This was our last Healing Retreat of the year at Dezna in Romania, in the foothills of a central mountain range whose name I've forgotten... We shared the teaching with Jim Person, who can be seen frantically waving at the back. Good things happened!
Here are our wonderful students, or most of them anyway. It's always a job getting 70+ people arranged for a photo.
Many Russian Ellel Ministries books were bought by the students.
Most of the pictures recently have been taken on my phone, which is why the quality isn't that good. This is the entrance to the Romanian city of Timisoara. Triumphal arches like this were a typical feature of cities in communist times. This one has faded a little and looks in need of repair when you get a bit closer.
Here's a nice Romanian sunset in July, not far from Timisoara. I really wanted to see if my phone would reproduce the colours, and it hasn't done all that badly.
After the goulash we had some songs round a campfire. Just one problem: it was a very hot evening, and the fire was so hot that this was the closest we could get!
We bought this breakfast cereal in a local supermarket in Hungary. Maybe somebody ought to tell them what it really says?
Last Wednesday we treated a group of Slovaks (who were at the Ellel base for a Holiday Week) to a Traditional British Garden Party in a Traditional British Garden. Just as they all arrived, a tanker truck came to empty our septic tank. Very reluctantly, because getting hold of the "honey-dipper man" is quite difficult, I had to tell him to leave. He promised to come back the next morning, but we haven't seen him since. Never mind, nothing appears to be overflowing ... yet ...
This is the first Ellel Modular School in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. We have nearly 50 students learning about the ministry of healing and restoration. We try not to emphasise "deliverance" because they are sometimes a little too keen on it...
Those Jews who avoided the British patrols and entered Israel "illegally" were rounded up and sent to the internment camp at Atlit near Haifa.
Here they were met again by barbed wire and watchtowers.
It looked just like the camps they had just left, only now the guards were British.
First they had to go to the shower block where they were de-loused and their clothes were put in a giant pressure-cooker. Many were traumatised by this - they knew what happened in "showers" in internment camps.
Then they were sent to the bare wooden huts.
They had to live in the huts for weeks or even months. Their belongings were hung from the rafters to keep them away from the rats. Men and women were separated, husbands and wives were in different parts of the camp.
They were prisoners in their own country. Some managed to escape, and once there was a mass breakout. They walked many miles through the night to a kibbutz on Mount Carmel where the local people protected them from the British patrols.
This was not "Our Finest Hour". Britain turned its back on the people of Israel, partly in order to appease Arab interests. From that time, an empire which covered 25% of the Earth's land surface has shrunk to nothing, and Britain's influence and reputation in the world has gone rapidly downhill. Will we never learn? Will we ever repent?
This is a Druze village on the slopes of Mount Carmel near Haifa. The Druze are followers of a very secret religion which started as an offshoot from Islam. You have to be born a Druze; there are no converts. Only a very small number of Druze - the "Sages" - know all the teachings of the religion.
This poster (despite the supposed secrecy) is intended to show the history and structure of Druze belief. No, I don't understand it either. Never mind.
This is the Kehilat Ha-Carmel, the Carmel Assembly, a big Messianic centre on the top of Mount Carmel. This was our second visit there, the first being in January of last year.
Inside we were able to hear once again the vision for the "One New Man", united in Yeshua Ha-Mashiach, destroying the division between Jewish, Arab and Gentile Believers.
Back in Haifa we spent more time looking at the amazing view over the harbour.
