Desert Worship: Successes and Mishaps

What I learned from some time in the desert.

My community of believers in Be'Er Sheva had made plans to go as a group to a place called Sde Boker. In general people consider Be’er Sheva the desert, but Sde Boker is truly the desert. I didn’t have to do any of the planning for this trip and for that I am thankful. Basically, the lowdown of what I knew before hand was a group of us from Be’er Sheva would take a bus Thursday afternoon to Sde Boker where we would meet with believers from Sde Boker, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv to worship, eat some food, camp, and hike the following day. It sounded like a great time of fellowship so I signed up.

I’m going to preface my reflections with the admission that it WAS a great time. God met me where I was and led me closer to him. BUT. It was simultaneously a really rough time for me personally. And with that, let the adventure begin (:

I discovered a few days before prior to Thursday that the bus we were taking left Central Station at 4:30pm. In theory this sounds like a perfect time to leave. It’s about an hour and a half bus ride, so it would leave us time to get settled before it got dark. However. I have histology lab until 4pm on Thursdays and it would be nearly impossible to reach the bus station on time without leaving early. Jack and Caroline were also going to the desert gathering so we made a plan to leave class early, bike/scooter to Jack and Caroline’s apartment, take a bus from there to the central station, and hopefully still have time to spare. On paper, this looked like a wonderful plan.

But real life never follows the script haha. The first road block presented itself when the histology lab before ours ran late. Over 25 minutes late. It wasn’t looking like a great day to leave class early haha.. We stayed in class for as long as we could and successful executed the next part of our plan, with time to spare. As we were waiting at the bus stop, other friends arrive and we waited together. It was relaxing and chill until 4:30 came and went with no sign of our bus. Then 4:45 passed, and before we knew it, the clock read 5:15. And we hadn’t seen the bus and doubts start arising haha. Were we in the right place, did we somehow miss it, what should we do… etc lol. Caroline and I were nominated to try and find someone we could ask about the bus. It turned out to be harder than I thought to try and find someone official looking at the bus station. On our perusal we did encounter free smoothie samples, so we truly couldn’t complain. Smoothies improve almost any situation (maybe this can be a new motto haha?). Eventually we found someone who informed us we didn’t miss the bus (YAY!) and that it would arrive within 10 minutes. We returned to the group feeling victorious, and true to his word, the bus showed up a few minutes later. There was only one problem. Some of our other group members had also decided to investigate the situation and hadn’t yet returned. Frantic phone calls were made and those present made a point to load the bus slowly. Thankfully, they made it back just in the nick of time. And finally, we were off! On the way out of town, we saw this fellow juggling at a red light, giving us his best performance. He seemed to be having a great time, but I suppose one must appear that way in his line of work. It made me wonder, how did he get to this point in his life? I have no answers haha, only questions.

We made it to Sde Boker much later than our planned arrival time, but we made it nonetheless (: We were greeted by one of the local believes named Christian. Introductions were made and we began our trek down to the campsite. We reached a point where Christian presented us with two options, the adventurous route or the winding paved road down. I chose the adventurous, cross desert route with several others. Christian left us with the warning to stop and take photos, don’t walk and use our phones at the same time. Emeka and Abraham were determined to video their way down, compromising by saying they wouldn’t actually look at their phones during the process haha. Quite silly lol but they did it. Jack apparently has a semi-death wish, as he enjoyed sprinting down the steep parts haha. I don’t think I have good enough brakes or balance for his method, especially while carrying my camping supplies.

You probably weren’t wondering what my camping supplies included, but I will inform you anyway ;) I had by Osprey back with a change of clothes, my hiking boots, 1.5 liters of water, 2 blankets, two sweatshirts, some granola bars, and a portable charger. I had been warned it gets quite cold in the desert at night and I was determined to be prepared. Other people in our group drove earlier that day and brought all the tents and sleeping bags which was so kind and helpful of them.

We finally made it to the campsite, and it was lovely. We were just in time for the sunset, the tents were already set up, and there was a wonderful, blazing fire. We had just enough time to meet a few people and sit down before darkness was upon us. We all introduced ourselves and shared where we were from. There were people from everywhere. I would list the places, but I am certain I would forget many so I will simply leave it at that. I can’t stress enough how incredible and big and unstoppable our God is and how beautiful the body of Christ is. People who may have nothing in common besides Jesus are bound together and able to enjoy each other and feel refreshed by each other’s company. The group from Sde Boker worked hard to prepare a delicious meal. They used big caldron type pots directly in the fire. I hadn’t ever seen this before, but now I am convinced I need some haha. Someday (: They made a delicious Indian style curry (a little spicy for a wimp like me, but still delicious). After sharing the meal, we gathered around to sing and praise the Lord. People had brought their guitars, ukuleles, drums, and of course their voices. It was absolutely beautiful. In between songs people shared spoken words of encouragement or convictions. Samuel shared a brief message about the power of the Holy Spirit. One of the things he said really hit me hard. Am I allowing the Holy Spirit to be a part of everyday of my life? Or am I limiting the Spirit's potential? The Holy Spirit is so much more powerful than I often allow in my life. God is in us, with us. All. The. Time. We are never on our own or left to figure it all out by ourselves. This concept is something I know and understand, but I don’t always let it saturate my life. I want to be filled with the Holy Spirit, overflowing.

As we were worshiping, it started to rain. Which is crazy, we were in the desert. Even the people from Sde Boker told us afterwards rain wasn’t even something they considered, because it happens so rarely. But I have a confession. As it started to rained, I felt annoyed. Why did it have to rain now? While I’m out in the desert with no way to get dry or warm if I got soaked, while all I have is a tent, while I’m trying to enjoy a bonfire? Even to me, my response didn’t make sense. Literally for as long as I have been in Israel, I have been longing for rain, to be in the rain. As I sat in the rain, crying out to Jesus, surrounded by believers, it hit me. This is so often how I react. I ask God for different things; growth, patience, humility, dependency on him, etc. But when he gives me the opportunity to grow in these areas, far too often I react in annoyance or anger. Because His way isn’t when or how I thought it should be. Because I had an image in my mind of how it should work. Because it’s harder than I thought it would be. Because it’s inconvenient to my plans. And in that moment of reflection, I started to enjoy the rain. I opened my hands, let go of my expectations, and simply soaked it in. This is God’s desire for me. When the hard and unexpected hits me, He whispers, “Betsy, I’m here in the midst of it all. Let go, cling to me, soak it in. Because there is beauty if you will just allow yourself to see it.” This isn't necessarily a new revelation, just one that I need reminded of again and again and again. I'm so thankful for God's grace to continue to remind me.

After worship I got a taste of home when we made s’mores!!! Which was actually challenging haha. The marshmallow roasting sticks were incredibly short. You had to choose if you wanted to risk your cooking flesh or having an undercooked mallow. But even more exciting than s’mores, was my discovery of stick bread!!! Maybe all of you are much more cultured than I, but I had never heard of stick bread. It is exactly what it sounds like. Someone made and brought bread dough, everyone gets a stick, you wrap a hunk of dough around it, and cook it over the fire. If you are lucky, there is Nutella to go with it (we were lucky don't you worry haha). It was glorious (: Thankfully these sticks were slightly longer than the s’more sticks haha. I think stick bread is German in origin and it is something I plan to bring home with me for future bonfires, so get ready. I can’t wait to have some stick bread with y’all ;)

Around 1am I decided to attempt to get some sleep. The only problem was not everyone shared this decision haha. I shared a tent with Rachel and Leann right next to the fire, so as long as others were awake around the fire, I was also awake. This meant I was awake until around 3:30am. I also was never cold for a moment during the night. I brought way too much warm supplies, I should have used the space for a pillow instead haha. It was a restless night because someone’s alarm in a nearby tent started going off a short 3 hours later, in a repetitive fashion haha. There was no choice but to get up and start the day. The goal was to leave the camp site by 7:30 to begin our hike to a Bedouin woman for breakfast. With large groups, (and in Israel in general as I am learning) nothing ever starts on time. Patience am I right? ;) I think it was after 9 by the time we finally got going. It was quite a hike honestly. I built up quite a sweat, which shouldn’t be shocking to anyone.

It was more than worth it. Honestly it felt a bit mystical when we arrived. We were met by a woman in all black walking towards us out of seemingly nowhere. She greeted us with the biggest smile and gestured us to follow her. Many of my companions spoke much better Hebrew than I do, but I did understand that she said welcome and that she feels like a mother to all of us (: I don’t know if I have explained the Bedouin way of life before so I will just include a brief excerpt here. They live a kind of nomadic life. Their living structures are constructed mainly of tarps over a simple wooden frame. They typically have animals - she had sheep, chickens, and dogs that I could see. They also have very limited electricity and few modern luxuries. It is almost comical to see their solar panels, which feel futuristic to me, and all their extension cords hooking up to lights in contrast to their tent-like dwellings, and cooking pots over a fire. We had delicious tea (I was informed it was full of sugar haha) and then an assortment of different foods which filled me up . I honestly don’t know the names of the dishes so I will just include a photo (:

After eating we hung out in the shade and my group played a competitive game of Egyptian Rat Slap haha. I am terrible at it, but I still enjoyed it. It was nice and just the right amount of shady. Eventually we had to head back in order to catch our bus. The hike back felt much easier and before long we arrived back at the campsite. We had left our stuff in random cars of people from Sde Boker and now we faced the problem of tracking our things down. I am going to admit, when we put our things in the cars that morning, I had the thought of maybe needing to coordinate in advance to be reunited with our belongings, but since no one else seemed concerned, I did nothing. Which turned out to be a tragic mistake as you will soon see haha.

Back at the campsite, all cars were gone. Our Be’er Sheva group had also gotten very spread out on the hike down so we weren’t sure where everyone was either. We decided to hike up to the actual town of Sde Boker with hopes of finding our people and/or our stuff. When we got there, we found neither. On the bright side, we did find a place to refill our water (the desert hike definitely exhausted my supply) and a bathroom. We reached out to our Sde Boker contact and were informed we needed to walk about 10 minutes to retrieve our things. At this point, we were still hopeful we could make the 1:30pm bus back to Be’er Sheva. So we trekked across the campus and unfortunately none of our stuff was there yet. I think it was at this point the stress and confusion began. See, this time around we were responsible for bringing all the tents and sleeping bags back with us on the bus. Most of the equipment had been borrowed from the university or a dear family who lives in Be’er Sheva. Jake, who was in charge of this exchange, was with us. However, we were informed that some of the Be’er Sheva group had somehow already left and took some of the tents/sleep bags with them. We didn’t know the identity of these individuals or exactly what they had taken with them, making it difficult for us to take inventory and make sure we had everything. Finally one of the cars containing our belongings arrived. Yay! The not yay part was soon present when we couldn’t find everything, and we realized we were definitely going to miss the 1:30pm bus. Since it was a Friday, the last bus option was at 2:30, so we were still okay, but we did not have infinite time.

Eventually we all found our belongings, we did all we could to find all the tents and sleeping bags, and then congregated at the bus stop. In true Israeli fashion, the bus was late. But it did show up eventually and I was more than grateful to begin the trip back. I was tired. Maybe borderline exhausted would be more accurate haha. I think the last part of the journey is always the hardest. We had a 15–20-minute walk ahead to Jack and Caroline’s apartment after arriving and then I had a 10-minute bike ride to my apartment. I finally made it back home, but I would not recommend biking with two book-bags to anyone. Oof.

I must admit even though I was exhausted, I had bigger problems manifesting by this point. My throat was on fire and I had little to no voice left. And of course, it was my weekend to clean all the common areas of the appartment haha. I knew once I stopped I wouldn’t be able to start again, so I got to work and got everything cleaned. I even managed to shower before I ran out of steam (: I called some friends before surrendering to sleep.

It was a good thing I had already planned on not going to church, because there was no way I could have made it. I spent the majority of Saturday in my room either sleeping, wishing for sleep, or laying on the floor. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t study, I couldn’t even look at my computer without feeling like my head was going to explode. By evening my roommates discovered something was up. They were so tender. They made sure I had water, medicine, and everything I needed. I feel so blessed. It was a rough day and I went to bed that night unsure if I would be able to make it to class the next day.

Now, don’t worry. I am very far behind on my posts. This was way back on October 16th. I survived, I am fine (: Maybe I’ll get caught up on posts sometime haha..

When my roommates asked how the worship/desert experience was, my response was it was good, but it was also terrible. It was good because God met me where I was, and I was reminded of his goodness and beauty in the midst of chaos. It was terrible because I didn’t sleep and I felt absolutely terrible by the end. But like I discovered in the desert rain, growth and God’s goodness rarely looks like we expect it to. The good often comes with the bad, and I can either accept that or I can constantly live in bitterness over the bad. I would much prefer the first option. Even when I was laying in my room praying for relief, I felt incredibly blessed. Blessed that I have an air-conditioned room to lay in when I am sick, I have access to plenty of clean water, and I have incredible roommates and friends who I know would get me anything I needed in those moments of hard. God provides. He loves. And life's not perfect. But without the imperfections, I wouldn’t see how beautiful life really is. For that I am thankful.

Psalms 86:12

"I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify your name forever."