Dayna is a passionate Christian Zionist who yearned to go to Israel “someday,” but real life kept getting in her way.Well, last month she finally got her wish…and she sent me this remarkable, passionate and encouraging letter which I am urging you to send out to as wide an audience as possible……Joan Swirsky (Author of “The Cargiver Survivors Guide”)
Dear Joan,
As I sit, safe and sound, on my living room sofa in my condo in Naples, FL, it’s been less than two weeks since I toured Israel and walked the streets in the Old City of Jerusalem. I’m thankful that, as a tourist, I was not personally confronted with the deadly violence that Israelis are experiencing these days, in a Palestinian “knife intifada.”
We spent a day at a ministry center in Haifa. I met Russian Jews who came to the center to receive practical goods that were being gifted to them by The Joshua Fund. The grateful looks on their faces were priceless. There were incredulous tears of joy as they received a decorative canvas wheeled cart, kitchen knives, a wireless electric tea pot, laundry detergent, dish towels, a cutting board, a vegetable peeler, a can opener, a pot with a lid, a glass bowl, a ladle, a decorative mug, and a pillow––items that you and I take for granted.
One sweet, gray-haired lady whom I greeted and assisted, really touched my heart. I couldn’t hug her or help her enough! I got choked up just wondering how she happened to be there at that time in her life.
Two hundred people (men, women and their children) had been selected to participate in this event. Fortunately, not everything that’s going on in Israel is violent or deadly!
Joan, everywhere we went, there were tour groups of Christians and Jews from all over the world in Israel! Not even the threat of Palestinian Islamic terrorism kept us away from our quest to experience Israel!
I felt safe from the moment I arrived at Ben Gurion Air Port in Tel Aviv. As a visitor in Israel, when I was standing on the Golan Heights hearing gunfire fire coming from Syria, that’s when I was confronted with the reality of war. It was surreal.