Greetings and Shabbat Shalom

This is written Saturday, 10 October. I know you are all keen to know what wonderful foods we are eating. The picture at the right is an evening meal, prepared by Rinah, and it’s a delightful soup with turkey meatballs. Each meal Rinah made has been excellent. Their son, Marius, is also an exceptional cook, with intentions to go to Culinary School next year. He made a stir fry with a special sauce he invented, and I twisted his arm for the recipe so I can recreate it. All meals are Kosher, which means meat and dairy are never served at the same time. But their kitchen is not Kosher, which means they do not have two sets of dishes, one serves dairy and the other meat. Our new friends who hosted us the first two nights (meet the Kramer’s) are Orthodox Jews, so their kitchen had two dishwashers, two sinks, two sets of cupboards… one for dairy, the other for meat.

This photo is my own typical breakfast, which I serve here in our little B&B unit. I have sliced cukes & cherry tomatoes with cottage cheese, or toast. I’m loving the veggies here, and we have LOTS of cherry tomatoes and cukes on hand. Jerry usually enjoys a bowl of cereal or toast with a creamy sort of cream-cheese and jelly. Yogurts here are quite nice as well. We always eat breakfast here at our B&B unit.

Here is our little B&B, which is about a 4 minute drive from Boaz & Rinah’s Moshav. We’re quite close to the Thai farmers, and watch the tractor towing the wagon with 20-25 men and women off to work their 12-hour shifts. Yesterday afternoon and into the evening, these people partied with lots of laughter, and I wondered if they weren’t playing a game, as after some pause, there were loud affirmations of victory! We are surrounded by a vast number of greenhouses, where all the veggies are grown and sold to markets and other moshavim or kibbutzim. The complete B&B is made from a 40-foot shipping container! What a job it must have been to saw through the steel to make doors and windows! Our unit has one room with two windows letting in a cross-ventilation (praise the LORD!), and a bathroom. We have 2 twin beds, and mine is more comfortable after folding two sets of duvets as extra cushion. A little table in the corner has a hot pot, coffee cups, various teas and instant coffee, sugar, etc. Then the middle unit is a kitchen, with a one-burner stove for frying, a microwave and small refrigerator. It works for us, and we lack for nothing. There is another unit on the other side of the kitchen, just like ours.

The LORD has given me a special friend to dote on… a donkey whom I’ve named “Burro-ito” (Get it? Burrito?) Ha, Ha. We hear him braying from time to time, and I give him an extra handful of hay, and have cleaned out the bathtub used for drinking water.

Boaz has his Shofar workshop adjacent to our B&B, which is also a 40-ft shipping container. He has a large heat-reflective tent over the top, as he only uses a fan to cool things off. We, however, have an actual air conditioner when needed.



The photo is of Boaz and Marius working with the drilling, sanding, cleaning, polishing, etc., needed to make an excellent shofar. Jerry was in on the action as well, being taught the fundamentals of how to begin preparing a horn for its transformation.

I had my first visit to the doctor Thursday afternoon. Can’t seem to shake these UTIs! A wonderful Russian Jew who has been Rinah’s doctor many years took good care of me. We had to drive along the Egypt border to a Kibbutz not far from Kerem Shalom (which is on the border of Egypt and Gaza), where the Dreyer’s lived not too long ago. We had to hurry after my appointment and going to the pharmacy to fill the prescription, as the road we take closes at 7:00 pm. There are high look-out points all the way along this road, well-lit and stationed by IDF soldiers. Rinah began singing the Psalms in Hebrew as it got dark, probably knowing I was getting a little “antsy”. But we arrived home shortly after 7:00, and our husbands had a good handle on the evening meal…it smelled so wonderful. Shalom from Israel! We think of you all with great fondness. Please pray for my wellness!