April 2008 Newsletter - Dov and Lyndee Gelman - Israel

Girls Group Update

Rachel started her girls group 3 weeks ago (that's her on the left in the picture). The ground proved to be quite hard at first. Nothing like this has ever been tried in the neighborhood before. The first week, although quite a few girls promised to come, no one showed up. The following week 4 girls came, and this past week that number doubled to 8! We're pretty excited about the progress so far! We applaud Rachel for persevering through the rocky ground and ask that you would keep this Tuesday night group in your prayers.

Apparently, the 8 girls that came this last time are from different "clicks," so this week, Dov is going to attend and lead the girls in some team-building exercises.

Neighborhood BBQ'S

On April 9th, we hosted a team of volunteers from
Cyprus and held a BBQ for the 2 kindergartens we work with. For 2 hours, aside from feasting on the grilled delicacies, the Cyprus volunteers played with the kids, painted faces and nails and made balloon animals. A great time was had by all!

In mid-May, we are hosting James Goll and a team from Encounter's Network to do a neighborhood-wide BBQ that will coincide with Israel's 60th birthday! We are planning a huge bash: we plan to take-over 2 playgrounds with live Ethiopian music, inflatable bouncy-things and other activities for the children. Dov is especially excited to grill an estimated 600 pieces of meat.

Clear River just received this update from Dov and Lyndee:
Grace and shalom to you and all the saints of Clear River. First, allow me to thank you and the folks at Clear River who have been praying for us. The prayers have been felt over here. We just completed (last Wed) a huge neighborhood BBQ with inflatable jumpy things and over 300 people from the housing projects we work in attended. They devoured the 400+ pieces of meat we grilled and it was a blast.

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