this land. “Christianity” usually has a negative stigma among Jewish people as “Christians” have been their primary persecutors. We hope to change the view by Yeshua’s love, grace, wisdom and power.

Steve and Pam Johnson

Natanya on the Mediterranean

Bella Kids at the pool

Pam and Micha’el

Leonardo, Una and wonder car!

A wedding at Caesarea

Michael &conductor David Loden