Description:
The greatest adventure of Sterling and Isaac

I apologize for not having written on the blog in a while- I do miss you guys and have just been slacking lately.  The rest of the team has done a really great job of summing up stories of where we have been and signficant people that we have been talking to, that are continually on our hearts.

Ministry in Nepal is quite different than in India, and I was not fully prepared for that realization when we arrived.  We were able to spend much time with Nadav and a few other close friends who are now gone on treks, but after they left us we really didn’t have that one hang out spot that everyone sits in all day, as they do in India.  Kathmandu is very spread out and the area we are in is bustling with tourists from all over the world, most of whom are constantly planning treks around Nepal.  We resolved to hang out at the Chabad house because that was the only place we knew Israelis would congregate.  We spent some time there for a few days and attended the Shabbat dinner there this past Friday night as well, but ministry from that is also difficult because we have to be strategic about who we are while we are there (it would not be beneficial to be kicked out, which is always a possibile reaction to us being Messianic).  So we would meet people there and then invite them to dinner elsewhere so that we could feel free to talk about spritual things, or we would recognize people that we met at other places, which made it possible to enter into other conversations.  The guys have also been playing shows at a nice restaurant here and we have been able to invite people to that (I have to say, they have done an amazing job in performing and also in connecting with people after they play- way to go, guys!)

It was definitely feeling like a struggle, or at least more difficult than areas we have been in before.  We took some time aside to really pray for this area and for the people here and ministry with the Israelis (there really are a lot here for the high holy days).  After just giving this area to the Lord for him to work with, we found the hang out place where ALL the Israelis go and spend most of their days… a vegetarian restaurant called Or2K.  Everyone sits on pillows on the floor and stays there for hours- very similar to the traveler scene in India.  So we now feel that we’ve kind of hit the jackpot and will be able to meet a lot more people here!  From that, I am reminded that God really answers prayer- all the time.  And he is really the driving force behind all of this.  I am so thankful for that reminder, and to know that we can just be here and be available, and God will lead us to the right places and the right people.

We leave for another area of Nepal today (Sean and Isaac are already there making preparations for us), so be praying for our time there!

Also, pretty much everyone  has felt sick in one way or another since being in Nepal- please pray for health during our time here.

I miss you guys at home and think of you often.  I am encouraged and am thankful to just be able to rest in God and know that he is taking care of things.

Much love!

We are presently in Nepal. Thank God. I think we were all very ready to move on from India…

In the Delhi airport, waiting to board our flight to Kathmandu, we bumped into our old friend Nadav who we had met in Leh! If you remember, we met Nadav on top of this mountain and played music for him (MTV Unplugged On Top Of The World) and entered into a full Gospel conversation with him (A Very Sane Way Of Life). When we had parted from him in Leh we had expected to see him again in Nepal at the huge Rosh Ha’shana Service here, we did not expect to be on the same flight from India. We were all very pleasantly awed by God’s planning.
After landing in our new country and sorting out all the visa’s-on-entry and baggage-claim, the seven of us including Nadav took a taxi into the heart of the traveler-scene in Kathmandu. At Nadav’s suggestion we located a good guest house and situated ourselves into our rooms. Isaac and Sterling took one room. Sarah and Talia another. Sean, myself, and Nadav occupied a third. This is the first time we as the Mobile team have had the chance to room with a new Israeli friend with the opportunity to more intimately communicate the Gospel! We had discussed the possibility of this happening many times, and this was our first experience.
The first night as the three of us prepared for sleep, we entered into a dialogue about following Jesus instigated by Nadav’s expressed enjoyment of the book ‘Angels And Demons’ by Dan Brown. As Nadav took the book out to read before going to bed, Sean inquired about his thoughts concerning the content, which turned into a discussion about the true tenants of the “Christian” faith. After an hour and a half of sorting through misconceptions and questions, conveying convictions and relating common understandings, and finally personal testimony and spiritual revelation, we (Sean and I) felt we had come to the end of what there was to dialogue about with Nadav concerning Jesus and his understanding of, and need for, salvation. It ended with Nadav saying that the only way for him to ever consider God let alone Jesus in a lifestyle-transforming way would be for God to present himself or the need for himself in a radical way. We responded with a challenge to seek.
We spent the rest of this week rooming with Nadav. The next day he was much less open and familiar than usual. Over the days between our discussion that first night and when he left for a trek this morning, he avoided anymore further discussion about anything remotely spiritual. But he remained with us, ate with us, watched movies, explored the city, made friends, and attended the Rosh Ha’Shana service with us; and when we said our goodbyes, he embraced us warmly and expressed his desire to visit with us in Israel if not again in Asia.

Please pray for Nadav. He has become a loved friend by all six of us. He is an energetic, eccentric, fun person, with an immense knowledge of American Pop culture! And we love him. Pray that God would reach him in a radical way, and that he would come to accept that he needs salvation and that Jesus offers it as a free gift to him. Nadav has a Brit Hadasha in Hebrew that we gave him… pray that he would have a desire to read it.

Thank you,
Much love.
Remy

more visual aids for all of you back home!

isaac hanging out with some israeli friends we met in leh

we traveled to the amazingly beautiful pangong lake

NLR playing music at wonderland for all the committed fans

with friends at desert rain cafe in leh

on our way down from leh, world’s 3rd highest pass!

NLR playing for a full house at the friendly planet in dharamkot

we love you all, thank you for your prayers!

love,
mobile

Hey guys, so here’s a couple pictures of where we’ve been and what we’ve been up to:

Isaac talking about Y’shua

NLR playing at HaIsraelit!

Full house when we played!

On our way to Manali:20 hour jeep

More to come (we havea slow internet connection!)
love
sterling

So I just wanted to update you on the last couple days here in India. After two and a half weeks in Leh, we took a 20 hour jeep ride to Manali… that was literally like 20 hours on the Indiana Jones Ride at Disneyland. After recovering from that we had good time in Manali. We played a big concert at Dylan’s, which is the popular Israeli hang out/coffee shop run by Believers. We also spent more time with Israeli friends that we’d made in Leh that also traveled to Manali at the same time.

On one of the days we made goodie bags full of little toys and candy for the children at a Children’s Home in a nearby village that’s run by Believers. Our team last summer visited the kids and they actually remembered us this time. We had a great time playing with them and giving them awesome goodie bags The next night we met up with a missionary couple that we’d met last year and had become very close friends with. We led worship for their youth group and had a couple of the boys help us with the music. It was great seeing them again and being able to be an encouragement to them. Overall it was a really good week in Manali and now I’m going to give you an example of how travel here in India works.

I had booked a jeep to take us to Dharamsala late Monday night at 1:00am. So we got all packed up that night and hiked down the hill to meet the jeep… which ended up being the wrong kind of jeep and consequently too small for the six of us. So after calling our “travel agent” and finding out that it was too late at night for him to get us another jeep, we hiked all the way back up to our guest house and spent the night. We were able to take a jeep early the next morning, but that’s just an example of how things work here in India, and its not the first time (or probably the last) that its happened to us.

But we made it to Dharamsala and have had a good couple days, especially last night. So we’re staying next to this “restaurant” called Friendly Planet that is full of Israelis til 2am. At breakfast yesterday we were talking to this Israeli about how we had been in Leh a week ago, and she asked us if we were the ones who had played the music in Leh, and proceeded to tell us how there was talk all this last week of this American band that had played amazing music in Leh! We hadn’t met her in Leh, but she apparent knew us! And wanted us to play music at Friendly Planet that night. So we talked to the owners and played last night around 10:00. It was an awesome concert! There were +50 people, the place was full, and it was the most attentive crowd we’d had in a while. We played for about an hour and had some really good interactions with people afterwards. It was a really fun night, but probably the funniest/most encouraging thing to hear was that our music and presence in Leh definitely made a big impact.

God is awesome and its so cool when He allows us to serve Him in fun ways. Please be praying for our last couple days in Dharamsala and our ministry here. We leave for Nepal in three days, please pray that God would guide in our steps in Kathmandu and lead us to the right area, full of Israelis. We love you guys and are so thankful for your prayer, support, and encouragement.

love,

sterling

This day was a Monday, which is our weekly debrief, intercessory prayer, worship, and reflection day. God had other plans. We woke at eleven as usual, prayed for our day, and set off to our favorite and faithful breakfast place, Wonderland Café. We sat where we usually sit, and each ordered what we ordered every day. Sterling: American breakfast; Isaac: four fried eggs and plain toast; Myself: A8 (Bruschetta-like invention of toast toppled with sun-dried tomatoes, thin sliced potatoes with garlic and olive oil, yum) etc… We ate. We lingered surrounded by familiar faces that we had become accustomed to seeing every morning for the past two and a half weeks; many of which we had become quite close with and had shared the Gospel with multiple times. We prepared to open up our bibles and discuss Acts, as we had done every day.

Today, we made a new friend, Rotem. She had come to the Café to meet up with another Israeli friend of ours, Mi’chal who we had shared with extensively and have become very close with. Mi’chal wasn’t there so she asked to sit near us since she had heard us play the night before and knew that we were close friends with Mi’chal. Within minutes, just as so many introductions turned conversations have gone, I was emerged into an explanation of who we are as Messianic Jews, how we live our lives, and how Jesus makes sense for Jewish people. Isaac continues the conversation, taking over theologically, and is dialoguing back and forth with Rotem (secular but well-educated on biblical writing) and this Frenchman named Bruno who just wanted to piss off Isaac by throwing out random questions and accusations into the discussion. Eventually most of the seating-patio was engaged in their debate and Isaac held his own very well. Bruno leaves eventually when he realized that Isaac and the rest of us knew what we were talking about and left us with Rotem again. A few hours go by and I have shared my testimony and the testimonies of both of my parents, at the questioning and prompting of Rotem. Before she left, Rotem tells me that she is very happy to have happened to have sat with me and that she enjoyed our conversation very much, and that I opened myself up to her. We exchanged Facebook info and said goodbye. Due to the incredible situations of Gospel opportunities, we did not discuss Acts that morning as planned .

We reconvened together a little while later in my and Sterling’s room for a time of worship, prayer, and Sterling had prepared to give us his full testimony (he and Isaac had not given theirs at this point). We situate ourselves in a posture of worship and Isaac begins leading us on the guitar. We have gone through one song, when there is a knock on the door. Sarah opens it and it is Mi’chal. She comes in and says how happy she is to see us how she found us by following the distant music to our door, and how worried she was that we had left and hadn’t been able to say goodbye. After some time of group-picture-taking she pronounces how odd it is that she feels so connected to us, and how much she is going to miss us. We feel the same, but we know why. I let her know that we were actually spending a time of worship to God through song before she showed up, and we invited her to stay if she wanted. She accepted. We spent the next hour in worship and she observed, with an expression of awe and calm. When we finished, Sterling explained that he had planned to give his testimony, and how four of us had already gone and it was his turn to share his life and what God had done through it. He invited her to stay if she liked, and she was very happy to stay. We all gathered on our bed and Sterling gave the account of his life to this point. The back-round of his parents’ stories, his childhood, the pain, hurt, confusion, healing, call, and acceptance of a life committed to following Jesus. As Sterling finished, I explained to Mi’chal that after someone shares, we like to pray over them. After we each pray over Sterl, Mi’chal with tears in her eyes, thanks us for allowing her to be a part of “such a beautiful moment between friends”. We tell her we were happy to have her and there are many hugs all around. More tears fill behind her eyes and Mi’chal shares how blesses she is by us, how she truly loves us and is so blown away by our friendships and our love for her. We share, that THAT is the love of Jesus. We invite her to join us for dinner, and she comes. We did not debrief. We did not reflect. We did not have our time of intentional intercessory prayer. God had other plans, so we went with it.

Please pray for Rotem (professional from Tel Aviv) and dear Mi’chal (married student from Haifa). God is tugging at their hearts, join us in warring for their salvation.

Much love. Remy

Description: Update from Mobile

Hello everyone!!!

This is Isaac reporting live from an undisclosed location in India!

We have just traveled 20 hours straight on a jeep ride from Leh, our first location as a Mobile team, where we spent the last 2 weeks doing ministry and living life with Israelis. I am pleased to report to you all that it was indeed incredible.
When we started talking about extending the Massah program in this way, we, along with a lot of other people, were quite skeptical about what would come of it, or if it was even possible. There were a lot of ups and downs in the formation and preparation of Massah Mobile, but God knew exactly what He was doing. After spending these last few weeks with this team, living life with them and making ourselves available to be used by God in this way, I can say that there is no place on earth I’d rather be. God is so powerful and so sovereign, and it is so obvious that He is leading us in to the core of His heart and His will on this journey.

In our 2 weeks in Leh, we were able to play around 10 concerts for hundreds of Israelis and others of our music, which is Gospel-centered, as well as talk about the songs and their meanings. We also gave out over 50 Cds of our music to those we interacted with. We had very significant conversations with around 50 people about the Gospel and our personal walks of faith, and are in touch on Facebook and other means of communication with just about all of them. We interacted with dozens more whom with seeds were planted, and many of them received Cds of our music. Among those people, we made several VERY close friends whom we love dearly, and were sad to see us go. Some of these people traveled to our new location at the same time as us, and we will have more chances to connect with them. Please pray for Naama, Rotem, Chen and Ayelet, who we will continue meeting with.

Thank you so much to everyone who continues to read our blogs and continues to pray for what God is doing here. We are so excited and encouraged by what we have seen in our first 2 weeks, and can’t wait to see what God has in store for the next few months. Please continue to pray for health, discernment of God’s Spirit, and an ever-increasing ministry dynamic among the 6 of us. We love you all so much and are so thankful for your support. We cannot express that enough. Until next time. J

Love,isaac