Saturday 7/7/12
MEGIDDO
Har-Armageddon, also known as Megiddo was the place we were going to visit today. This fort was built over 25 times. War would rage, the conquering army would destroy it, then rebuild it for themselves. This happen 25 times. It reached it's splendor during Solomon's time. You can clearly see the valley where all these wars took place and why it would symbolized the gathering place for all the nations so Jehovah could war against them and destroy them.

 A view from Megiddo to the Jezreel valley

Stables for horses, this is probably where Solomon kept all those horses he wasn't supposed to have.

Leti participating in an active archeological dig

Jehu don't got nothing on me

More stables, remember, Solomon had a lot of horses

Inside the tunnel the provided water for Megiddo





 







The way out of the tunnel at the bottom of Megiddo.









 BETHEL

After Megiddo we went to tour Bethel, which by the way was right around the corner from where we're staying. If we would have known. A small bethel family about 40. There job is mostly translating. They've been very busy translating the new bible. During the tour we had a bro. from the legal dept. talk to us about the problems they have here. I'll relate one, you can ask me about the others.He says that although there is religious freedom in Israel, we are not legally recognized as a religion. And the Ultra-orthodox Jews persecute us. One way they do that is by taking pictures of the brothers when they go out on service and come out of the Kingdom Hall. They follow them until they know where they live. After they have this info they print flyers, like a Most Wanted flyer, pass them out and post them. The flyers have the pictures of the brothers and sisters, there addresses and say that they are missionaries, which here a missionary is a very bad person, who is basically trying to steal your soul. They also say they are Nazi's and call them all kinds of names.Some get harassed because of this. The branch has encouraged the brothers to file a complaint to the local police. They keep records of all the complaints, so they could use it for prosecuting purposes if something bad were to happen. We pray it doesn't.

Then a brother from the translation dept. spoke to us. He told us that it takes them approx. 6 months to prepare a study magazine. And there public magazine is a quarterly one. What they do is the branch committee looks at the magazine articles from a quarter and chooses the best ones for the territory. So there public magazines are unique. Because the dept. is small they haven't translated some publications yet like, Reasoning, Jeremiah, Thorough Witness. But he said, we don't focus on what we don't have we rejoice on what we do have, like our new bible.

After that we went to the service dept. The overseer of this dept. was the convention chairman a Canadian, Gilead grad that had been in several assignments with his wife before Israel. He was so appreciative that we made an effort to be here for this assembly. He told us "you just don't know how good this is for the local brothers". They have never been together in a large convention. Their conventions are 200-300 big, and they're separated by the languages, Russian, Hebrew, Hebrew sign language and Arabic.So this was a HUGE TREAT. I'll give on more detail. In Tel Aviv, there are about 1,000 territory cards. They work about 90-100 a year. It'll take them 10 years to work the territory in the city. They NEED HELP!!!

It was very encouraging to us how these brothers with all the difficulties they face are active zealous preachers. I've never met so many brothers and sisters in the Special Pioneering work. They truly have a zealous spirit. May Jehovah continue to bless the efforts of our brothers here in Israel.


GATHERING
After Bethel we left to the gathering the brothers had prepared to us. A short 20 drive and we were at commercial building where 2 Kingdoms Halls are located. Ask me why they have them in commercial buildings. Once there the brothers told us how the work got started here and grew. We sang together and we even attempted to sing song 134 in Hebrew sign language, we failed miserably! We met the 2 couples in the drama and many more brothers who opened their hearts and there homes to us. What a beautiful experience!!! Can you really doubt this is Jehovah's organization? We all left on spiritual high.