The Land of Living Stones

Today is the first day of Ramadan, a time of religious furvor and significance in the Muslim world, including Palestine.(Side note: I regret that I am writing from a computer with limited capabilities, including the frequent inability to type the letter h and much delay.) Anyway, this is a time of fasting and praying, with many people not eating or drinking anything at all until sundown.  The whole month or so will be very different around here than other times of year. School is shorter, people take off early. We will see how it affects me.

I am at the Hope Flowers Center, which is a distance from the School, and which offers the teacher trainings and community outreach projects. I have just learned that I will be at the school two days a week to teach stories to the upper levels, and I will most likely work from here the other days doing writing, editing, or whatever they need. Femke is to be my supervisor, and housemate also. Tuesdays and Wednesdays I have scheduled Arabic lessons from a tutor at the Bethlehem Bible College.

Funny thing about Ramadan: the time has changed, falling back an hour for Winter Time. Unfortunately, no one thought to tell me about this in advance, and I only learned it the night before from an MCCer. But Israel does not change the time with the West Bank, so now I am an hour behind Jerusalem and the MCC office there. Hmm…so maybe a month or more of this confusion, and then Israel will change also.

I would love to hear from you. Write to:
MCC Kim MacVaugh
PO Box 19208
Jerusalem Israel 91191

My week in Akron, Pennsylvania is drawing to a close now and I am soon to depart to my real destination, Israel-Palestine. I have met over 100 people and made some good friends! One is headed to Jordan, another to Tanzania, another to Cambodia, etc…everyone is off for a crazy adventure! We’ve been told so many cautionary tales that I fear I might fumble mightily and become one of those stories they tell every year. Ha! But seriously, the learning and growing has already increased tremendously. I will do my best to live up to MCC’s standards. And not to terribly offend anyone I meet with my stupidity. They tell me I’m a dreadful pessimist, and I think they could be right. Oh well So finally,  I am praying for safe travel and easy entry…think of me these next few weeks as I transition to my new space and life. Peace!

As I embark on a journey to Bethlehem in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt), I hope that this will be a place where I can share my thoughts and experiences with those friends and family back home and anyone else who finds them interesting. My task is an assignment given through the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) as part of their Serving and Learning Together (SALT) program. For eleven months, dozens of young North Americans will be scattering the globe to…er…serve and learn. See their website: www.mcc.org/salt/ for more info on the program.

Particularly, I will be working with a school in Al-Khadr, a suburb of Bethlehem, in administrative activities, as well as helping out the MCC Palestine group as much as they need/want. There are few specifics yet but the Hope Flowers School has a great site at www.hopeflowersschool.org that you should also browse through. I spent a couple weeks in the West Bank and I really have a heart for the pain and beauty of the region which has been wracked by violence and war but which also has millenia of history and tradition. Particularly I am excited about the local peace and reconcilliation initiatives and non-violent conflict resolution that have sprung up underneath an international perception of danger and instability.

The title of my blog comes from the thoughts of Fr. Elias Chacour, a great peacemaker who lives in the Galilee and is a Palestinian Christian with Israeli citizenship and ancient roots in the area around Nazareth. He works as an archbishop of the Melkite (Greek Catholic) Church and has spoken around the world to encourage people, especially Christians, to work for peace in the Middle East. In his book, Blood Brothers, Chacour so eloquently notes that living stones, i.e. the people who live and work in the land, are much more important than the stone structures that so often capture the most attention by tourists and internationals. For Christians worldwide who make pilgrimages to see the churches and places Jesus was, Chacour urges them to pay attention to the plight of their fellow Christians who are a living monument to Jesus’ work but whose livelihood is ever threatened.

The SALTers will be gathered in MCC headquarters (Akron, PA) for an orientation week August 9-16, which will culminate in our dispersal around the world. In the remaining 15 weeks, I will be frantically attempting to prepare for the adventure by raising financial support, collecting cool-but-modest clothes and other desert necessities, and reflecting on what lies in store over the next year. Thanks for joining me in this endeavor!