Experiencing God & Finding Family in the Desert

Today has been incredible! My eyes have been opened so much throughout the past couple days in Israel, every site we have visited and learned about has completely blown my mind! Ask anyone on this trip and they will say all I have said is “this is crazy!”, “this is insane!”, and “this is breath taking!” because those words truly describe every single place we have been to. I can already tell that this trip is truly life changing, and we are only half way through our journey!

Everything has been absolutely amazing, but today was very special to me. So first let me tell you a little about myself, my name is Aisha and I used to live in South Korea with my family! I spent the majority of my life in Korea so to me Korea is my home. Living in California has been really hard to adjust to, but honestly I could not have asked for a better community to be involved in with this new transition. When I heard this amazing group was going to Israel, I wanted in because I knew I would never get the chance to not only go to such an amazing place but also go with such an incredible group. The group of people I am in Israel with are amazing people who are devoted to God but are also devoted to knowing and loving their community. To me these people are my family, I love every single one of them so much!

I had a great conversation with Mrs. Mayer about all of this earlier today. She said, “It’s crazy to think that if you had not moved from Korea, I would not have known you.” And this hit me hard. I had never thought about this, so while Ronen gave us sometime to take the beautiful scenery in I really thought about what Mrs. Mayer had said. God had a plan from the beginning that I would live in Korea then move to California so I could have this moment with him. For 9 years he has been waiting for that exact moment where I realized, God has a plan for me, God will provide even when I think that my world has flipped upside down he knows what he is doing. All the events of my life have been leading up to the moment I had today and it was beautiful. Because once I had really thought about it I realized that if my family hadn’t moved from Korea I wouldn’t have had this journey, and I wouldn’t have known the people on this trip, the people I know think of as my family. And that blew my mind.

What made this day even more special were the locations we were in. Our group started off in Ein Gedi and I had no idea what we were in for! Ein Gedi is probably the most BEAUTIFUL and BREATH-TAKING places anyone will ever go to. You start off with a simple hike and you get a beautiful view of the Dead Sea and these amazing mountains. But then a little later you come across a tiny stream and you think “wow, a stream in the desert!” But if you keep walking you find a WATERFALL in the desert! And here at this first waterfall we all sit down and listen to some devotions, which were amazing. Ronen talked for a little bit about God being living water and I thought that was really cool! He read a passage from Psalm 63 and the whole chapter is amazing but I really loved Psalm 63:1 it says “You, God, are my God, earnestly I see you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.” Listening to this verse being read right in front of living water brought the whole verse to life! But the moment got so much better when Ms. Davis came up to talk. She brought our attention to Psalm 1. She also taught us a new word, Miem Hiem, I might’ve spelled it wrong but anyways it means waterfall or living water. And both Ms. Davis and Ronen talked about God being Living Water and they could not have been more right! One of them talked about how God had taken pure water and dumped it into the Dead Sea and instead of the pure water being killed, it brought life to the dead water. Which is a perfect representation about our relationship with God. We are the Dead Sea, we are all dead without God but once we add God into our lives, we are made clean. After learning this, Ms. Davis gave us an amazing opportunity just to sit next to the waterfall and talk to God, to have a moment to really process all of this amazing information! Then we went to another waterfall, which was SO much bigger than the other and there truly are no words to describe how stunning the waterfall and mountains were.

Our next couple stops were also very interesting. After Ein Gedi, we went to Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. This is where I had my a-ha moment with Mrs. Mayer! This place was really cool and we got to see some real micvas, bathing areas, we learned a lot about how the scrolls are proof that this land truly belongs to the Israelites. The scrolls were found the day after the big UN voted about who this land belongs to, which we believe is no coincidence! After learning more about the Scrolls we visited Jericho for lunch and were greeted warmly by a Palestinian who had fresh dates and nuts for us! Jericho had two different sides to it, one was very dirty and had broken down houses, and the other had very nicely built houses that looked cleaner. There was no balance between the two, there was a very old house and right next to it was a beautiful house that looked pretty much like a castle. There was no city plan there, but it was really interesting to see a different side of Israel.

Finally we went to the Jordan River, which is not the mighty river I was thinking of but was still an amazing place to see. There were many people being baptized and singing songs near us while we were sitting for our devotion and it was a beautiful scene. While at the Jordan River we talked about God providing, which was an awesome lesson and exactly why I wanted to write the blog today. I felt like the message to take away from today was that God provides. He will always be there even if you are wandering through the desert for 40 years. He will always be there for you quenching your thirst and slowly revealing little bits of his plan for you when the time is right. I’m grateful for an amazing third day and so excited to see what our tomorrow, our first full day in the Galilee holds.