Friday, December 13, 2013

Still Friday 13 December

This afternoon Steve put on a DVD about an Amish community in Pennsylvania where two families decided to leave the church: a very moving insight into Amish life and how this decision affected their families.

Tonight Dianne and I went to a Shabat meal at the Return Ministries centre, about 25 minutes away. It was fairly clear when we left; no snow had fallen during the afternoon. We were greeted with “Shabat shalom”, as I was introduced to everyone. There were probably 30 people in total. Natalie, whom I’d met on Thursday evening at the theatre was one of the two on kitchen duty and she joined our table for the meal.

After the introductory words, Dean, the leader of the group welcomed me and asked Dianne and me to light the candles: this is a great honour at a Shabat. 


Return Ministries is a community with a great vision to see Jews introduced to Jesus and freed from exile so they are actively helping Jews return to their homeland. They are in the process of setting up a ministry base in Jerusalem. It was a beautiful night, honouring Jesus; the ceremony of blessing and breaking bread and blessing the wine was explained as it was enacted, followed by the meal, which was very good. The evening finished with Dean praying Proverbs 31 as a blessing over his wife, with others invited to give thanks and to bless those who are significant in their journey, including wives and mothers.

On the way home, the snow was starting to fall again, already carpeting the roads and giving us a delightful show as it was illuminated in the headlights. There's just no way to describe this with words! This is a moving picture because of night exposure:




Again a late night and off to bed because there’s more action planned for tomorrow! We're expecting a big dump in the afternoon too.

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