At Ben Gurion airport

We are sitting at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv waiting for our flight.  Airport security was easy and we have about two hours to wait for our flight.  We have had an interesting last week in Nazareth.  We went somewhere every night except Friday, either for ice cream or for dinner.  On Monday we were upstairs in our building for ice cream with a couple from Canada.  Then on Tuesday we went to visit Afif and Mimi, our first friends in Nazareth when we started coming here ten years ago.
On Wednesday we went to the home of Morag's co-worker, Adel, and had a great evening.  We go to visit them once every time we come to Israel.   Thursday we went to the home of Morag's other co-worker, Moin, and were entertained by their son who is a professional musician.  He plays the lute and did a rendition of Malaguena, which was really something to hear.  He also played one of his own compositions, which was a classical type of music.  The young man is a very famous musician in Israel and is known throughout the middle east.
Friday night we had the two Canadian couples in to our flat for dessert.  One of these couples left on Sunday so we said goodbye to them later the next day.

Sunday we had to bid farewell to our friends at Good Shepherd Baptist Church in Nazareth in the morning and then to our friends from Cana Baptist Church in the evening.  These were sad times for us because we have no guarantee that we will see them again this side of glory.  We were all sad to say farewell.  This year we have become closer to them than ever before.

I hope you have not been too bored reading our blogs.  We are looking forward to seeing family and friends soon.  

One week later

Sorry we haven't been in touch this last week.  The reason is that we have been very tired and it took us quite a while to recover from our trip.  We also had to start work, which is hard going and we get very tired out from it.  We had three nice days in Migdal, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in a B&B run by a Christian group.  In fact, we met a lady from Glasgow there so Morag and she had a good blether.  We actually took it quite easy because the whole group was tired and this was a great place to relax; good weather, good view, good company, good hotel and a lovely garden.

We looked around at a few sites.  Alan preached at the church in Cana on Sunday night, which went over very well.  People from Cana had us for dinner both Sunday and Monday.  On Tuesday we all came back to Nazareth and we showed them around and had them for dinner that evening in our house.  They left fairly early because they had to fly back to the U.S. on the Wednesday morning.

Weather is absolutely wonderful.  Today it is in high 70s.  It's nice to be in this part of the world at this time of the year.  The flowers are blooming and you don't need a coat.  It's quite nice.  The group, before they left, all had colds.  Mel caught one as well and Chris has a sinus infection, but things are looking up now.

One thing Morag is excited about is the story of her bed.  The mattress is too big for the bed.  It overlaps the bottom footboard and in order for that to work there are two mattresses under it to support it.  Unfortunately one of the mattresses is not wide enough to fit the frame so she has been sleeping on a slant since she has been here.  Last night, during the night, she thought that this was maybe the reason for the pain in her back.  So she got up this morning and she and Mel took off the three mattresses and put the smallest one on the bottom and placed two-liter soda bottles that were filled along the side to fill in the gap and then put the other mattresses on the top.  So she just had to try it out and the trial turned into a three-hour nap.  She was so excited that she was on the level.  It's the first time she has ever slept on soda bottles but it worked and now she is a happy camper.

So, life goes on as normal in Israel.