Ministry Updates from Jason and Janice Rose

 A couple weeks ago, we began an English story hour. One of our native English speakers reads a couple of stories for children in English and for about an hour we keep them non-native English speakers immersed in the English language. We have done this for two weeks in a row now and  we think it's working pretty well. To begin with we have only invited a few families because we want to build a solid core group before opening it up to the general public.  So far, the response seems to be pretty good.  We ran into one dad on the street shortly after the class and he reported that his son thought the English story hour was "awesome!" It's exciting to see how engaged the  children are in spite of the vast age differences. We split the groups into two by level so that those are the capability of reading will have the opportunity to do so. Of course the goal for us, is to provide a service that's needed, and also meet the spiritual needs of the parents while the c

Another exciting program that we will begin in less than a month, is a parenting seminar. There's a huge need to give parenting tools to parents of young children.  So we  we have invited a family counselor to provide a parenting course, that is uniquely geared towards parents with young children. The goal of this course is to provide parents with young children with the skills they need to  overcome the challenges they face when they put their kids in the public school system, specifically the mandatory kindergarten. Rather then go into the specifics of this uniquely Israeli problem I'll just ask for your prayer's prayers.  We are expecting a mix of people both believers and nonbelievers, due to our advertising on Facebook. Hundreds of people have gone to a website to view the details of this free workshop. You Can too:  www.mercaz.org.il

Kids love to play with their siblings and our kids are no different. In 2014, we were in the USA visiting Jason's parents. They had a wonderful basement with a room dedicated to toys. Our boys loved playing down there and their cousins did too. The problem was that the baby, Eitan (his name means MIGHTY in Hebrew), also loved playing down there with his brothers, but he was too little to do the stairs... way too little! We brought a child gate to put at the top of the stairs and brought the crawling baby into the living room. After the meal, all of the kids went to play downstairs, except for the baby, of course. When his cousins and brothers kept coming and going, climbing over the gate, he followed them. At one point, he was so focused on going downstairs to play with all of the other "big" kids, that he pushed and shoved the gate so hard that it released and glided down the stairs with the baby on top. Later the older cousins described his descent like surfer lying

In Israel there is a five month draught from about April to September every year. Water is a very important part of the culture here in Israel, since most of the water comes from the sea of Galilee, which is filled up primarily by rain. Kids go crazy when the first rains comes in September or October. Schools shut down for an hour or two as the kids run out of the classes to play in the rain. When Jason was fairly new in the country, he was working at a school as an English teacher. As he was heading home, mid-afternoon, a rainstorm hit. He was riding on the bus and the clouds became so dark that it almost seemed like night was nearly upon him. The rain came down hard and even though the bus windows were closed, the water seeped in and landed on some passengers. A few seats had to be evacuated. Jason, was relatively dry and the long ride progressed as the deluge continued. Jason knew that at the end of this line, he would get off the bus and have to walk home five short blocks in t

How are we reaching People? You probably already know that one of the methods we are utilizing to reach the "unreached" is by offering free courses, seminars and events. We are using social media to do this by purchasing advertisements. These ads redirect people to our Ministry Center website.  The main purpose of this website is to promote, explain and provide a means for registering for our events. Would you like a preview? Before you go there, you should know that the website is only in Hebrew! And it's still being developed. A lot will change over the course of the next month. So keep looking to see how it changes.  It's good for us, if you go there and click on it, because it will help our ads and website to be more prominently displayed. Here's the address:     www.mercaz.org.il

When sharing the Gospel with people, I often like to share a story from my life in which we can clearly see the hand of God. I call these stories, God Stories, because they are all about the Lord and I feel like we were given these events for the purpose of sharing the Gospel and encouraging other believers. My wife and I were discussing how many God Stories we have and how it might be nice to share them with you, to encourage you in your faith and also to encourage you to share your God Stories with others as well. Honeymoon Money Janice and I were engaged to be married and we had several meetings with our pastor to plan the wedding ceremony. At one of these meetings in his office in Tel Aviv (Israel), he handed Jason a thick envelope. Inside was a lot of money. He said, that he had been praying for us and felt led by the Lord to give us this money. He said, "I feel like you are going to need it on your honeymoon." We tried to tell him that we are fine financiall

Recently, I attended a conference in Jerusalem. The goal of the organization behind the conference is to connect believers (from other countries) to local Israeli ministries. So, our ministry had an information table at the conference. Most of the people who came to the conference were believers from outside of Israel, but some local Israelis came as well. On the first night of the conference some radical ultra-orthodox Jewish men came with the goal of disrupting the conference.  The tried to enter the conference, which forced the organizers to close the entrance. They came into the area yelling, "Jesus is dead" and "we crucified Jesus." This group of ultra-orthodox was sent by an organization which is known for being quite violent. They have burned down churches and attacked people. So, when opposition like this comes, it's important to know how to proceed.  I saw a number of believers try to talk to these guys. But as you might expect, th