I've agreed to share my blog with my traveling companion and teammate, Markie Re'em.  We're both flying home tomorrow morning. I was glad to get some time in with my friend Ya'alah before leaving.  I think I needed a little transition time--and evidently a lot of sleep.  I sort of feel like I'm doing my whole jet lag thing prior to my flight.

Because school is not in session until February 2, three of us were able to go to church again this Sunday.  As usual, I got the fisheye from the border police when he read my passport.

Still need to do some adapting on this for my February Mennonite Weekly Review column, but thought I'd post the longer version here.

To the Israeli Ministry of the Interior:  Things you may not know about internationals working in Palestine

Dear MOI Personnel,

Fathiyeh and I lugged a propane canister down to our gas refill guy this morning, when we got a phone call from Paulette telling us that a delegation would shortly be at our apartment.  A weedy looking guy in the group looked very familiar, and then I realized it was Shane Claiborne, who had spoken at the Mennonite Convention in Columbus this summer.  Turned out that this group was largely composed of Christians from the Emergent Church movement.  We talked about the work in Hebron and I forget now the question that started me crying, but I essentially said that the happiest

On Sunday, since school is out until February 1, everyone on the team was able to get to church--something I really needed a lot.  As usual, there's something spiritually powerful about worshipping and sharing communion with people from all over the world, and getting connected as well with the small, stalwart core congregation--mostly composed of relief and development workers.  The church offers the wine in two ways, via a common cup and via little cups like the ones we used at the College First Church of God in Findlay when I was growing up.  It's interesting that the disi