After much prayer, and support from the members of our Community at JoshGen, I accepted the job in Gauteng.
An exiting part of the job is that much of the training I require is presented in Tel-Aviv, Israel and also in Bucharest, Romania. As it turned out, my first day at the Israeli company I had to report to the head office in Tel-Aviv.
Getting to Tel-Aviv was an ordeal in its own right. Since the training was scheduled to start on Sunday, I had to be in Tel-Aviv on the Saturday. El-Al, the Israeli airline, does not fly on Friday, their Schabbat. The only available flight was with Ethiopian Airlines.
After a sleepless night on very hard seats, and a 3 hour stop in Addis Ababa, I arrived in Tel-Aviv around 4 o'clock on Saturday. I checked into an hotel right next to the company office and went to sleep.
The part of Tel-Aviv where I stayed and worked for the week was part of the commercial hub of the city. Lots of office buildings and restaurants line the street.
The course was attended by people from various continents. We had Ricardo from Uruguay, Baljit from USA, Nick from Canada, Daniel from Philippines, Deepak from India, Allesandro from Italy, Dan and Liviu from Romania and your's truly from South Africa.
Some of the other guys were in their late twenties and early thirties. They were very adventurous and visited some of the night spots of Yafo, the coastal part of Tel-Aviv, till early in the emornings
I had a lot to absorb about the training and also the new company, so I did not join in the fun, but used the time to prepare for my upcoming visit to Nigeria.
On Friday, my last day in Israel, Nir our Team Leader, offered to take Deepak and myself out to see Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. I was very excited to get such an opportunity and looked forward to it.
Jerusalem is an important place in the history of Christianity but also plays a big part in the future, according to prophecies in the Bible. It was absolutely awesome to see the Western Wall of the temple.
What really struck me was the fact that for the first time in my life I was walking in a place where Jesus also walked, and seeing things he also saw.
Today many people come to the wall to pray and in one can see them reading from the prayer books while swaying back and forth. They also write messages or prayers on pieces of paper in stick it in the cracks between the stones.
To these people it is a real religious duty, but because it is such an historic place, many tourists are also walking through and talk while others are praying quietly. Like most religious places, men and women are separated by a wall.
Nir also read from one of the books and even put on a Tefilin to show us what it looks like. It is two small black boxes containing verses from the Torah, that observant Jews strap to their forehead during morning prayers.
From Jerusalem we went to the Dead Sea. En route we passed route indicators with names like Qidron, Yericho, Ein Gedi, Qumran and Masada. Even though the spelling was unusual, I was very much aware of the fact that these are names I have previously only seen in the Bible. Now I was there and experienced it all first hand. I always believed the Bible but now it gets a different context.
Swimming, or rather floating, in the Dead Sea was a very strange experience. It is really impossible to sink. The place is 400 meter below sea level resulting in water only flowing into the Dead Sea, and nothing flows out. The salt content of the water is so high that the water feels oily and tastes horrible. It is extremely difficult to get one's feet down to the bottom, and require extreme concentration, because your feet keeps floating to the surface.
I heard that the water has wonderful healing capabilities and experienced it myself. I had a skin irritation because of the dry air in Israel, but after the visit to the Dead Sea, I never felt it again.
I really enjoyed the time in Israel, especially the day in Jerusalem and at the Dead Sea. The only missing element was my wife, Regina. Next time she has to come with.
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