VIM Holy Land Team at Work.

Holy Land VIM team at work
[June 14th, 2006] This is the fourth day of our stay at the Mar Elias Institute in Ibillin. We will not be posting to this BLOG as often as we would like due to computer problems which cropped up with Lindsey's computer. Yesterday morning, we toured the elementary school, and sat in on a First Grade class (which sang a song for us) and a Second Grade class which shared a 'show-and-tell' session where the teacher was showing the class a type of flying squirrel. After the class broke for lunch, the children gathered around us to talk with us and to have their pictures taken. As several team members remarked, this school could be located in any town in the United States.
Apart from the tours we have taken, we have also been working at the school performing such tasks as varnishing the stage floor in the auditorium, sewing graduation gowns, polishing crosses for the gift store, and sanding the iron railings along the dormatory walkways. While we are happy to be able to work in these small ways to help with the school, clearly the greatest aid that we can provide is to serve as witnesses to the success that has been achieved following a road of Peace in this land of perennial conflict.
Last evening we toured the ancient Crusader city of Acca, where Katie (our resident animal-lover) came across a cave of bats, where we briefly misplaced Susan and Anne, and where we toured an ancient mosque dedicated to Al Jazzar, governor of this region who defeated Napolean in 1799 and drove his armies back to Egypt. Today, we saw the remains of the town of Bar'am, which was the home of Elias Chacour in 1948 when the Israeli Defense Force evacuated the residents and leveled the town. The rest of today will be spent sanding and preparing to paint. --Paul--