A Weekend in Eilat and Aqaba

Greetings, Shalom, Marhaba! Three ways to say… Hi there!

We’ve had a wonderful time with our dear friends, Boaz & Rinah in Israel, and part of the fun has been in serving. Jerry has been working with Marius, the young adult son of Boaz & Rinah, mainly dry-wall work, plastering and painting. But in the process, a major accident happened and Jerry did a very bad thing to his left index finger, nearly severing it. He was using a grinder on the floor prepping for tiling, and it slipped out of his hand onto his left finger, then dropped down and made a few little cuts in his foot. The bleeding was tremendous, but the two guys wrapped up the finger tightly and brought the poor lad home to me to doctor. It truly needed a few stitches, but the doctor is nowhere close and Jerry wanted me to just do the best I could. Having watched a number of surgical programs on TV, I felt quite qualified to make the repair. Not having any butterfly band-aids made the job nearly impossible, and so there will be a significant scar for him to sport around. But at least the gash is healing, praise God. Today Marius and Jerry built a work table for the greenhouse, as Rinah and I have been busy separating little seedlings into small pots, and we truly ran out of space.

The B&B had 2 South African couples coming, and Jerry and I needed to vacate our room, so we chose to head south to Eilat for a 3-day holiday. Rinah booked us a room at the Youth Hostel Eilat, with a private room & bath, which for our age is much better than a dorm room with 15 bunk beds and no bathroom! The Lord blessed us with the best room ever… on the top floor (3^rd w/no elevator) with a balcony off our room with a private entrance. Nobody but us ever used this area, which had tables and chairs where we played cards in the cool of the evenings. We purchased a 24-hour card so we could use wi-fi in our room, and check e-mail, and Jerry could keep up with his web-site customers. I had tried unsuccessfully many times to connect with our friends Betty & John Stroble who lived in Aqaba , hoping we could work out a visit there. But as the Lord would have it, they finally wrote and I got their e-mail that first day in Eilat! John had a fall (their in their mid-80’s) and Betty was too busy with him to check in for e-mails! But we all were amazed at God’s timing, that we were in Eilat and had a full day to come across the border to visit. They got busy and contacted the friends who were still there, 10 years after we had lived there.

After John & Betty picked us up at the border crossing, we went down to old Aqaba to find our old friend Fadel, who owned the Spice Shop in the Souk . . .
we became close friends with Fadel in the year we lived there. We visited for awhile, and were invited to a meal he was planning with his family, which we had to decline as we made plans earlier to cross the border early evening before it closed. I took several photos with another photograph held by various friends of Jan & Earl Robbins, our wonderful friends also from Aqaba who now live in Indiana and are faced with physical problems. They so wanted to travel with us, so I said I’d take them anyway and carried this photo of them to take pictures to prove they were indeed with us!

We met the remainder of our group (who are still there) for lunch at Ali-Baba’s, a favorite restaurant we frequented often. And as you can see, Jan and Earl joined us! Jerry and I are on the right, then Joanie and Karen. Across from us at the back are John and Betty and Dolly, also in her 80’s. Each person has their own story of how the Lord led them to Aqaba to live, and be a part of the Arab community but worshipping the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They have several Bible studies a week, and that particular day was the Torah teaching which Joanie and Dolly didn’t want to miss.

We visited later more with Karen, who with her Pastor husband, Chip, are moving back to the States in a few weeks. It’s a sad time for them to leave, and they hope in due time they will return.

Chip was not there for us to greet, as he was already in the States, as his Dad passed away and was making the arrangements to take over his Dad’s position as Pastor of that church.

The day went only too quickly; we made our way back across the border about 7:00 pm, and were in our hotel room by 7:30. We caught the bus the next morning for Be’er Sheva and 3-1/2 hours later Rinah picked us up at the bus depot.

It’s been quite hot here lately, and we take a siesta for a couple of hours in our little cabana with the air conditioner on full blast. But it’s time to rejoin Rinah to prepare the evening meal for Swiss visitors here. Every week is full of new and exciting things to ponder… especially the wonder of God’s grace and mercy in our lives.

Shalom, shalom.