Twice in Royal David's City

Salaam/Shalom,

Well, here I am in Bethlehem, for the second time in my life and hopefully not the last. I'm really enjoying it so far, the people at the Bible College are very interesting and open. The first night I got here I spent hanging out with the guys in the dorm outside cooking fish, talking and singing (probably 80% in Arabic, which definitely challenges me, especially with the differences between Palestinian and Lebanese), it was great. Yesterday I went to a funeral in Jerusalem, which of course was kind of sad (a Lutheran bishop had died), but also interesting from a cultural perspective. The church served a meal after the funeral, where they gave us Arabic coffee without sugar (symbolic of course). It tasted basically like spiffed-up dirt, which reminded me of "Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust." A good tangible lesson.

One of the more exciting things for me so far is seeing the connections that many of the students have to Israeli believers and congregations. One guy named Jeris is from Nazareth, and speaks Hebrew as good as Arabic. He's a musician (a very good singer), and gave me a tape he'd recorded of worship music, mostly in Arabic but with one song in Hebrew. His roommate, Ibrahim, was singing to me all these Hebrew worship songs, clamoring from the bottom of his heart. =) It was so beautiful for me to hear Palestinians worshiping God in Hebrew, being willing to bridge those gaps and accept Hebrew culture as legitimate and redeemable. I don't think most people on both sides of the conflict think or feel that way about the other side. I told Jeris I would love to help him with doing music as much as I possibly could. So I really feel like God has brought people into the school that I can have really fruitful and meaningful relationships with.

Things here seem to be pretty sensitive politically, not in terms of feeling like I'm facing danger, but mainly in terms of what kinds of words I use and lots of other little subtleties. So please keep that in mind when you write me, and who's in charge here--as far as I'm concerned, my e-mail is just as public as this website. As far as Jesus goes, proclaim it from the rooftops! Don't worry about shying away from spiritual topics in e-mail. I am volunteering at a Bible College, after all, so it's not like people don't know I'm a Christian.

My suitcase is still AWOL, this morning I'm going to call the airline people and hopefully track it down. They told me they would sent it to Jerusalem yesterday morning, but apparently that didn't happen. Meanwhile, I've been in this situation before (five days in Damascus with no change of clothes), so I'm a veteran by now. ;) And here I actually have friends who will loan me clothes and shampoo and stuff like that, so hamdillah. =)

I always appreciate news, even if I can't always respond personally very quickly. So let me know how y'all are doing.

God bless you all,

Seth

On to Jerusalem

Got a ticket today to Tel Aviv for tomorrow night (ie, Wednesday night), should be in Bethlehem by Thursday morning or afternoon. I'm excited. =) May God work in the border officials, and may His will be done. I expect to be writing from Bethlehem soon. This last week in Istanbul has been very encouraging, God is working in my life and my heart. Much love to you all.

Istanbul, not Constantinople

Hey everybody,

Just wanted to let you know, I'm doing well and happily in Istanbul this morning. We took a bus from Skopje, Macedonia yesterday afternoon (left Kosovo in the early afternoon), I'll be here for a week or two roughly. I had a really great, though unfortunately short, time in Prishtina, meeting together with the church there and meeting up with my friends from Boulder (Georges, Jason, Hoyt, Mary, Ashley, Heather, and Corinne). We're now here together with a few of the believers from Kosova, I expect it shall be a really good time. They all speak English very well, and I've picked up a few words of Albanian too (as well as Bulgarian, Macedonian, and now some Turkish). =) Slava na boga! (That means "Praise the Lord!" in Macedonian--in Albanian, it's "Lavdi Zoti!")

I had a good time visiting with my brother Joel in Germany, even though our time was pretty short. May the Lord bless him there in his last few months.

Here goes the call to prayer in Istanbul--most people don't seem to care much. It's definitely a more secular country even than Lebanon. Or rather, both the Muslims and the Christians in Lebanon take their religion relatively seriously (for better and for worse, usually the latter in Lebanon's case), but in Turkey which is almost completely Muslim, most people don't seem to hold onto a Muslim identity very strongly, if at all. Of course that's a generalization. It's even more that way in Kosovo, which was Communist for a long time--it was weird for me to drive through little towns and see all the women unveiled, wearing tight jeans and Italian fashion.

I'll write more hopefully from Istanbul, once we've spent a little more time here. May God bless you all--pray that our time here might be fruitful and meaningful. Soon I want to write more about Kosovo and the Balkans--I've really seen some things I want to be praying for there that I wasn't as keenly aware of before I came here.

Love,

Seth