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From: heb_roots_chr@mail.geocities.com Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 1997 1:49 AM To: Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup Subject: The Rabbi Arriveth From: "Hay Did Center For Learning - haydid" <haydid@haydid.org> Reply-to: shalom@haydid.org To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com Subject: The Rabbi Arriveth Shalom, Rooters, Well, Rabbi Yehoshua Othniel has arrived with his family in Independence, KS! We wanted to tell you that your prayers and good wishes were answered with their safe arrival late Friday evening after many adventures along the way. The local crew had to go to the rescue of the Rabbi in Joplin, MO (about 90 minutes from us) though. Seems as if in their exhaustion, the rabbi locked the keys to the truck inside! So David and Mary Fritzemeier had returned early from vacation for a reason---and now we knew why! David is a man of many talents, and locks is one of them! The four of us headed over to Joplin to find a very wilted Rabbi, wife and three children standing in the shade of the Ryder truck in 115 degree heat index weather. After several tries at unlocking the door (Ryder said that they would come for $400, and the police don't do that kind of thing over there), Tom decided to try out his collection of Ford keys. Since the Holeman's only drive Fords (something about having a godfather who is a dealer, and your father being a service manager just sort of created Ford fans here), Tom whipped out the key to "Lurch". Now Lurch is a unique truck. Lurch has about 275,000 miles on it, and is a l975 version of brown junker but with a great a/c and heater! This was to be the new vehicle for the Rabbi's family once they arrived here anyway, so Tom tried the key...it worked! Who would have thought! When we arrived in Independence, the gang was all lined up to offload the small truck of its precious cargo. Rabbi's children had asked many questions on the drive home about the possibilities of life in rural Kansas, and were ready to explore, but since it was after 11 pm after many days of driving they were fed pizza, and loaded into the cars once more to go over to their temporary home. Earlier this week, a wonderful blessing came our way. Randy and Betsy Felton had arrived with a missions trip group of teenagers from the church in OKC that they attend. Often times the Feltons have lead trips to Mexico or to Indian reservations, but this time they came to help remodel the rabbi's house. What a blessing these 11 teenagers were! They knew that Randy and Betsy taught in the adult Sunday school something different than norm, but had never knew what. After the first lunch discussion about who we were and what we were doing, they started asking questions, and exploring the books and materials that we had in our house. Our home was the breakfast and lunch feeding area, so they knew that this was not an average home with the phone ringing and mezuzahs on the doors! "What's this" and "Why do you do that?" and "What do you mean we don't bless food?" were just some of the many questions that were asked! As we worked with the teenagers, the discussion continued each day. When they ripped off the leaking roof on the porch they discovered our worst nightmare! Carpenter ants and termites! To complicate the situation, one of the teenagers decided to "step out" on the roof, only to find himself on the floor of the porch underneath! He had fallen through! We held our breath, but he only had one scratch on his arm! Baruch HaSHEM!!!!! Since we are a teaching ministry, on the second night we had decided to teach about the sabbath. I got up at 4 am and baked 4 loaves of challah bread before the heat set in. The work broke for naps in the afternooon (there was no a/c where they were working), and they worked hard until about 7:30 pm. Then back to their two homes-away-from-home that had been provided for showers. At 8:30 pm they arrived ready for a spaggeti dinner, and not realizing that their lives would be changed! As we lit the candles, and proceded through the service we explained each element and how Yeshua was everywhere! You could have heard a pin drop when we had finished...they knew that they had experienced HIM! They were listening to each of us explain and explain and explain for hours into the night. Fertile ground was receiving seed..... On Wednesday we were all focusing on finishing as much of the remodeling job as we could by 4 pm. The heat was sweltering, but they had begun the day watching SHALOM JERUSALEM video, and you could hear "Hine MaTov" being sung as they worked. By 4 pm the hardest part of the remodeling had been finished. This was an amazing feat! Many of these teenagers had never held a hammer, or even been on a missions trip! But they had done it! To HIM be the glory! At 4 pm we took them over to a neighbor's private pool for a good swim party full of laughter and fun. Our little children and grandchildren had never experienced, "teenagers" so they were thrilled this week, and when they got to join the teenagers in the pool, the kids were thrilled! At 7 pm we loaded them up for dinner out. All through the week, our local volunteers and friends had shown up with food donations and hours of cooking and cleaning to keep the teenagers well fed. The OKC group had not expected this kindness, and were thrilled with the homecooking! My grandson, Thommy age 7, was thrilled with all the soda/ice tea cans that he accumulated during the week from the workcrew, too! He had been saving his allowance and anything else that he could, so he could go with us to the Little Rock conference to hear "Dr. Ron do some good teaching!" He'd fallen in love with Dr. Ron Moseley when he was here in April. What he doesn't know, is that we have already paid his reservation and he will be in tow at the Little Rock Conference August 6-9! Much to our children's delight, the teenagers tucked them in the church van and took them on our final evening meal trip out of town to our favorite restaurant. Each of the 4 children (under 9) had latched on to their particular teenager, and wasn't letting go anyway! When we arrived at the restaurant we had warned the group that this place believes in homecooking and LOTS of it! The steak hangs over the edge of the plate, another plate is your REAL mashed potatoes and gravy, or homecut french fries, and still another plate is your one homemade bread roll! At the end of the meal, the waitress shows up with styrofoam meal boxes so you can take your left overs home to feed on for the next 2 days! When the plates began to roll out, Clayton--the youth assistant--let out a whopeee! and ran for the video camera. He proceeded to video tape the entire table, and interview each of the 25 of us about our plate in front of us while he climbed on top of the benches around us to scan it from over our heads! If that wasn't enough, he then proceeded to interview the other patrons of the restaurant and finally wanted to know where he could get a franchise! After much feasting and fellowship, we loaded them up and went back to our evening home for fellowship. We all gathered in the dining room where we shared havdalah. There wasn't a dry eye in the place as we listened to "UNTIL I SEE YOU, LORD" sung on the tape deck, and lit our individual candles from the main candle. We talked of HIM and of the work that HE was doing in each one of them until early morning, and even as they were leaving Thursday morning they were still asking questions, and writing down titles of books! One of the boys said, "I feel so cheated not to have known about all this! I have so much to learn!" I replied, "Yes, you do. But we left a paper trail where you can follow. That's more than we had when we started out many years ago!" Now the rabbi is here, and our local group has had its first sabbath together. Much work is left on the house, and we still ask for your prayers. We need an Orkin man or someone who knows one, to come and help us treat the house, and the two hollow trees in the yard that are there feeding them. We also need someone with a boom truck to come and cut down those trees that hang dangerously over the house that was donated. And we need a job for the rabbi locally. That HE provided all the funds for the move, the funds for the remodeling so far, and the workers, surely HE will be faithful to provide the rest. Will you pray? Father, right now, we ask each member of this newsgroup to join together in the unity of prayer. We ask them to reach out to their prayer partners and friends in agreement, to give YOU the praise and the glory for the work that YOU are doing. Without YOU in this work, nothing is possible! You ARE providing for our needs, and we thank you! We give you all the praise and the glory for this work within us, and that we may all experience this work in our own lives each day. Speak to our hearts, Lord, what you would have each of us do for YOUR KINGDOM. Let us bring our hearts faithfully each day to your knee, and listen to what each of us is to do. Thank you, Lord, for the workers and volunteers that have come to assist us both here, and around the world. Please bless those that have made financial contributions, as well as those that made prayer contributions. Each was given in obedience to YOU, and we give you the praise. It is a good work, and worthy are the servants! And everyone spoke Hebrew and said, "AMEN"! There is much sheet rock to hang, and finish. There will be much fellowshiping, and bonding with our families, and with our rabbi's family. Thank you for your part in this work. Shalom, Cheryle Holeman HaY'Did (The Friend) Learning Center PO Box 804 Independence, KS 67301 http://www.haydid.org *********************************************************************
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