Friday, August 26, 2011

Catching Up

It has been a few months since we have posted anything on this blog, but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy. In fact, we have been to busy to stop and catch up on our blog.

So, what's happening with Tikvat Yakov in Israel?

All of our six compassion centers are fully operational and we continue to provide food bags for approximately 400 families a month and provide clothing to over 500 families a month.

In addition to being able to provide financial support, which is always welcome (and needed now more than ever - details below), you can now provide material support. Details about what type of items you can send are listed on the Jacob's Hope website, on the donations page. Material items can be sent to:

Jacob's Hope
Attn: Bryan May
5141 Craig Rath Blvd
Midlothian, VA 23112

We are also looking to purchase a building in Israel which will serve as a warehouse to store and distribute material goods for our compassion centers in Israel. It will also serve as a job training center to help needy people learn the skills needed to get employment in Israel. There will be apartments for volunteers to live in while on work trips to Israel, including building projects and healthcare projects. This facility may even be used for conferences and to house weekly congregational meetings.

We are also pursuing other opportunities here in Israel, but I'll save those details for another post once our plans have some more momentum behind them.

The High Holy Days are coming up fast and we are looking to bless the people of Israel in special ways. In Tel Aviv, we are distributing blankets with our partners Agape Ministries. In Akko, Kamiel and Maalot, we are preparing special meals with the help of Rivers of Living Waters.

Just a reminder, as always, none of these things can happen without your support, and we want to thank all of you who faithfully give to Jacob's Hope or support a Jacob's Hope Team member. Unfortunately, things have been happening so fast in Israel, that our compassion team (that's us) has not been able to raise the support needed for their salary, office and travel expenses. Even with a supplement coming from Jacob's Hope we are only able to cover about half of our budgeted salary after we have taken care of the necessary office and travel expenses.

Although, Michael had been working in order to cover our personal expenses, he lost his job this summer and has not been able to find work here. We are not even sure if he will have the time to work with all of the new projects we are looking to take on here in Israel. So, now more than ever, it is important for us to raise support. We spent a few weeks this summer speaking at a few places to raise funds, and were able to get some much needed donations, but very little in the way of the long term commitments we need in order to continue our work here.

Please consider making a long term commitment so that we can continue all of the work we have started here in Israel, and continue to bless the people in this land through all of the projects and plans that God has called us do. Please click here to fill out an online commitment form to support this ministry.