Day 1 - Jerusalem Here We Are!

Day 1 was a hit!  We went to bed after 4am and therefore woke up late.  We all felt hungover when we woke...from the sleep deprivation - 36 hours of travel without an evening.  We got up around noon, and got out in time for a 2pm lunch out on the town, then headed to a prayer room.  King of Kings prayer room is about a 10 minute walk from our place - so that is great.

We ate lunch at their version of the Loft coffee house.  They have a cafe in the basement of an office building that their church owns and runs.  The people were fantastic and the food was even better.  Huge portions, high quality, we even managed to get some ice out of the service staff.  We then brought people eating at the cafe up to the prayer room and they were able to lead some worship.  They are a group from South Africa who feel called to pray for Israel.  We will meet them tomorrow for coffee to connect with them more.

The King of Kings has a prayer room on the 14th floor of the Klal building.  The building sits on a hill and so you feel as if you are at the highest part of the entire city.  We met several people during the worship time, arranged some meetings, got some prayer, and then went to dinner.

We enjoyed basically a small appetizer and drinks for dinner due to our late lunch and enjoyed chatting in the outdoor seating.  The weather is warm during the day - high of about 90 degrees today, but it cools down substantially in the evening (think how SA used to be).  After a lite snack, we headed back to the prayer room for more worship.  We enjoyed a long set of worship, then ended up praying for the worship team - 4 in all, we spent about 45 minutes praying for their team.  The time was good and encouraging, and they invited us to their place tomorrow for Shabbat.

All in all the day was good.  We recovered from our travel hangovers (we'll see how we feel tomorrow am).  Our time clocks are still off (Israel is 8 hours ahead of SA time) and our meals are still off time.  This should take a few days to adjust to, but being out in the city walking places, meeting people, and most of all, getting to pray for folks really helped us to feel normal again.

It seems that God has many people to connect us with on this trip and today was a fantastic start.  Tomorrow we start with coffee with the South Africans, then hopefully visit the Western Wall in the Old City, maybe a little Gethsemane Church, and likely some other prayer rooms, then Shabbat dinner tomorrow night.

A good day today and met some fun folks to meet with tomorrow.  We miss all y'all at home.  Thanks for the prayers and encouragements.  We have felt safe the whole time and the meetings with people have been great.  The prayer time tonight was powerful, and it was a good reminder how far God has brought our community in prayer.

We love you, and miss you lots,

Matt