Shalom to you all! Thank you for all your prayers for our Shefla (coastal plain) campaign, which is now over. This is the third of twelve campaigns in our Behold Your God Israel outreach. We praise God for enabling us to complete it. Here are the final results.
By God's grace we were able to hand out over 33,500 gospel tracts. We spoke to over 3,900 people on the phone and offered them a free copy of the New Testament. We knocked on more than 1,800 doors and talked to 632 people in their homes, offering them a free book about Jesus. We got the contact information of 716 unsaved Jewish people who told us that they want to know more about Jesus. Fourteen Israelis prayed with us to receive the Lord during the campaign and seven prayed with us during follow up visits. Twenty-one Jewish people and eight gentiles came to faith in Jesus during this campaign. Praise the Lord!
Thank you so much for serving on this campaign with us. Your prayers were felt and they made a huge difference. We need more prayer (see prayer requests below) and we know that we can count on you. I praise the Lord for each of you and for your heart to see the Messiahship of Jesus made an unavoidable issue in Israel today.
For His Kingdom,
Dan Sered
Israel branch director
Prayer needs:
Pray that we will see more Israelis come to faith in Jesus through our follow-up efforts.
We have filed over a dozen police complaints against those who assaulted us. Pray for justice.
Pray for the 21 Jewish believers and eight gentile believers that came to faith during the past three weeks.
Safety and traveling mercies for all of the volunteers that are returning to their home countries.
Continued growth in the level of cooperation and help from the local believers with the follow-up efforts.
Preparation for our fall BYG campaign; pray for wisdom for Ofer and Dan, who will be leading this effort.
Stories:
Meir:
In the park we spoke with two young adults, Yosi and Daniel, who were closed at first, but then opened up. Yosi did most of the talking, but in the end it was Daniel who was interested in receiving a New Testament. We also spoke with a pediatrician who accepted a Gospel of John from us.
I was phoning yesterday afternoon and no one was willing to speak with me for 52 calls. I phoned the last number, and the man I spoke with already knew quite a bit about Y'shua, and I was able to share the gospel with him.
Karol:
We were doing a music sortie in City Park in Rishon and it was great. One of our campaigners, Yuri, is a professional violinist and as he played Ha Tikvah (the Israel National Anthem) and other Jewish songs many people (mostly Russian) came to hear him. He even took requests! We all were reminded of the verse "and a little child will lead them" as the kids were most interested in coming over to hear and even to dance, and their mothers/grandmothers/caretakers followed. They didn't seem to mind that we were in Jews for Jesus T-shirts, and after a while we were able to speak to several of the adults. We even got a contact or two before two religious women saw what was going on and came over to try to stop us. They were yelling and screaming at us that what we were doing was illegal and that we should go home to America and leave Israel alone. They threatened to call the police, which was fine with us. When the police arrived and saw what we were doing, they told the women to leave us alone! Begrudgingly, they did.
Elizabeth and Yarden:
On our last day of the campaign (Wednesday) we decided to walk through each of the towns that were included in our campaign territory. All of the teams went out in Jews for Jesus T-shirts as walking billboards, but not to pass out tracts. Our purpose was simply to demonstrate that we were still here and that we were not chased away or frightened by them. At our first destination, Rehovot, Sergio's team got out of the car and one of his teammates, Maaian, was immediately approached by an interested woman who gave her contact information to learn more. Soon after, some anti-missionaries showed up one by one until our team was completely surrounded on the main street by eight of them yelling and screaming at us to leave. Sergio recognized one of them as the man who earlier in the campaign had attacked and threatened him saying, "If you ever show your face here again, you'll see what will happen." Sergio took some satisfaction in having the opportunity to look this man in the eye once more and see what would come of his threat . . . nothing did.
Another team was doing their walk through inside the Rehovot mall when several anti-missionaries attacked them right in front of security (who did nothing). Seven of the men hit and pushed Vovo (not a large man) to the ground. One was on top of him hitting him and had him in a neck hold, beginning to choke him. His teammate, Steve (a very large man) saw that if he didn't intervene, Vovo might actually be seriously injured, so he moved quickly to get the religious man off of him. Given his size and strength this didn't take much to do, and the religious man rolled off of Vovo onto the floor of the mall. An Israeli soldier came at that point and scolded the anti-missionaries, saying, "I don't agree with what they believe either, but they have every right to be here in peace." And the men left. It was encouraging to the team that the soldier came, reminding us all that many people see the way the opposition behaves (and the non-violent way we respond) and it's a good testimony.
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