Dear Israel Benevolence Fund,

“We thank you so much for your love gifts to us. You cannot imagine how timely this check was.

Recently we lost a man in our congregation that was 52 years old. It was shocking to us. He was running and had a cardiac arrest …his wife and his daughter are so needy right now. Your check helped us to help them when the last thing they needed to think about was finances…..

Also our widow in the south, ***, who we regularly help…when we asked her how things were going financially, she said, “Just barely getting by.” An extra amount this month just made her let out a sigh of relief.

Lastly is our widow here in our midst with the five children….her washing machine broke down, and because of IBF’s gift, we have extra funds so she can purchase another one…..

This is so rewarding to be able to help the needy. Your love to
us is so meaningful.

When you come…, give me a time frame that we can have others come to meet you and be available.  **** and I are at your service.

Blessings on you and your wonderful congregation.”

Love,

Friends in Israel

[Because of your generous hearts, three Israeli widows and their families recently received  encouragement of the L-rd's care for them.   Thank you, Mighty Defenders, from IBF.]

Over 400,000 families in Israel suffer from “nutritional insecurity,” a euphemistic term for “hunger.” 28% of Israeli citizens, or 1,600,000 people are living in poverty. Among them are more than 600,000 hungry children. Those experiencing “nutritional insecurity” eat smaller portions, skip meals and, in extreme cases, don’t eat for a whole day. Diets may be high in carbohydrates and lacking or almost devoid of meat, dairy products, vegetables and fruit. In Israel, 22% of families are deemed moderately insecure and 8% suffer from severe insecurity.

A family’s situation is considered moderately insecure when the parents deprive themselves of food to ensure their children get what they need. In families whose situation is severe, the children are deprived as well. 60% of nutritionally insecure are Jewish, 20% are Arab, and 20% new immigrants. 80% of nutritionally insecure people reported a deterioration in their situation in the last 22 years, as Israel economic conditions have deteriorated. About 24% of Israelis are forced to make choices between food and other expenses such as mortgage, rent, medicine, heating and electricity. About half choose to get along with less food. The ‘poverty line’ in Israel in 2002 was NIS 4,500 a month ($937.50) for the average Israeli family of four – mother, father and two children.

Signs of how severe the problem is are all too apparent on the streets of Israel. In Jerusalem, for example, nearly 1,000 people a day come to four soup kitchens at which hot meals are served. It is also commonplace to see older men and women picking through the garbage at outdoor markets in Israel’s cities. The collapse of the economy has taken a great toll on the lives of Israel’s poorest families, and many children from middle-class families are now joining their ranks. Unemployment in Israel is around 20%, and the difficult economic situation has taken its toll on huge numbers of Israelis.”

The above is a report from Israel News Agency– and many Jewish still people continue to experience poverty in the Land.

Israel Benevolence Fund sends the money you give to take care of practical needs to bless Israelis, along with helping local Messianic Jewish believers feed the poor in Israel. A local ministry wrote, “Our two soup kitchens in Haifa and Upper Nazareth continue to receive an increasing flow of referrals, many of them from municipal social workers. We now distribute 3300-3500 meals a month.”

When the Jewish believers came from Jerusalem to speak with Rav Shaul (Paul), Rav Shaul wrote, “All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.” (Galatians 2:10)

G-d takes note of what we do out of love for Him. He sent the angel to Cornelius, and the angel said, “‘Cornelius, God has heard your prayer and remembered your gifts to the poor.” (Acts 10:31)

Thank you for what you do for the least of these, Yeshua’s physical brothers and sisters.

“We are blessed to be able to minister to the 23 single parent families in the Beer Sheva Congregations. Some of the women are widowed, some divorced, and some were abandoned. We long to see God manifested in their lives as “a Father to the fatherless, a defender of widows”. We believe that one characteristic of the Body of Messiah, to a large extent, should be that manifestation of the Father’s love in the life of single parent families. We can’t do this work without your help!

We also run a support group for single mothers with a Russian-speaking background. This is going very well as it presents the women with an opportunity to grow in their trust of the Lord and become a supportive presence in each other’s lives. It also validates their life and spiritual experience, helping to restore dignity to their lives. Single mothers and widows are also offered an opportunity for prayer counseling designed to bring deeper emotional healing, as well as receiving regular house visitations where prayer support and friendly council are given.”

“Every year in Spring we [in Israel as well as Messianic believers throughout the world]enter into a very festive season, and every Israeli household is preparing for Passover by cleaning their houses from any traces of leaven, since during the Passover Feast the only bread we eat is Matza bread (Unleavened bread) just like the one the Israelites ate during their exodus from Egypt. Every family gathers together for Passover night with all the relatives and they read from the Haggadah (the retelling of the story of exodus).

It’s a beautiful tradition that the Jewish people managed to preserve even during the 2000 year Diaspora. And every year there’s a wonderful opportunity for each one in Israel to hear and remember what G-d has done for His people when He delivered them from bondage and brought them into the Promised Land.

For us as believers, it is especially powerful to celebrate this Festival, because we see it as a shadow [symbol] of the fulfillment we have in Yeshua the Messiah, who delivered us out of bondage and slavery.

“It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians. Then the people bowed down and worshiped.” Exodus 12:27

“For Messiah, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed…” 1 Corinthians 5:7

Each year we have a wonderful opportunity to help those who are in need and we praise God that this year is no exception. This week we are doing a project together with [others in Israel].  We will be handing out gift vouchers along with food parcels for 150 people, and blessing them during this holiday season.

The following day we will be doing another project and blessing approximately 200 people with also gift parcels, and this time we’ll have a unique opportunity to also share with them about this Festival and its significance.

Please pray for these projects, for open and receptive hearts that God will be able to touch and lives He’ll have a chance to change.”

[This report is from some friends in Israel.]

“Over the past years, we had the wonderful and humbling experience of helping the needy through our numerous humanitarian projects. We’ve seen the hearts and lives of people touched as they joyfully and thankfully receive the help we’re able to offer them because of you.

Feeding the hungry is only one part of our calling as believers and followers of Yeshua. The other part is also clothing the poor.

So with great excitement we launched a new project and are now opening a new one of its kind clothing distribution center in Ashdod, that will provide help for single mothers, handicapped people, elderly and poor and needy families, not just from our city but also from the surrounding area.

We trust that this is something that can make a significant difference in our city, simply by demonstrating G-d’s love in action through reaching out a helping hand with practical aid.”

A recent gathering  to celebrate Hanukkah and  bless Israeli Holocaust  survivors

According to figures presented by the National Insurance Institute and other Israeli agencies, out of the 250,000 Holocaust survivors living in Israel in 2007, 20,000 receive reparations from Germany and another 40,000 are paid stipends by the state. The overwhelming majority, however, receive no support whatsoever. Under Israeli law, those survivors who arrived in Israel after 1953 are ineligible for government benefits.

To bless 5,000 Holocaust survivors in a very practical way, we purchased 2,500 high-quality fleece jackets and hats.   2,500 jackets have been distributed in Akko, Haifa, Jerusalem, Ashdod and Tel-Aviv.

Many people came to hug and thank us: “You did something fantastic for us; the people were so touched… May God bless you!”

“Thank God somebody cares for us – I had no warm jacket for this winter,” said Leah from Jerusalem. She survived the ghettos in Nazi occupied Ukraine and can’t make ends meet on her own.

Michael another ghetto survivor:  “You warmed our hearts, it’s not just the jackets, it is your attitude and love that we feel. Thank you from all of my heart!”

David  did not have his own winter coat but was wearing a woman’s coat given to him last year. He and his wife Asia just celebrated their 49th wedding anniversary. Asia cried at the gift of a coat for David.

Luba  is very poor.  Her husband has Alzheimer’s and is in a facility– all her money goes to care for him. She lives in an apartment that is furnished- nothing is hers except her clothes and photo album from her family in the war. She was very grateful for the coat as she did not have one for winter.

Another survivor  asked us to thank the sponsors for the warm fleece jacket, while another ghetto survivor was happy to receive such a beautiful gift for Chanukah and said: “Let the generous giver’s hand be prosperous, be blessed!”

“This Chanukah gift given by you is a proof of the caring heart and loving attitude towards us, the Holocaust survivors. Thank you for this.”

Thank you so much for donating to this special project, as we show these courageous survivors that they have not been forgotten. We are working together with others to be  your representatives of love and compassion here in the land.

“Not unto us, O L-RD, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory, for Thy mercy, and for Thy truth’s sake.”(Psalm 115)

Israel over the last few months has had wonderful rain– the best rain there has been in 50 years!

“These are pictures in the [Israeli] desert.  ’The desert shall bloom, the Scripture says, “and it will bring forth flowers and it will bring forth fruit.’”  And so [on my recent trip to Israel in Nov. 2009] we found these flowers along the way in the desert.”   Rabbi Ron

More water is still needed.  We’ve been asked to pray for steady rains that will soak into the ground and fill up the reservoirs.

There is a need for physical rain, and there is also a need for spiritual rain.  Please pray for a wonderfully wet winter in Israel, with steady rains that the ground and cities can absorb.

Deuteronomy 11:14

¹⁴That I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil.

Hosea 6:2-4

²After two days will He revive us: in the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight.

³Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: His going forth is prepared as the morning; and He shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.

Yaakov (James) 5:7

⁷Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.

In Isaiah 51, The L-rd has promised, “The LORD will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the LORD. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing.”

Yavne, Israel

“S”  is a 19-year old Israeli girl, who comes from a religious Jewish family in Yavneh.
When she was 12 years old she accidentally stumbled upon a Christian program on TV and while she didn’t understand any of what she saw, she felt touched by God.

“S” then ordered a new testament in English, and tried reading it with a dictionary. It was very difficult for her to understand, so she stopped, but the seed of God’s word was still sown into her heart.

She was drafted into the army and there she met our dear brother “C”, who himself got saved after hearing the gospel for the first time from one of our evangelists at a New-Age festival. He quickly became very passionate about reaching his generation with the gospel of Yeshua.

He began sharing the gospel with her and quoting the Tanach (Jewish Bible). She felt as though it began making sense to her for the first time. But the more it did, the more afraid she was to receive it, because that would mean that her family, as well as the rest of the nation is deceived.

So afraid of making a mistake, she prayed one night before going to bed and asked God to show her whether Yeshua is truly the messiah of Israel and whether the nation was deceived into rejecting Him.

That night “S”  had a dream. She dreamed that her brother, who is not a believer, went to heaven and when he came back described what he saw. In the dream, he described angels that he saw, the glory and the power of God that fills the heavens. He described the streets of gold and the pearly gates. He told her that he saw God sitting in glory and His voice was like thunder and lightning.

Then she asked, “Did you see Yeshua? He said, “Of course! He is seated at the right hand of God. He is the Son of God and the Messiah of Israel!”

When she woke up, she knew beyond any doubt that everything was the truth and God had just answered her question. “S”  went on to give her heart to Yeshua.

She is a devoted believer in Yeshua who testifies to all the soldiers she serves in the army with, to her relatives and friends. She is also continually witnessing to her family through the scriptures, revealing to them Yeshua the Messiah.

“S”  is now a part of our congregation, and has already even brought her sister to one of the services.

And we are witnessing how the Lord has opened the city gates of Yavneh through an 18-year old believer. It’s amazing to see how God is using our youth to reach such difficult places. Hallelujah! The word of God is returning to cities where it was rejected by some 2000 years ago. “

* Names have been changed.

The global financial crisis has affected many countries and many layers of society. Israel didn’t escape its consequences, and unfortunately we see every day that the ones who are suffering most are the poor.

Poverty is rising in Israel and we as believers are called to help. Every year as the new school year is approaching; many families in need are facing many difficulties. Expenses suddenly grow as the children prepare to return to school and need many school supplies.  One of the largest expenses is usually a school backpack. Its average cost is about $50. That is an amount many needy families we help simply do not have to spend on one school backpack.

We were so thrilled when our friends from the Jerusalem-based ministry “Jerusalem Institute of Justice” (JIJ) generously donated 800 student school backpacks, and we were able to distribute them to many needy families with children in Ashdod.

It was so moving to see how such acts of kindness open people’s hearts and fill them with thankfulness. One example is a single mother raising her four children herself.


When she heard that it was in fact Christians who generously give, help and support Israel through projects like these, she was thanking us with tears in her eyes, that there are Christians out there who haven’t forgotten Israel and are such a blessing to people like her.


Here is another powerful example of what Humanitarian Outreach can do. While handing out backpacks, we had a chance to meet [government official and his assistant], along with another municipality official who’s in charge of kids work. They are quite young and I felt we connected really well with them, and so we spent two hours in a coffee shop sharing about our faith, witnessing to them and speaking about the future of our city. We had a really wonderful time.

This is one of the many examples of how Humanitarian Outreach through believers can open doors and build bridges with the local authorities. As we spent time with [government officials] , I received a word that God is joining us even in bonds of friendship. That they will grow in their career fields and also in influence and we will grow in the work of the Kingdom, but right now we are laying a foundation for future cooperation and work in freely spreading the gospel without hindrances, as the Lord is granting us favor with key people.

I truly sense that this is history in the making, events are taking place that have never taken place. It is a new and a glorious season in the body of Messiah in Israel!

You can also be a part of it, through partnering with us in helping the poor and the needy in Israel.