Quick Look at a Fun Stop

Recently I took a vacation to visit my kids and grandkids in California!

One family lives near Modesto, CA, the rest live down near Los Angeles.

This makes for the looong drive between, on Highway 99.

My daughter made me aware of a place they found by accident when making the same drive up to see her brother's family near Modesto....Bravo Farms Cheese Factory!

I stopped and really enjoyed the fun things they had to see, plus had a great hamburger at their  homey little cafe.

The Tree House was especially fun to climb!

Naomi and Eddy came to My Home!!! (away from home!)

This is a picture of my daughter Naomi and her son 3 1/2 year oldEddy!!!
They are sitting by one of the beautiful tile signs on the walls of NYC Subway system:

A couple of months ago I learned the Rabbi and his wife, from Beit Simcha, were putting on a Messianic Praise Concert AND hosting a Messianic Passover for their congregation and other local churches in the Allentown, PA area.

I decided I would take 5 days off of work to attend the regular Shabbat Service and the CoffeeHouse concert on Saturday and then the Passover Seder the following Tuesday Eve.   I thought it would be very nice if Naomi could go with me!!!  I could ask, all she could do was say, I'm sorry, I won't be able to come.  BUT she talked to Dan and they decided she and Eddy could come!

Yay! I made arrangements with Nomi to get my car (my great little Subaru Forester) prepared for the trip.
Then we prayed and asked God to please arrange loads for me so we could caravan with my truck and car to Allentown.  God did just that!  I got a load from Kentucky to Chicago on Thursday AM.  That morning Naomi left Eau Claire and met me in Bloomington, IL, I picked up my load and we drove to Pennsylvannia together!  We had 5 amazing days together, everything went as planned and God blessed every aspect of our time together. (Even the weather and where to park my truck!)

On Saturday we attended the morning service, then the "after service fellowship lunch" (an Oneg), then Nomi and Eddy went back to the truck to sleep, and in the evening was the Messianic Praise Concert.

On Sunday, we got up and drove 1 1/2 hours to Hoboken, NJ.  Took The Path train under the Hudson River and spent a day exploring Manhatten!! So fun!!  Looking close, you can see the Statue of Liberty in the background:

On Monday, we did a self guided tour of 7 Covered Bridges in the Allentown area.
In the evening The Blanks, the Rabbi's family invited us to their personal Passover Seder in their home, Passover began on Monday Eve.  It was wonderful, we also learned so much and enjoyed lots of conversation!

On Tuesday, we headed over to a truck stop in New Jersey to relax a bit and get ready for the Community Seder scheduled for the evening.  At both seder's the children are included looking for the Afikomen and checking to see if Elijah is at the door.  Eddy got to do both of these, he loved it!

This is a pic of my pastor Rabbi Glenn and his wife Pam, Naomi, Eddy, and me:

                                                                                 
The next morning (Wed) Nomi packed up and her and Eddy started on their two day journey home. 
It was a perfect visit, eveything went so well, we had a wonderful time!!

How I found Beit Simcha

Last summer I dropped a late load in North Philly and needed a place to park and sleep for the night.  Up the road about 20 miles was a Plaza on the I-476 Turnpike.  Went right to sleep and woke Saturday morning ready for my daily walk.  On my walk I walked passed a church....a Christian Missionary and Alliance Church.  It was Saturday Morning , so I thought I might go to their service the next morning.  Then I saw another sign in their yard that said, "Beit Simcha", "A Messianic Jewish Congregation", my interest was instantly perked, I had been asking God to lead me to a place where I could learn about Him and become involved in serving others.  Thirty-one years before this we had made a trip to Israel, where I fell in love with the country of Israel and the Hebrew language and became interested in Jews finding Jesus, so a Messianic Congregation was very interesting to me.

Long story short - I fell in love with the Jewish way of living in the Messianic way.  As the Rabbi of Beit Simcha said, The Messianics find Yeshua in EVERYTHING in the בתנ"ך‎ Tanach (Old Testament) and
הברית החדשה HaVrit HaChadasha (New Testament).

I have spent the last 6 months getting back to Allentown, PA as often as possible to attend services on Shabbat AM.  I have learned so much about the Lord and the New Testament's heritage in the Jewish Old Testament Scripture.