We Walked In. We Were Not Ready for This.

In our last update we told you about a door that had opened in a sensitive area. Two men who came to faith out of Islam, asking to be discipled. We told you we were not certain the interest was genuine. We told you there were enough reasons to be cautious. We told you to pray from that honest place.

You did. So did we. And then we went.

What We Found

We did not know what to expect walking in. We had been burned before in this kind of situation. We had seen what it looks like when someone performs faith for an audience and waits for the money to follow. We were prepared for that. We were not prepared for what we actually found.

A home. A real home. A father who opened his door to us knowing the risk that carries where he lives. A mother who laid out a spread of food that took time and care to prepare. Children everywhere, from a seventeen year old down to a baby still counted in months. The oldest son came in after us, walked straight past the adults, picked up the infant, and started playing with him. That image has stayed with us.

When Dan began teaching from the Gospel of John, the questions started and did not stop. Not polite questions. Not performance. Real questions came. The kind that tell you something is genuinely moving inside a person. They were turning things over in their minds and their hearts and they needed help understanding what they were holding. The room was full of it.

We did not get far in John. There was too much talking. That was the best possible sign.

All three of us drove away from that home with the same feeling sitting in our chests. This family wants God. Not what Christians can give them. Not a connection or a safety net. God. They want to know Him, love Him, follow Him. We were not expecting to feel what we felt leaving that house.

We are meeting with them every Sunday evening now. We are praying this is the beginning of something that outlasts all of us.

One More Important Thing

This family has children in a Christian missionary school. The economy where they live has collapsed. There is almost no work and no way out of the city to find it. The father can no longer pay the school fees and he has been told the children have thirteen days before they have to leave. Elias is going with him to speak to the school and see if anything can be done.

We do not know yet how that conversation will go. We will tell you when we do.

Back at the Soup Kitchen

The same week, back at the soup kitchen in Tel Aviv, we had a very different kind of moment.

We serve everyone who walks through that door. We always have and we always will. But there is one individual who has been escalating for some time now, and this week it crossed a line. The police were called on Elias on the basis of things that never happened. Standing there watching it unfold, knowing what Elias has poured into these streets, knowing the years and the cost behind it, was painful in a way that is hard to describe.

We have seen spiritual darkness in this work. We know what it looks like. This was one of those moments.

But the same day, two women we have been walking with for a long time both came in. Both carry wounds that run very deep. One arrived softer than we have seen her in a while. She received a small gift that had been brought from far away, held it, and her face changed. The other came through the door the way she always does, arms up, ready for a fight. But she stopped at the entrance, looked at us, and said: “I know you love me.”

She knows. After everything, she knows. That is what keeps us showing up.

Pray for protection over Elias and over this work. Pray for the family we visited. Pray that Sunday evenings become something none of us could have planned.