Let It Rain!
The biggest season of holidays of the year, ending with Sukkot, the Biblical Feast of Booths, has just ended here in Israel.
We usually see the first rain after summer around Sukkot. This year’s first shower was an especially heavy rain. We woke to its sound, and it continued for a couple of hours, washing away the dust and soaking the cracked earth, leaving everything fresh and glistening and with the feel of a new season.
God has begun a new chapter in our fellowship. Several brothers taught a series of baptism classes, with some classes attended by our whole community and others shared in the smaller context of our youth group.
Brother Dylan and Sister Marieke Kraijenoord and their family from South Africa came to visit us in September, and Dylan helped with the baptism classes.
On October 14, the last day of Sukkot, mentioned in the gospel of John as “the last and greatest day of the feast,” our community held a baptism. The presence of God filled the room as we witnessed the victorious baptisms of Alexander and Cäcielia Dietze, Christine Axt, Avidan Grau, Liron Grau, Yuval Kurucz, and Amos Stewart. We worshiped and rejoiced with singing and dancing before sharing a meal together.
Christine Axt is the mother of Raffi and Joel, who were both married this year. God has brought healing and grace into her life as she has opened her heart to His love. The young men who were baptized are all members of the second and third generations of our community.
Alexander and Cäcielia Dietze moved from Germany to Israel eleven years ago. Aware that his grandfather was a Nazi, Alexander founded a ministry organization to help Holocaust survivors in Israel. Last year, as their family was struggling and seeking God, they met our community at one of our mobile fairs for refugees from the Gaza war. They were drawn to the unity and love they saw between us, so they started to visit our meetings.
Over the course of a year, they grew to love the brothers and sisters in our fellowship, and they felt God show them that this was their home. As these believers continued on their path of faith, they recognized that baptism in Jesus’ name was the next step of obedience God was calling them to.
Through the Dietzes’ connections, our youth group is hoping to begin a singing ministry for Holocaust survivors as well as elderly folks in nursing homes.
Brother Peter Xiu, his wife, Ruth, and two friends from China traveled to Israel to tour the country and visit our community. Brother Peter is the founder of a huge network of underground house churches in China, numbering millions of Christians. He and his wife were imprisoned and tortured for their faith five different times. Several families from our community gathered to worship and eat together, as well as Brother Steve Hirschtritt, who was visiting from Texas. With the help of their translator, Brother Peter and Sister Ruth encouraged us with stories of their refusal to betray their brothers and sisters in the face of torture and longtime imprisonment.
Many prayers were answered on the morning of Monday, October 13, when, after two years of captivity, seven of the last twenty hostages were released from Hamas and brought back home to Israel. Later that day, the rest of the hostages followed them into freedom.
Please continue to pray for Israel and for our community, that God will give us a unity and love that inspires jealousy in the people of this land. Pray that God would work through us to rain hope on this suffering country.
