- Joanne enjoys her job as a caregiver for seniors in their homes. She has served many enjoyable people. She also enjoys gardening and singing. She especially feels called to a ministry of prayer.
- Ron worked for many years as a service tech for durable medical and rehab equipment. He enjoyed meeting many people through delivering this equipment to their homes. He is now a maintenance assistant at Landis Homes retirement community, enjoying relating to the residents there. Ron enjoys reading, photography, and pigeons (when he had the opportunity to raise them).
- In 2012-2013, we lived in Bethlehem, in the West Bank, serving primarily as guest house managers at the Bethlehem Bible College. We served there, because God awoke in us a passion for seeing a just peace come about for those living in the land of Palestine / Israel. Having made many meaningful friendships there, and having learned much from our experience, we returned to continue our lives here in the USA. We continue to advocate for the rights of all people in the Holy Land to experience freedom from fear and oppression. That is the vision behind the Resources section of our blog. We hope the resources we have collected help you develop a fuller understanding of the conflict and inform you in praying for and advocating for a just peace in the region. Here is a brief summary of our convictions regarding the Palesine / Israel conflict:
- We realize that the dynamics of the conflict are complex and deeply nuanced. However, we also believe that Jesus called His followers to be peacemakers. As such, we believe we should not consider the conflict to be intractable, nor give up hope for building peaceful relations between the parties in the conflict.
- We believe that it has not been helpful for those living outside the conflict to project their various political, theological, or prophetic frameworks onto the conflict. Such projection typically triangulates persons into supporting only one side or the other. God is just. His followers should be advocates for justice.
- After living in the reality of walls, ethnic division, and power imbalance, we watch, with growing dismay, at racial division, the changing attitudes and policies toward immigrants and refugees, and growing insular/isolationist views in the USA.