Brothers and Sisters,

I received this in an email from Walid in Lebanon the other day. He has a very good friend named Bashir, a MBB from his church in Lebanon, who is now in Syria amidst all the unrest. Sadly, Bashir had fled to Syria a few months ago to escape the hostilities of Iraq:

May the Lord have mercy on His people where ever they are. I see trouble in Syria almost every day. On Friday, you may not see people on the streets because of fear of shooting. Our dear brother Bashir is still there; I think the Lord is preparing him for ministry through the trails he goes through where ever he goes.

Please pray for Bashir.

Marc Glass

Voice In the Wilderness

27 April, 2011

Greetings!

Thank you for your prayers. We just came back from the New Age Festival, Boombamela, in Eilat. It was a fruitful time! Praise God! We gave out many Arabic and Tigrinya Bibles to the refugees there as we traveled to and around the city centre. Although we faced opposition (and once a violent one) from the anti-missionary organisation, Yad L'Achim, we managed to distribute 200 or more Hebrew New Testaments and other literature in two and a half days. We want to also thank God for the partnership with The Shelter in Eilat and Gary, an evangelist from Haifa, who joined our team of eight.

Boombamela during Pesach

We arrived in Eilat on Thursday in the afternoon. We went into the festival area to survey the ground but were quickly spotted by the ladies from the anti missionary organisation who recognised me. The crowd was relatively thinner this year but the immorality has grown worse! There was a talk held in there encouraging the people to explore alternative lifestyle i.e. homosexuality.

We decided to pitch our tent a stone's throw away from the festival area. While the rest of the team is preparing the campsite and food for dinner, I went into the festival area to do another quick check of the presence of other evangelism teams. The religious ladies have started to follow us everywhere we go. I managed to lose one as I walked through the dance floor.

Back at the campsite, whilst the rest of the team were cooking, there were two religious girls sitting nearby out in the cold, waiting to report any stirring within our camp. Some of them had earlier on spread the news of our 'poisonous' presence to our neighbors in the campsite. One of our team members tried to offer them something to eat but they turned it down. We tried to talk to them but they did not respond either. And so we left them there while we enjoyed our dinner and later a session of worship and prayer.

We came out with a strategy to go out in pairs but leave the camp individually before meeting up as a pair again at a designated place in the festival area. Inside the festival area, we managed to do a little bit of distributing Hebrew NT and engaging a few people in conversations before we were spotted again. One of our members, on the other hand, has been followed by five anti-missionary men and women at one time before he had to run out of the festival area, through the traffic and hotels to shake them off. These anti-missionary people often stirred up the crowd against us, slandering us before the people we talked to, and demanded that they gave them the literature they received from us.

My last encounter with them in the festival area turned into an ugly scene. I tried to strike a conversation with a man who turned out to be a security police. He has been informed by the Yad L'Achim of our presence and thus soon afterwards, a jeep carrying four security police arrived. Two of them pinned me down to the ground and muttered angrily, 'Eat the dirt, you Christian.' They gave me a few punches and threw me and another team member out of the festival area, ripping off our 'ticket' (which is in the form of a wrist bracelet) such that we both were denied entry for the rest of the festival.

The next day on Friday, we decided to go to other beaches outside the festival area to distribute literature. It was an undisturbed time - most of the time - until one of us was spotted and again followed by the anti-missionary people. Some of us also made several trips in the van to the city centre to give out Arabic and Tigrinya NTs to the Sudanese and Eritreian. We gave out a few Chinese Bibles too. They were so happy to receive them. In the late afternoon, three of our members went to a beach near the city centre. They swept through the area giving out Hebrew NTs. It was a good time and the authority did not throw them out of the area. In the evening between seven and nine, while the religious Jews were resting to receive their Sabbath, we were again distributing Hebrew NT near our campsite with no disturbance. We have new neighbours who had just arrived to the campsite and we tried to befriend them. They were friendly people and we got on well. At around ten, the ladies from Yad LA'chim came to our campsite again. Seeing our new neighbours, they again went around to them sowing seed of discord between us.

The next day in the morning, some of us went to the beach bordering Egypt and again swept through the area that is filled with many holidaymakers to give out Hebrew NT and literature. It was a good time! Another team drove to the city centre again to distribute Arabic and Tigrinya Bibles.

We prayed God to forgive our enemies in the gospel, knowing they are blind and know not what they were doing. Join us in our work through your prayers! Pray that as the seeds were sown, God will cause the growth for His glory. Pray also that the liberty to talk publicly about Christianity will still be maintained and guarded by our government in Israel.

Sincerely,

Antony and Voice In the Wilderness Team

Voice In the Wilderness

17th April 2011

Greetings!

Thank you for praying for us for the Passover Campaign 2011. We gave out thousands of leaflets over the past two weeks in different areas in Israel. We lost a little bit of weight and became healthier in body and soul. At this point of time, not many people called us to order the books online. But if people would have read the leaflet we gave out, they would have known the true meaning of Passover; thus many seeds have been sown. Though there are many different kinds of soils, the sower's responsibility is still to sow everywhere faithfully.

Upcoming Evangelism This Week

Today we are on the way to the Samaritan annual Passover celebration on Mount Gerizim. Many thousands of people attend the ceremony in which the Samaritans offer sacrifices for the Passover. There will be many Jewish and Arab people observing the ceremony as well as a great number of evangelical Christians. Sadly most of the Christians will not be evangelizing. They are going to observe the slaughter of lambs and not use the opportunity to tell people about the death of the Lamb of God. But we will evangelise! We will be armed with hundreds of NTs in English, Hebrew and Arabic; we will be happily working amongst the people. Pray that we will be able also to have many good conversations and that we will be able to explain the gospel clearly to both Jew and Muslim and nominal Christian and Samaritan . All are divided in their different religions but can be united through the gospel of the Messiah.

On Thursday to Saturday, we will be going to Eilat, south of Israel, to a New Age Festival (Boombamella) held annually. There will be tens of thousands of young people going there to look for pleasures - the pleasures of sin - for a season. We are going with about eight people, spending the three days camping outside and evangelising. Usually, you will also find presence of anti-missionary organisation at the festival, opposing our work going around like the woman possessed while Paul was at Philipi and disturbing him. Please pray that God will keep us and give us many opportunities to hand out literature and talk to the people.

Thanks again for your prayers and support!  Visit our website www.bibles4all.net. Take note that our main website www.voice-wilderness.com is currently undergoing some constructions. Please be patient with us.

Blessings,

Antony & Donna

& Voice In the Wilderness Team

Brothers and Sisters,

The following is from an email that I've recently received from a friend in Yemen regarding the current political situation.  Please pray that the Gospel of grace would capture the heart of many other Yemenis.

Many thanks for all e-mails, short messages, and telephone calls that are sent asking about us and the current situations within these critical times in Yemen. It is very important to mention that by His grace, we are safe and working hard to be away from the protest locations. The government declared the state of emergency and imposed a set of severe measures concerning communications, media coverage, civilian freedoms, moving to other cities and carrying weapons. As learned, there are groups of mediators of tribal leaders and princes from Saudi Arabia trying to dissolve the conflict between the regime and oppositional parties. Yesterday evening, President Saleh accepted an initiative offered by the opposition which called him to step down at the end of 2011 after performing general parliamentary Elections and agreeing upon a new constitution. We do not know if the opposition sees positively to this step or not, but we are afraid of what the opposition plans to do next Friday which called " Friday of March" to the Republican Palace.

Meanwhile, we have learned that most of the foreign "workers" have left Yemen to their countries or neighboring countries such as Egypt, Ethiopia or UAE. Yet, we are in connection with other "workers" that still stay in Yemen.

In the same way, We believe this makes an opportunity for people in Yemen to receive Him and being transformed in Christ who bring His light to their lives. Please, Pray for Yemen and for Yemeni people.

Marc Glass