A Tour Of Roses Israel, Day 12

Dear Friends Of Improbable People Ministries And A Tour Of Roses,

If you are looking for mystery, intrigue and a wondered sense of the unknown . . . answer these four questions for me:

● How does a woman take 10 large durable plastic flower buckets, magically turn them into a bunch of beautiful flowers, then make those white flowers disappear right before your very eyes for a Shabbat service?

● How does a casual trip to the mall turn into a 3-hour prayer session with a Nutella sandwich thrown in for good measure?

● How do 10 Americans make 900 roses disappear in just 40 minutes? And are they willing to share their secret with Penn & Teller?

● How can a conversation that takes place in Israel fail to be understood in English? Fail to be understood in Hebrew? But is ultimately successful in Spanish?

What can I say? It was a day for sleight of hand and slight of, uhhh–tongue. Mmmmmm . . . NU-TEL-LA! We know you can’t wait to see the connections in all this. So take it away TEAM Rose!

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TESTIMONIES

YARA:

So today we went to the Canyon Mall in Haifa, very big three-story shopping center. We divided up into 3 groups one for each level of the mall. All told we had about 800 to 900 roses. Our group was in the first floor so we went to the first-floor level and then we barely made it maybe 20 feet from the entrance. Four of us started to hand out the roses and people started coming up to us, asking for a rose and asking why we were doing this, we were able to tell them that we were doing this to share Gods love with them and to bless them and pray for the peace of Israel.

One of the rose I gave was to a young lady that I was able to have a conversation with. She came up to me and I offered her a rose. I told her in the very tiny bit of Hebrew that I knew. I told her free gift of love and she took it. She was trying to ask me what this was for. Sheasked if I spoke Hebrew. I said no. I asked do you speak English, she said no, And I jokingly said Espanol, you speak Spanish? and she said YES! Yes, I speak Spanish!!!

So we were able to talk and I was able to tell her in Spanish what it was we were doing, why we were there. I told her that we are here, a group from the States that we’re here to pray for the peace of Israel–especially since Israel is going through such a hard time right now. And we’re here to. pray for the peace of everybody here in Israel and we wanted to share God’s love with you and give you this free gift to let you know that God loves you that we’re praying for you.

She had little tears in her eyes and she said thank you so much thank you and we talked for about 15 minutes. I got to find out she was from Argentina. She’s been living there for 20 years. And the neat thing was, even though we were engaged in a conversation, there were people that came up to us because they wanted a rose. She was able to help me to translate to people to tell them why we were there to give them the rose and it just was so meaningful to me to see people go oh my goodness thank you so much and they want hugs and it was just amazing to share God’s love that way and it was really nice to have someone to be able to communicate in their language to tell them why we were there been there. She asked what if I was, you know, Jewish? I said, no, I’m a Christian, I’m a believer and she says, oh, very, very good, But we just had a really good conversation and so after that she had to go.

Then another lady came up and I gave her a rose and she asked in English, what is this for? This is a free gift for you to tell you that God loves you, that we’re praying for you, we’re praying for peace for everyone in Israel and she had big tears in her eyes and she said can I hug you? I said yes of course and I gave her a big hug and she held on for a while. She said thank you this is what we need right now this is what we need and I told her God bless you.  I hope you have a great day and told her we’re praying for you guys.

I just want to thank God for all the different stories from everybody on the team of just the encounters that people had and being able to just share God’s love. Even though we weren’t able to always communicate directly, this is from Jesus, people would ask. And when they would ask, then we were able to tell and have a deeper conversation with them. So hopefully some seeds were planted. And I hope that later on those seeds will grow.

Thank you so much everyone for praying as we gave out the last of the roses today. Thank you so, so much for praying for us. God bless you.

ERIC: 

I want to start by saying that we were having a good morning and getting ready to take out the roses for an outing. Along the way I found that God had given me a vision of myself, on my knees. at my bed praying and he gave it to me three times within a minute or two. But I kind of brushed it off. At the same time it stuck in my mind and I kept asking God what that meant? He said I want you to skip the outreach and to spend your time in prayer interceding and asking for the things that are on your heart.

So I spent the time with God as the Team got ready to go out the door. I spent the time preparing myself to get on my knees, which isn’t an easy thing for me (prosthetic leg), but I spent time on my knees for an hour and a half. I prayed for lots of things

I prayed for safety, I prayed for calm, for coordination, for favor, for gifting of the roses, for mobility for Lura, and then I went on to pray for each and every person on the Team, numerous times, I prayed for their travel and the security of getting through this kind of traffic that would be around in noontime. And to be able to find their way to the Grand Canyon Mall without any problems. It is difficult to navigate in Haifa, the streets are quite winding and a lot of one-way streets.

There came to me a time where I got hungry but I thought that it wasn’t appropriate to eat, so I asked God if it would be okay and he sent me to the kitchen. I found a pita, some peanut butter and some Nutella and made a pita with those ingredients inside,

There was a lot of savory food around to be had, a lot of leftovers in the refrigerator and in the cupboards, but I chose to have the simple food. It seemed to me that it was in line with what it was He was doing because it was plain and it was filling. And it satisfied my hunger. I just felt like this was the bread of life that He was giving, along with His sustenance. You know, his strength through the sacrifice of so many people who produced this food, That strength was what I was going to count on to be able to finish the task of praying. And once I got back to the room I was led to go into the bathroom and to wash my hands to wash them really good and make sure that they were clean clean and  that was the second time that I washed my hands and both times I felt that there was God saying that this was the same thing that the priest used to do before they went into the temple to work and that what I was doing was interceding for the team, making sure that they were safe and that the needs were being taken care of.

So, as each team member came to mind different issues that they had brought up earlier today and over the past two weeks came to mind and I prayed into those issues and so in the end the Lord had me get off my knees and to lay down and pray. and when I lay down to pray I immediately thought of numerous other areas to be able to pray into. So, in the end, I spent about three hours in prayer and felt that I covered the team for as many things that I could possibly think of and that God brought to my mind.

KHALIDA:

We went to the mall today and we gave so many flowers to everybody and they went so fast. And after we were done with giving the roses and were ordering lunch, I saw an old lady and her husband sitting. And I was talking to them. They thanked me for the roses.

Then I saw another lady with a little girl sitting and the mom approached me and asked me what the flower is all about and I told her. Then, she said my little girl is sitting over here and she’s looking at all the roses and she wants one so much and then I said to her I’m sorry baby I don’t have any more roses to give you.

The first lady and her husband who were talking to me heard me talk to the young girl and to her mom about the roses. They heard how much the little girl wanted the rose so she said to me come over here. You could give this rose to the little girl because she really wanted the rose. So, I took it out of the hand of the old lady and gave it to the little girl and the little girl had the biggest smile on her face because she also got a rose. And it’s really touched my heart that in Israel they are so happy to receive the roses and they happy to share the love of God.

DAVE:

Today we got to go to the Grand Canyon Mall again and we took nine buckets of roses that were in between 800 to 900 roses. Me and my team took the first floor and the other team took the second and third floor.

We gave out all of our roses and just like all the other days, many people were blessed and many people were happy. They wanted to take pictures and hug us and so it was a very good time. But what I found very interesting was we had a little bit of time to walk around and look into the shops in the mall.

So I walked into this one shop, which is a Gaming store, and I was talking to the guy behind the counter and his name was Mike. And he asked me where i from, and I told him from the States, and he goes, “Oh, what are you doing here?” And I told him, “Well, we’re here to tell the people of Israel, we love them, and we support them, and God loves them. And we love you, and we give them a rose.” He said, “Oh,

“You’re the rose people!”, and he said, “My girlfriend got her rose with a little card on it, and she was so happy about it. She wouldn’t stop talking about it, and she took it wherever she went. And this guy looked to be about, late 20s, early 30s., And I thought, that made him happy to see his girlfriend touched in a way. We don’t get that kind of feedback very often where somebody will say hey a family member received your rose you know a couple days ago. This was the first time I was able to hear second hand from someone who knows a person who received a rose and witnessed firsthand how much the rose and its message impacted them.

ANNIE:

Today was our last day of passing out roses. We had six buckets prepared, the last of our 5,000 for this trip. We went into a big 3 story mall.  People were all over us just asking for the roses. And more often than not saying “Why, what do you do this for? “ When we say, “because God loves you, “ it’s like-. “Who are you and why are you here? Where do you come from? “

And when they hear that we’re Americans, They would respond energetically,. Most love America. Some have family there. And they ask, why are you doing this? Why are you coming now in this time? I would answer, “because I prayed, and I felt like God said ‘for such a time as this! ‘ You are in war.  In this time, especially, God wanted you to know that He sees you and He loves you! We are praying for you.

After an hour, after we’d passed at all the roses, Khalida and I were walking, in the mall and a lady turned the corner from about a hundred yards away started yelling out to me,  patting her heart and reaching out to me. So, I went over to her and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand, I only speak English.” And she said, “You, the rose!” and pointed to my rose in my shirt. Then she says, “You bring delight. You bring delight.” And I said, “It’s God. He loves you..”

At this she got all teary eyed and gave me a big hug and Khalida, came over and gave her a hug too. It was so beautiful.! We both saw the answer to prayers, from the scriptures we’d just gotten this morning–that God would pour out the oil of joy for the spirit of heaviness!

Again and again, people nearby who could speak English would be translating and telling the other people that couldn’t, what we’re doing and why we’re doing this.

And they just were in awe. They said things like, “This is so beautiful. This is so good. You have no idea what this means.” I think that’s the one struck me the hardest. “You have no idea what this means!!” With gratitude and patting the heart eyes alight!

SALLY:

Today we handed out the last of the 5,000 roses, 2,500 for Tel Aviv and 2,500 for Haifa and we decided to take them back to the Grand Canyon Mall. We had a really sweet time of just talking about how God had met us on this trip, each person expressing that during devotions and that was a real encouragement to all of us to hear.

And then we headed off for the Grand Canyon Mall. I was in the driver’s seat because Eric felt led to stay and intercede for us. The Lord gave him a picture of intercession for the team. So, we had about nine buckets of roses and we managed to figure out how to get there with not as much trouble, and park. We distributed the roses, all nine buckets among ten of us because Inga was not feeling really well this morning. You can be praying for Inga, although she’s doing okay right now.

So then we took all the remaining roses out of the buckets and distributed them and they were quite a big handful. Everybody’s arms were full, really. And we took the elevator up into the grocery store because that’s where the elevator lets off to go into the mall area. We were immediately attacked, assaulted by people for the roses. It’s kind of funny, but our objective was to get out of there as fast as possible.

Four of us took the first floor, another four took the second floor. Evi and I took the top floor, where the food court was. As it turned out there were quite a lot of people on the third floor.  We were giving out roses and I noticed some people were reluctant. I don’t know whether they didn’t believe us when I said “Mattina” “Mattina”  which means a gift, It’s a gift, as opposed to we want money for the Rose. But some people, when they took the Rose, they were very pleased and some people who read the cards were touched, very touched. The mall is mainly in an Israeli area where there were a lot of interesting responses. I think a very meaningful response happened when I went over to a table of three men. And there a woman who was very, very excited to receive the Rose, Then I gave one man the Rose. And she asked me what it was about, and I said what I’ve been saying, which is not what the card says, but it is the underlying reason we are here, which is, you know, that God loves you, and he loves Israel, and he has not forgotten Israel.

And she’s very touched by that and read the card. And then the man read the card. And he was a little skeptical. I don’t speak Hebrew, but I know some words. But he had a friend who was also there. And the friend could speak some English. And he’s very touched. He’s kind of watching us give out the roses and he was very touched.

And he kind of invited me to sit down. And I did. I still had some roses and Evi came and relieved me of them because she was still giving out roses. And I think the man’s grandparents were in the Holocaust. I think that was what he was saying–or his parents. I don’t remember.

But anyway, he was very open. He’s very sensitive and soft-hearted. The friend said, “So is this about Jesus or Yeshua?” And I said, “I don’t speak Hebrew, I speak English, I could tell that he said Yeshua.” And so the guy who had invited me to sit down and spoke English, he said, “You know, he’s asking this question, and I said, well, please tell him that I’m Jewish, and I’m also a believer in Jesus as the Messiah.

That was enough for that guy, you know, he was done with me. He just turned his face away from me. But this guy, who’s translating, he was really moved, and I he said, it doesn’t really matter to me about, you know, you believing in Yeshua. Well, I said, you know, you can tell your friend that we didn’t come here to evangelize or try to convert him. That’s actually not our purpose here this particular time. We’re here to be a comfort and to express the extravagant love of God to you. And he was very receptive. He is a widower.

He was kind of saying, I can tell you have a good heart. And I said, well, my heart is only good because  I know Yeshua. And he changed my heart. I wasn’t such a good person,  I could tell he was moved, but I also could tell that he didn’t know exactly what it was that was touching him. He saw it as me, but I know that it was the Lord and I tried to tell him a little bit. He didn’t really hear me but I was touched by him also and so I gave him a hug and he kissed me in the cheek.

It was very sweet. And he had a very sweet spirit about him. His friend was a little irritated, but that was OK. And then we were figuring out what we were going to get to eat, because the roses were all gone in about 40-minutes. 800 roses in 40 minutes, if you can believe that. And so, we were hanging around the food court trying to decide what to eat, and we’re all out of roses. And this woman comes up, and her son is wearing a yarmulke, She comes up, you know, to a few of us that are kind of clustered. And she says, “I went to your website.” And I’m thinking, “Oh, okay. Okay, now we’re in trouble.”

But she was really moved. She was like you came here to do this. God bless you. She was really moved and touched that we would do this, that we would come out and do this. And in fact, it was interesting to me that I went to get some gifts in this one shop and this woman, you know, she had a very hard face. And she said, “What you’re doing is really beautiful..

So, all in all it was a very good experience. Only God knows. Again, it was a very much planting, a sowing of seed. But it was a very good way to end, really. And funny thing,, there’s a flower shop right next to us and we ended up paying for the buckets that we borrowed from Avi because I can’t return them to Jerusalem and we ended up paying for these buckets. So I went to the flower shop. Dave and Yara came with me, and we took the buckets. We gave them to the flower shop.. And she was thrilled. Oh, she was so happy. She was so, thank you, thank you and she gave us a bunch of white flowers. They’re really gorgeous.

I don’t know if they’re a kind of rose or not. I thought it was interesting. And she gave them to me. Just big tall bunch of white, I don’t know, rose-like flowers. And then what I did was cut them all down, put them in a vase, and gave them to Michael who was the proprietor for us here at this place who answered all our questions and helped us with all this different stuff. Michael was really kind of reluctant when we first came, but softened up quite a bit and I gave him the vase of the white flowers and he was really like, WOW,! And I said, keep this for your Shabbat service. So yeah, it’s been good. I think we’re done. I think we’re tired and we want to go home, but it’s been good.

Thank you so much for praying.

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PHOTOS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dave is quite the lady magnet. Good thing Yara is keeping a close eye behind the camera! 

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ITINERARY