Israel 1997

I will tell you about a special travel we made to Israel 1997.
It was the end of February 1997 and only a few days left of our year in Titusville, Florida.
Clas had finished his flight school lessons at The Space Coast Executive Airport and had got a licence.

An american man called John Lents, that lives in Titusville, came together with his wife to our home to say goodbye. He gave us an Israeli coin (shekel) and said `This coin will be a sign that you two will be in Israel in September this year!´ -Oh, thank you so much! we said. But I thought;`Us in Israel? Why?´It felt very far away. Specially when I only was thinking of getting back to Finland right then.

We moved back to Finland and I had almost forgot about Johns' words when we one day in the end of August got a call from The president for The International Christian Chamber of Commerce in Finland, Fredrik Ekholm. He is a friend of us since many years back. He asked us to join him and his wife on a fortnight trip to Israel in September, and we decided to go.
John was right! We went to Israel!

There is a big party in Jerusalem in September every year; The fiest of Tabernacles (also called "The fiest of the harvest").
The first nights we stayed up in Tiberias and went on sightseeing every day. We were sailing on the sea of Galilee, visited a kibbutz, we also went to many places were Jesus had been doing different things.

One day our group got a special permission to go by bus up to the Gohlan hights at the border of Syria. That area was a zone under alert right then and it was soldiers everywhere in the ditches and trenches. When the bus got to a hill where we could see over to Syria it stopped and we all went out. Then we reached our hands toward Syria and proclaimed peace.

I'm not going to go into politics, but I need to say that many times Israel has been miss treated in media. Of course, they don't do everything right but the media often distort the truth and blame Israel. And one of the reasons why we were in Israel was to show the world you can be a friend of Israel too! Clas and I like to be friends of all the nations.

After some days we moved down to Jerusalem. There we visited the grave of Jesus, the church were he was born in Bethlehem and many other places. In the nights we went to the fiest (one night out in the desert). The program was excellent with artists and dancers from many different nations and powerful fireworks.

One night was very special. The prime minister of Israel at that time was Benyamin Netanyahu. He had his birthday that night and came to the party to talk to us.
He said, among other things, he felt warm in his heart when so many people come from so many nations to Israel in a time when many are afraid to go there. I think we were about 1000 people from foreign countries there.
The security check for getting in to the party that night was little complicated. When Benyamin finally came in to talk to us nobody where allowed to stand up. He had many bodyguards standing in the room. And when he came to the fiest he had an escort of four police cars, with twinkling lights on. What a stressy life that man were living!

In the middle of a day in Jerusalem we joined a march in the town. There were representatives from about 100 different nations and we walked in the middle of the street protected by the Israeli army. It were soldiers everywhere with K-weapons. Even up on the roofs of the houses.
When we walked outside specific places, like the house of the mayor in Jerusalem, etc. we stopped and sang songs and swayed the flags.

The Palestinians were angry and screamed bad words to us at the street. They even took the Israeli flags we carried, and teared them into pieces and throw them on the ground and put them on fire. The event got headlines on the national TV that night.

This march is the most powerful thing I ever been doing in my life so far. It really felt like giving your life to a nation that was treated of war. A memory for the rest of my life!
The last days we were in Israel we moved up to a town called Netanyah where it's a beautiful beach at the Medditerranean sea.