A Tour Of Roses Israel, Day 4-Version 2.0

 

Dear Friends of Improbable People Ministries and A Tour Of Roses,

The good news is our copy of Microsoft Word started again–on its own–after I opened it up this evening. The bad news is that our promised double issue–both Day 4 and Day 5 in one single edition–will not be possible due to the unwieldy nature of the reportage. There are simply too many testimonies and pictures. I have realized, belatedly, that such an outpouring of stories would place you all on sensory overload. I think our readers and the ATOR Team will be better served with the following publication schedule:

● Day 4, (Tuesday) published now
● Day 5, (Wednesday) will be sent out late Thursday morning
● Day 6 (Thursday) will be published Thursday evening on time

Then we will be back on schedule. Please feel free to take a bathroom break, grab a tuna sandwich, or chug a can of Red Bull if you are facing the dreaded malady ATOR Update Backlog. We’ll be here when you get back. Thank you for your patience and your prayers.

TESTIMONIES

Tuesday offer the Team a chance to go to the beach in Tel Aviv and also surrounding areas. The stories are truly heart-warming. One point before we start. These testimonies are captured by Robert Emmert as Team Members recount their stories into a recording device. From there the transciption is formatted into a MS Word Doc and emailed back home to the States. Some light editing has been done. But these are people speaking as opposed to writing fine literature. So you are going to encounter some repitition, a lot of “ands” and often the lack of quotation marks. There just aren’t enough hours in the day to do a fine edit on all the testimonies. So please listen to their tales with a keen ear and a merciful eye. They are worth wading through some occasional bad grammar and poor punctuation. Thanks for your understanding.

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EVI:

I had two really sweet encounters with some women that I met on the beach in Tel Aviv. One of their names was Olga, She was from Ukraine, and she was here–I don’t really know how long she was here–but she had children back in Ukraine and she He was here in Israel.

It occurred to me that she’s suffering about the war and she was very open. She was really happy to receive a rose and she said it really meant something to her because she needed something from God today as she was really going through it. So, she, I prayed, and she wanted to hug me. It was really sweet. And then I went further down on the beach, and there was another. Woman.

She was sitting just by herself in the waves and so I gave her a rose and she said thank you. She said I really needed this because my friend just died in Gaza. It was just sad and she was tearing up she was crying. I felt the same way. I was tearing up with her. And I prayed with her and we hugged, and it was just really sweet. But the main thing about both those encounters was each of the women told me that they needed it just then.

DAVE:

Today we got to go to the Mediterranean Beach and Sally set up to worship on the street. We had the other teams go out and me and my wife stayed with Sally, near a stop light. The cars would stop and line up.. They would either listen to Sally sing or look over at us and then that gave us the opportunity to walk up to them and ask them if they’d like a rose.

We told them it’s a gift and there were some that didn’t want one. But there were a lot more that did take a rose. They’d roll down their window and they’d ask us what’s this for? We’d say it’s for you. We love you God loves you. God remembers you and Israel. God bless you.

And we gave a rose to them. And many times they would cry or they’d put their hand over their heart. This one man put his hands together in the form of a heart. And so that was amazing.

But one of the things that kind of struck me was these two older men were walking by and they got roses. They stopped and talked to us for just a moment and they left. And then my wife found a wallet on the ground. So, she picked it up and I said, OK, let’s put it by Sally. That way, they don’t think we are pickpockets or something if I’m carrying it.

And I kept praying because I looked through the wallet. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t one of our team members. And it said, “senior citizen.” And I thought, “oh no. I hope he’s able

to get his wallet back. So, I just prayed, I said, Lord, please bring him back. Please, let us see him again, And within 20 minutes, this older gentleman was walking up, and I thought I recognized him. But the man behind him had roses, and we said, “Is he looking for something?” He goes, “Yeah, his wallet!”, So I whistled at him, and he came back around, We were able to give him back his wallet, and they were very happy, and they all came up and hugged me.

I was blessed by that and then, you know, we just lavished love on them and they walked off.  I thought wow God did such an amazing thing and so quickly that that man was able to get his wallet back.

I thought about how God hears our prayers when we pray to bless Israel. He hears them and he hears me That was a token that God hears our prayers when we pray. to bless Israel. So, thank you.

 

KHAHLIDA:

We were on the beach today giving roses in Tel Aviv and I handed a rose to a lady– a lady lady who refused to take it . And I said to her we came to give you the roses because Hashem loves and you because we love you . I said that I came from the United States and she said no and wouldn’t take the rose. And I said, OK, I understand.

There were two guys with her, and they accepted the roses from me. I gave each one of them a rose. And then I asked her, can I tell you my story? And I told her a little bit about how I was born in the ‘68 war and how my mom died, and how I was orphaned, and how my life would’ve been different if my mom didn’t die.  Things would have been different and I would’ve have stayed in Israel.

When I start sharing that with her she start crying and then she showed me her left arm and on her left arm she had tattooed names and she said these are the names of five members of my family that died in the massacre in Gaza. And this is why she is refusing to take the roses.

And she asked me, “Do you love the Bible?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “Do you love us too– the Jewish people?” I said, “Yes.” And she said, “Do you love our neighbors?” Meaning the people in Gaza, I said, “Yes.” And Hashem had commanded me to love all humanity. After all of that, she still was a crying and I asked if I could hug her. She didn’t refuse the hug and we hugged each other for a while. And we were both crying. It was very touching and moving. She thanked me in the end and I walked away to continue  handing out more roses.

 

LURA:

Today we were on the promenade and there were three of us–Sunny, myself and Ingaborg.

We didn’t have a lot of pedestrians where we were, but we were standing on the sidewalk near the bike path. We had lots of people biking back and forth, and a few pedestrians, so we would take turns standing next to the bike path and saying, “Would you like to have a rose?”

And sometimes they just would fly by or smiled and said, “No, thank you.” But we did have a few encounters and I’m going to share the significant ones to me. We had a young woman turn around on her bike . She was probably in her 20s and she was carrying a surfboard under her arm. She asked what we were doing and I told her we were from America and that we had come to show our support for the Israeli people,  our love for Israel, and that we were praying for them.  And we would like to give her a rose. She was so grateful. She said, oh, that is so nice that you’re doing this for us. We really appreciate it.

The 2nd encounter we had was a young man and he was on his bike. He stopped when we said would you like a rose and he was smiling and he said are you from the States and I said yes we were. I told him that we were there to support Israel and show that we loved them and he said oh that’s so nice of you. It’s a great day for me to receive this. I said, are you taking that home to your girlfriend? And he said, “Yes.” And he said, “It’s our sixth anniversary.” So, I said, “Well, I guess you need two. He was so thankful. And he really thought that was great that we were doing what we were doing.

The third encounter was two older men. They, too, asked us where we were from in America. and Sunny and I told them that we were from Arizona and Ingaborg was from California. So, we talked to them a little bit. They kind of wanted to ask a little bit more about daily life in America. But we kept going back to why we were there for them. And they really appreciated it. They said, our people need this. They were grateful.

And then I think probably the most dramatic encounter for me was a young girl. I told her what we were doing. She was a soft-spoken, very sweet young lady. and she asked where we were from and I told her. She said that she had lived in San Francisco a while but she had moved back to Israel. And she got tears in her eyes when I gave her the rose and she said this means a whole lot to me today. And I said well I’m glad. We just want to show you how much we care about you and we support you and she said she was at the music festival on October 7. She said it really does make me feel so much better. She said, thank you for  doing this for me.

ROBERT:

Today we handed out roses along the beach in Tel Aviv and had a number of very touching experiences talking to people. A lot of people were very touched by the roses and very thankful. They so appreciated to hear, as we told them, how much God loved them and how much God is for Israel and hasn’t forgotten his people.

In a few cases I was even able to pray for a people. In one case, I met this young man who had no accent. It sounded like he grew up in the United States. He said he had an uncle in San Diego. And he was just kicking around for a couple months and after that, he was going to be joining the IDF.

I asked him if I could pray for him, and he was very open and I prayed for him and I always told everybody that I’m going to pray in the name of Yeshua. One was a little hesitant, but in the end everybody that said they wanted prayer were willing to be prayed for in the name of Yeshua. He was so thankful and grateful for the prayer.

The next person was a young man who asked if I would pray for healing and for success for him. So I prayed for for him and he also was very appreciative.

Then I met a young lady who was pregnant and she was very willing for prayer. I prayed for her and her baby and she was very touched by that. Everybody was just so touched to hear about the love of God for them and that God has not forgotten Israel and He’s for Israel. So. it was a day of some pretty touching moments.

In another case I stood by the road and a truck came up that said police on the side and was full of young IDF soldiers. In the back seats of the truck were a number of young ladies and they just smiled when they saw the roses and I handed them roses. They were all so happy and grateful to receive them. I didn’t really have time to talk as the light turned green, but they drove off with big smiles on their faces.

YARA:

We got to give out roses today on the street, and it was amazing. We were able to share God’s love with people. People were really happy to know they were free. They were asking why we’re doing this? To tell you that God loves you, that we’re praying for you, we love you. And people were just really blessed. We were giving out roses to people in their cars waiting for the light to change.

They would roll down their window and we would say matana which means free gift for you and their faces would change to a surprised look. I said yes for you this is for you God loves you so much. And they would just be so happy it just made my heart so happy to see that.  And it never gets old. I’m just really grateful to be able to share God’s love in this way And even though it was really hot outside, it was worth it just to see people’s faces to see that God loves them and  that  there are  people  out  here  that care.

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PHOTOS

 

 

 

 

One final note: Sally reports that Air France has now cancelled flights to and from Tel Aviv through at least Friday, September 20. Please be in prayer that Air France and all the carriers will be operational in time to take the Team home near the end of September. As always, thank you for your prayer support. The Team feels your covering. It encourages them greatly.  –Michael O’Connor

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ITINERARY