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