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Carelinks | Israel
A
recent Carelinks visit to the brethren and
sisters in Israel began by visiting and
breaking bread with brother Vladimir and
sister Galina near Haifa - great to see them
strong in the Faith. We baptized Vladimir 13
years ago in the river Jordan, and Galina
came to the Moscow Bible School to be
baptized last year.
Next we spent a day with NASIR, an Arab
Israeli in Nazareth, who literally lives in a
house ?on the cliff on which their city is
built? (over which the inhabitants wanted to
throw the Lord). He turned to Christ 30 years
ago and is very intense in his faith and efforts
to preach the Gospel to both Jews and Arabs.
These have led to many problems for him,
including stones being thrown at him for
passing out tracts in Cana of Galilee, just a
few miles from Nazareth. It's really so hard to
be an Arab Christian - so many Israeli Arabs
who were traditionally Christians are now
converting to Islam. We baptized him in the
river Jordan. He gave a wonderful and
intense prayer before his baptism.
You can hear a video of his baptism and
testimony in English at:
And he also gave it in Arabic at:
On our last trip to Israel, we reported
meeting SHIMEON, one of the many Russian
Jewish intellectuals who left the USSR for
Israel when the USSR broke up. We told his
amazing story of survival as a child in the
holocaust against all odds - see
mentioned that he sadly and inexplicably
backed out of baptism then and we asked
for your prayers for him. This was nearly 18
months ago. Now he has turned the corner -
we were delighted to baptize him and record
a very, very compelling presentation from him
about how he turned from atheism to belief,
and how reading Bible stories to his grand-
children led him to believe the Bible as
inspired; and then, accepting the Old
Testament as inspired led him to accept the
New Testament, and thence to accepting
Jesus as the Son of God. There's much back-
Breaking of Bread near Haifa