Brothers and Sisters;

It is Christmas time!  Farah, our 3 years old daughter believes that Jesus will come to visit us and play with her at her bedroom because He loves her. She thinks for sure that He will come and celebrate His birthday with us. Any birthday party is not complete unless it is attended by the one we are celebrating his birthday. And she is right! Jesus is the reason for the season. That's the name of the campaign we are having here in this Land. "Jesus Christ is the Feast", yes He is! You can see these advertisements every where in Israel on newspapers, billboards, and internet. The plan is to distribute 100,000 packages (with 5-6 pieces in each package) and make mass door to door visits. Rajai has been working on this intensively leading the project and traveling all over Israel from north to south.

Two thousand years ago, after Jesus ascended to heaven, the early Church started to preach the good news and proclaim that Jesus is the promised Messiah. As a result, great things happened and the Church started to grow, and from Jerusalem the early missionaries started to go to the World to obey our Lord’s commandment to go and preach the Gospel. Since then many events and changes happened in this Land that our Lord choose to live in. Early Christians faced persecutions from the Romans until it was declared a Christian state in the third century. After that The Muslims invaded this Land in the 7^th century. Later on the Crusaders came and occupied the land from Muslims but  then Muslims again kicked them out and ruled the Holy land again until modern days when the Ottoman (Turkish )empire fell down. At the beginning of the 20^th century, The Holy Land was under the British mandate until the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Until this day this Land never experienced such an intensive and massive evangelistic campaign like the one we are having now in the Home land of Jesus, which is thirsty for the Word of God. Many ministers in Israel agree to that.

 Friends, it is time for the Lord to bring the Gospel back to where it was started from and We believe it is a time of Harvest and revival that is coming very soon. If you travel around the Arab villages and towns in Galilee these days, you will be surprised to see billboards with the sign “Jesus Christ is the Feast” (Jesus is the Reason for the Season). We have over 23 billboards in the Galilee and Mt. Carmel area. We have ads in 3 Arabic newspapers in Israel and 2 Newspapers in the West bank and Gaza. In addition, we have banner ads in the top 3 portal Arabic sites in Israel. Seeing the name of Jesus  high on bill board with this Christmas message is an overwhelming experience for all. The ads about the campaign included a toll free phone to call and a website to order the Christmas gift. Hundreds of people are calling our toll free phone to request the package and thousands signed their name on our website www.murasala.com to request the gift. Every day we receive an average of 500 requests online from the banner ads. Later on we will visit all of those who requested the gift (which we started already) at their homes and not to send it by regular mail in order to have the possibility of face to face evangelism. With God’s mighty power, we plan to distribute 100,000 packages till Easter and reach 1 Million people in Israel, West bank and Gaza.

The beginning was recruiting the Churches and convincing them with our vision. That was the difficult part of it. Rajai arranged for a meeting which included most of the pastors and church  leaders in Israel to cast the vision in them. Praise God for the tremendous response from our dear brothers. They all caught the vision and now they have a sense of ownership to it. Later on, the attendance choose a steering committee to lead the project that represents all the Evangelical denominations in Israel. It is only God who could make that happen. All the praise and Glory goes to Him.

We divided Israel into 7 regions and assigned a local pastor from that region to be our coordinator there. His job is to be our arm in the area he  lives in and to coordinate all our work there.

On 26.11.2005 The steering committee invited all the church members in Israel for a one day conference which we explained to them our plan and strategy and did some training on witnessing. It was overwhelming to see people coming to obey our Lord's great commandment and fall on their knees crying and praying for God for this nation to be saved.

For more details about the project and pictures please follow this link: http://www.comeandsee.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=703

           The meeting with churches on  26.11.2005

     One of the billboards in one of the entrances of Nazareth.

Materials arrived

Packing in the office

Distribution on Christmas eve in Nazareth. 4000 packages were handed out under heavy rain

Even Farah is part of the campaign. She prepared packages for her class mates and distributed 27.

Some of our other ministry news:

•  Our Discipleship group

Ashraf is a young man who has very good life, nice car, Good Salary and beautiful girlfriend. Despite the fact that he has everything, Ashraf feels lonely all the time. He is bored of his daily life routine. Few times he decided to commit suicide but he failed. His last attempt to kill himself was that Monday morning November the 14^th. He started to cut his vessels in his left wrist but the story did not end on that day. It only began.

On that evening we held at our house an evangelistic event. Our disciples invited their  friends to watch a Christian movie “ God is Love “. We had around 30 people. Ashraf's sister invited him to come and watch the movie and he did. After the movie Ashraf came to talk to Rajai and had many questions to ask. He told Rajai  that he tried to kill himself on that morning and showed him the cuts in his wrist. While Rajai was sharing with him the Good news, he started to cry and immediately he received Jesus as his personal savoir. His life was saved twice at the same day and his story with Jesus began. A week later we started a weekly follow up group with 7 new believers including Ashraf and his brother and sister .All Glory to Him!

December 19^th, we had the famous Christian Arabic singer Lydia Shadeed as our special guest at our home meeting. More than 35 people attended and one of them who was a Muslim, had many questions to ask after we finished the program. He is still arguing about the crucifixion So please pray for Zaid! 

The meeting with Sister Lydia at our house

30.12.2005 we had a dinner party  and a meeting with our disciples to Praise the Lord for what he did in 2005 and to Evaluate our ministry together. It was fun and blessed at the same time.

Encouragement time by lighting a candle for one another and speaking words of blessings

• Sports Ministry:

We are planning along with our 3 AIA Stinters a training course for the churches on how to use Sports as a tool to reach others.

June 2006 we will be hosting a big sport event. We will have Christian NBA players coming to play against Israeli and Palestinian teams. We will arrange to have them play against a joined Israeli-Palestinian team to promote peace and where it really comes from. This venture will be the talk of the hour in every home in Israel and the West bank. Please pray that the Lord will use this great and unique opportunity to bring many to His Kingdom.

• Radio

 Our Radio broadcast is still on Radio Bethlehem 2000. Please pray for openness in the hearts of the listeners and that we would be able to continue our broadcast for another year.

Praise the Lord for

•  For Farah who turned 3! She is a blessing to us and we are thankful to God who is taking care of her  while she did many dangerous adventures.

• We bought a Mini Van. We took a bank loan to add to the amount of money we were blessed  to receive as love gifts. The car arrived on time to be used for the Christmas campaign . We are happy with it.

• For our disciples and their love and commitment to our Lord. Also we praise him for our great relation together as a family.

•  The new follow up group that started few weeks ago.

• The Successful launching of the Distribution campaign. Over 12,000 Packages have been given out in the first week of it.

Please pray for  :

• For continuation of the Evangelistic campaign. Also for Rajai as he leads this huge responsibility so the Lord will grant him wisdom and power.
• The great financial needs for this project. So far we have 25% of the Materials. We trust the Lord to provide 250,000 USD so we can have the rest.
• Samar suffers from eyes problem that keeps causing her chronic erosion . She needs a laser surgery for one eye to heal one erosion, but it will not solve the problem totally.
• Rajai suffers from a back pain and some other minor health problems. Pray for complete healing.
• For our disciples personal life. many of them are in the process of making decisions regarding marriage.
• We have to raise 800 $ every month to have our support 100% . Also we will be paying 200 $ a month for the next 2 years to pay our Car loan. Please pray that the Lord  provides.