Rosh Hashanah and The Mediterranean

This weekend was a three day Shabbat.  Rosh Hashanah, the Israel new year, was Thursday and Friday.  We had a big party at our house with all the people from our group living in Jerusalem.  

This picture's for you Aunt Carole:)  I don't have a good one of us in the vineyard but it's with Lindsey.

We had a movie night afterwards.  After the boys went to bed the girls stayed up and watched two more movies:)

On Friday our family went to the Mediterranean Sea.  

Then we drove down to Sde Boker to spend the night with some of our friends.  We slept outside in a big tent.  It was fun but we don't have any good pictures from when we were there.

Fall Festivals

The Biblical Fall Festivals begin with Yom Teruah (Feast of Trumpets) or literally "Day of Shouting." It is the only Biblical holiday that begins on the first day of the month which is marked by the sighting of the new moon. To celebrate we had a salmon barbeque down by the lake and we danced and blew the shofar.

We ate lots of good food!

Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) is 10 days after Yom Teruah and is a day of fasting and reflection; asking God to show you how you can be more pleasing to Him. In the evening about a half hour before the Day of Atonement was to begin, I let the kids know they only had a half hour to finish eating for the next 24 hours. My remark caused a stampede on the kitchen... The kids did great fasting. I even got them to quiet down and spend some time in prayer and reflection. Once Sarah came out of the pantry with a few crackers (we let her slide since she's only two). She took Benjamin (4 years old) with her and talked him into eating a couple too. Although I didn't get after Benjamin either, he had a guilty look on his face and he decided on his own not to snitch any more.

Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles) starts five days after Yom Kippur and lasts seven days with a sabbath rest day on the 8th day. The command is for all native Israelites to spend the week in booths to remind them of how God brought them out of Egypt. As ingrafted Israelites we want to remember too, so we celebrate Sukkot. We started building a green house this year and we thought that would make a terrific Sukkah (booth). So Paul tried to get a few moments here and there to finish it off.

He got the roof on and we spent the first night under the stars in our Sukkah. It was the first night the stars had been out for some time and it got cold. It was 27 degrees Fahrenheit by morning.
Sarah slept between Paul and I so I could make sure she stayed warm. I guess she did because at one point she did the "I'm riding a bicycle thing" in her sleep and knocked all our covers off. I think it was about then that Paul asked if I couldn't put her on my other side so he could sleep just a little (she tends to kick). Around four o'clock Benjamin started crying so I climbed over several kids to get to him and make sure he wasn't freezing to death. When I got there everything was all wet. Somebody forgot to make sure he had on the diaper he wears at night and rarely needs unless we forget! So, I took Benjamin along with Sarah into the house. After I got Benjamin cleaned up, I told him to climb in our bed with Sarah and he started crying again because he wanted to go back out and sleep in the Sukkah. I convinced him that it was almost morning and we could just take a little nap. An hour later pounding on the stairs woke me up. Apparently Paul's teeth had started chattering uncontrollably. I guess he really missed all that body heat I took inside with me. Paul said, "lets go inside" and everyone responded immediately so I guess no one was sleeping very deeply. We all took a nice nap for a few more hours. For the rest of Sukkot the kids moved the Sukkah to different locations. One night it was the basement the next night it was the living room. Although the kids would have been up for it, we didn't try sleeping outside again. Paul wants to go all out next year and put up a wall tent with a stove.

The night after we slept out, Lavonne and Josh decided to sleep out in their tent pictured below. They made a Sukkah in the trees by the creek, but they decided to put their tent right under the window of their apartment. They took their phone out with them and Josh called me several times before 11 pm. At about 11 pm though, he called with an obvious amount of urgency in his voice. He said, "Susan, there's a bear out here. I'm not kidding." I told him okay and hung up and related to Paul what he said. He gave me a look of disbelief, but I told him Josh wasn't kidding. So he hurried out with all of the older kids at a safe distance behind him. They looked around and didn't see anything so they gave Josh a hard time for seeing things and headed back to the house. As they crossed the road, they saw three figures by the neighbor's garbage bin. Upon closer observation they recognized a mama bear and her two big cubs. They all took off running for the house and the bears took off running up the hill. This summer is the first time we've seen bears in the village in the seven years we've been living here. There have been around seven sightings this summer in the village.

The Martin's built their Sukka behind the apartments, overlooking the lake. We took advantage of a beautiful day to do some impromptu worship, singing and dancing.

We weren't out there too long before the musicians fell into the shadow of the apartments. It is incredible what a difference that made on the temperature. We would have played a lot longer if we could have felt our fingers...Paul, Quentin, Joshua and Josh A. were across the lake and up the river, cutting and floating logs down the when we decided to have our impromptu concert. As they slowly made their way back across the lake, towing a flotilla of logs behind them, they could hear us singing and see the flags waving.

Below David Martin is helping the rest of the boys make a manger to remind us of baby Jesus' birth. Everyone agrees that Jesus wasn't born on Dec. 25th and based on Luke's Gospel account, 1 Chronicles 24 and other historical records, many people agree that Jesus was probably born during Sukkot. If you Google "When was Jesus born," you can find many articles that go into great detail describing how you can figure out that Jesus was born during the time of Sukkot.

Sarah put her doll in the manger to represent baby Jesus.

p.s. We woke up to snow yesterday morning for the first time this year.

Jewish Festivals/Names of God and Shavuot 2010

Someone commented that they weren't sure we believed in Jesus anymore since we had so many blogs about Jewish feasts. Nothing could be further from the truth! Our faith in Jesus Christ the Messiah has, if possible, increased as we have studied Him in the Old Testament. He has saved us because of His grace and mercy and His love for us is unimaginable.

Our studies over the last few years have enhanced our understanding, and as such we have changed our celebrations and traditions as we align them with what we find in God's Word. Our studies began in earnest when Paul was asked to speak at a Feast of Tabernacles Celebration. You can hear him here. http://www.davidsinstrumentsofpraise.com/God_s_Appointed_Times.html

As he studied and prepared, one thing that really stood out to him was that God calls these different feasts "My Feasts." (Lev. 23) The Hebrew word translated feast actually means "appointed times" and He wants His people to hold them in high regard and commemorate them. History shows us that God keeps His appointed times, some obvious examples are: God rested on the Sabbath, Jesus died on Passover, was buried at the start of Unleavened Bread, was raised on First Fruits and God sent the Holy Spirit on the Feast of Weeks. There are many more examples that have happened in the past and I believe many of God's prophecies yet to come will also be fulfilled on His Appointed Times. I believe one of the many reasons God commanded us to keep them is so that we will be as ready as possible for what is to come. God has so much to remind us of and teach us as we keep His Appointed Times. Unfortunately the Christian Church has let its traditions move away from the celebrations that God commanded us to keep. If we are going to keep celebrations that honor God why don't we keep them as He commanded us to? No matter how heartfelt our celebrations are, I am reminded of when Samuel chastised Saul because he decided to keep the best animals in order to sacrifice them to God instead of slaughtering them as God commanded. (I Sam. 15:10-35) God wants our obedience.

The last three feasts of this year, The Feast of Trumpets or Day of Shouting (Yom Teruah), The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), and The Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot) (otherwise know as the Fall Feasts) begin this week. God is teaching us much from them. Take the time to do a little research and celebrate them too.

Here are some links to our past celebrations: http://quiverfullofkids.blogspot.com/2009/10/yom-teruah.html

http://quiverfullofkids.blogspot.com/2009/10/yom-kippur-sukkot.html

http://quiverfullofkids.blogspot.com/2008/11/paul-susan-sukkot.html

http://quiverfullofkids.blogspot.com/2008/11/sukkot-dancing.html

David Martin made a video of our Shavuot (Festival of Weeks) 2010 celebration. You can watch it at the bottom of this post. I had some trouble loading it, so if you can't watch it look back in a couple of days and I'll try and get David to put it on his website and I'll link to it.

יהוה

Something else that has been a powerful testimony to us as we have studied the Old Testament is the actual name of God. In Hebrew it is יהוה. In English we would write it YHWH and probably pronounce it either Yahuwah or Yahweh. His name was not pronounced for so long that we are not sure how to pronounce it and you can read many articles defending several pronunciations. YHWH is found almost 7000 times in the bible, in the KJV it is translated Jehovah twice and as the LORD the rest of the times. YHWH is a proper name and LORD is a title. During the period of the Old Testament YHWH was used and pronounced. God told us to call Me by My name, revere My name, pray in my name, swear in My name, greet each other in My name, fear My name, etc. Sometime after the Old Testament was written Jewish religious leaders decided it would be better not to pronounce God's name because we are told not to take His name in vain. Kind of a better safe than sorry idea. They started pronouncing YHWH as adonai which means lord and thus the English translators substituted LORD for YHWH. You can tell the difference when you are reading most English translations by looking at whether it is capitalized or not. If it is translated from YHWH it is LORD if Lord is meant then the last three letters are small. Yah is also used especially in the Psalms as an abbreviated name for YHWH. Since God tells us to use His name, we'd better do it the best way we know how for now and not just totally change it to Lord. Of course, it should never be taken in vain!

Jesus, on the other hand, I believe is an honest form of Yahoshua, transliterated from Hebrew to Aramaic to Greek to Latin to English. During Jesus' time the common rendering was Yeshua so this is probably what His mother called Him. Yeshua means salvation and we lose so much in our English translations. If we were reading the Old Testament in Hebrew we would see many references to Jesus that we miss in the English translations. Here is a link to a good article by Myron Martin talking about Yeshua in the Tanakh:

http://oneagleswingsinc.org/Yeshua_in_the_Tanakh_(Old_Testament).html

David Martin has also written a couple of articles about God's name.

http://davidsinstrumentsofpraise.com/The%20Name%20Of%20God%20(Updated).pdf

http://davidsinstrumentsofpraise.com/Yeshua's%20Work%20in%20the%20Father's%20Name.pdf

Yom Teruah

Yom Teruah, which means "Day of Shouting", and is also called the "Feast of Trumpets", occurs every year on the first day of the seventh month (Tishrei), which by observation, fell on 21 September this year. In Hebrew the word month means "new moon" or it is sometimes referred to by the word for moon. Each month starts with the sighting of the new moon. Yom Teruah is special because it is the only "appointed time"(The Hebrew word translated feast is "moed", and literally, according to Strong's concordance, means 'an appointment, that is, a fixed time or season'; thus "appointed time") listed in Leviticus 23 that begins on the first day of a new month. We can predict when the new moon will be sighted, but according to Hebrew tradition, the new month does not start until the moon is sighted by two witnesses (YHVH controls the clouds). Therefore, no one knows the day or the hour that the moon will be sighted and thus begin Yom Teruah. It sounds a lot like Matt. 24:36... and it would also fit nicely with the sounding of the trumpet and shout at the Messiah's return.(1 Cor 15:52 and 1 Thes 4:16)

As a family, we have started observings God's "appointed times". I don't know why we as Children of God ever stopped, but it is clear that we will be celebrating at least some of them, if not all of them, in the Messianic Kingdom to come (Eze 46:1-6,11 and Zec 14:16-19) so we might as well start now. I don't think that God ever intended us to stop celebrating His "appointed times." By observing them we are reminded of what He has done in the past and what He will do in the future.

Paul loves to study the Bible and he is a great teacher. I love being his sounding board and I have learned so much as he has been studying. As Yom Teruah drew close, I started thinking about the practical side of things you don't think about until you actually celebrate something. A new moon is difficult to see in the best of circumstances, but I didn't even know which way to look! Through my googling, I discovered the moonrise and moonset times for our area and the declination. I also discovered that you look for the new moon where the sun was about two hours before the time you are looking. The new moon had been sighted in Jerusalem before it was even possible for us to see it in Alaska, so Yom Teruah had started, but we wanted to go through the motions of looking, blowing the shofar and shouting when we saw it too. These times have been great opportunities to teach the kids. We built a fire on the beach and made a celebration of it while we watched and waited. Unfortunately it was a very cloudy day and we discovered that a mountain was situated right were my calculations said we were supposed to look for the new moon. Oh well, maybe next year we'll climb the mountain so we can see better and when Yeshua returns, seeing Him will not be a problem.

We all took turns blowing the shofar anyway.

David and Quentin harmonizing.

Abigail and Sarah.

Caleb had fun tending the fire.

Regina came and brought Nakita.

The Martin's joined us.

Lavonne and Josh.

The phone guy still hasn't showed up to fix the cut line. I'm still enjoying the peace and quiet, but 17 homes, Tribal and the school are without a phone and I think most everyone else is ready for them to be fixed.