Way back before I got close to a computer I ended up working in Israel for a while. A few years after the event, using my Commodore Amiga computer and dot matrix printer I wrote the story of my, actually our, time there. I subsequently updated that document to a Word format and now it's time to blog it so that if the Word file or the few hard copies disappear at least there is something online that might encourage someone one day. My apologies for some formatting issues!

As a Christian I had no idea of what the future held for me, or family, when in July 1986 I was made redundant from my job as a contract draughtsman.

Being summertime we didn't worry too much since after being made redundant we went on holiday for two weeks confident that God was in control and that I could soon get another job after my return, how wrong we were, at least on that count!

After returning from holiday, despite many letters, telephone calls and a couple of interviews, no offer of a job was forthcoming and we realized that the situation was getting rather desperate as a couple of weeks turned into a couple of months, the only hint of things to come at this stage was a vague enquiry from a London agency I had contacted a couple of years previously asking if I would be prepared to go to work in Israel. It is part of a contractor's make-up to say yes to almost anything initially, turning things down later if necessary, so naturally I said yes, I would go if they wanted me.

The summer changed to autumn with still no sign of a job and I recall one particular Sunday morning in our home church of St. Marks, when, after singing "Great is Thy faithfulness", David Brown reassured me that the Lord had not forgotten us as a family and would come to our aid in His time.

At least being out of work gave plenty of scope for prayer and bible reading and I remember one occasion, when after reading through the whole of Hebrews in one sitting (the only time I have ever managed it) I had a time of prayer during which the Lord plainly spoke to me and said that He would open the right door for us!

With that in mind, imagine my excitement on Friday November 14th when I received a letter offering a job in Israel as an aircraft design engineer to work on a new jet fighter for the Israeli Air Force being funded by the Americans.

Working on the assurance of what the Lord had told us and, after calling a prayer meeting with some close friends at St. Marks', we believed it right that I should go out and Denise and our two girls, Gillian and Natalie, would join me as soon as I had found suitable accommodation.

So on Thursday, 27th November I traveled to Heathrow airport ready to travel to Israel on the first stage of a foreign adventure!

At Heathrow I was given a ticket by the agency representative who saw me through the checking-in procedure (that was the easy bit!). Before being given a boarding pass for the aircraft (I was flying EL AL, the Israeli national airline) all passengers had to endure security screening by Israeli security guards. Questions were fired at me asking who was I going to work for, where would I stay, did I know anyone of Arab origin etc., then the guard walked away only for another one to come up and ask all the same questions again, but eventually the guard said Thank you Sir, have a nice flight"!

So at last the flight got airborne and we were soon cruising at 30000ft.

Arrival at Ben Gurion International Airport, Israel, was uneventful. I was met by another agency representative who put me in a taxi that duly deposited me at a Tel-Aviv hotel around midnight that I had been booked into for the first three weeks of my stay.

Early Friday morning I went down to breakfast and met several other English job shoppers, one of whom also came from Bristol. I spent the first morning relaxing on the beach which was only about 150 yards from the hotel, which I had also discovered was in the red light district of Tel-Aviv.

For lunch I thought I would eat out at Atarim Square, in the tourist area of the seafront, so I took a seat at an open-air restaurant and ordered lunch.

I had hardly begun to eat when a woman approached my table and asked if I was on holiday and could she join me at the table to which I replied No! both times. She said that if I changed my mind her name was something or other and I could find her in "the Gypsy" which I later discovered was a seafront bar where prostitutes operated! and I still hadn't been in Israel a day.

A stroll on Friday afternoon to find Beit Emmanuel (a hostel / church run by C.M.J.) led me around the back streets of the poor Arab quarter of the city, Jaffa, where a local English speaking Arab asked me if I was lost (I was studying a street map at the time) and would I like a cup of tea since he had guessed I was English. I knew that my destination was just around the corner so I said, "No thank you, I'm going to Emmanuel House" "Ah yes" he replied, "I know what they say there, that Jesus is the Messiah". It seems he'd heard the good news and a cup of tea with him could have been an interesting experience but I'm afraid I'd had enough for my first day and so ducked out of that one.

A few moments later I was safely in the grounds of Emmanuel House, where I made myself known to the pastor's wife (he was out!) enjoyed a cup of tea and rested there before returning to the hotel. 

                                       Beit Emmanuel

 

Saturday morning I returned to Emmanuel to share their worship and fellowship and I also met some other English Christians who were working at the same place I was to be, one of these friendships was to provide great help and support in my first few weeks abroad and I was grateful to the Lord for providing someone I would be able to turn to in time of need.

 

The first day of work was Sunday 30th November, the Israeli weekend being Friday and Saturday. I had already been given lots of forms to fill in regarding my final security clearance amongst which was a form asking me to list important events in my life, such as leaving school, foreign holidays, getting married, having children, etc. On this list I included becoming a Christian in May 1983 and at the subsequent security meeting, most things on this form were ignored whilst the Israeli security officer asked lots of questions about how did I know Jesus was alive, how does God speak to us and I'm sure he probably had more questions about the Christian faith after the interview than before it! I thought "Well, if I get sent home now at least I'm sure it was worth it".

It seems I passed the final security hurdle and was put to work trying to build the aircraft and help get it airborne and so it was that the rest of my initial stay in Israel passed relatively uneventfully, if you call weekend trips to Jerusalem and the colourful sights of Tel Aviv and Jaffa uneventful, until I returned home for the Christmas break on the 19th December.

The Christmas holiday period was spent trying to organize things at home, such as selling the car,getting someone to look after our two cats, Bill and Ben, and four goldfish as well as someone to look after the house and all our mail.

With lots of help from our friends from St. Mark's Church we just about sorted everything out so Ireturned to Israel early in the New Year with the priority of finding an apartment to rent so that Denise, Gillian and Natalie could join me soon as possible. I landed back at Tel Aviv at 4 a.m., cleared customs before 5 a.m. and got back to the hotel in time for a quick wash and breakfast before leaving for work at 6a.m. By lunchtime I felt pretty shattered and I learnt why that flight was known amongst job shoppers as the red-eye special!

Talking to job shoppers, it seemed right to try for an apartment in a town called Bat-Yam (meaning "Daughter of the Sea") about 4 miles south of Tel-Aviv and as you might guess is right on the coast, rents here were quite reasonable, and was a favorite beach area for Tel Aviv-ites. Lots of other English people also lived there and it was easy to get a bus from there to the school where we intended to send Gillian as well as the factory supplied worker buses for me.

After much foot slogging I was eventually offered a reasonable apartment, so I phoned home, said I would be moving into it in a couple of days and they could now buy their air tickets to join me. So I booked out of my hotel with my bulging suitcase and went to the apartment, with the estate agent handling the deal, to sign the lease agreement with the owner. However when we arrived there was a heated exchange in Hebrew between the agent and the owner and it was only after a few minutes that my irate agent informed me that the owner was now asking for six months advance rent when we had previously agreed two months and that he also intended to remove all cutlery and cooking utensils and I would have to provide my own since I could not be guaranteed to keep them kosher.

So that particular deal fell through and I moved into another hotel that was considerably more expensive than the previous one and one of the first things for me to do was to ring home again and say "Don't buy those tickets yet!"

It didn't take me long to move out of there and into an apartment hotel which was really a high rise block of small self-contained apartments intended for short stay holidaymakers, although some job shoppers actually lived in them for several years and although I did not particularly like it, I phoned home again and informed Denise once again that I'd found our new "home".

It was my Beit Emmanuel friends (from Bournemouth, England) John and Maureen, who put mealmost immediately onto the local tourist office and the chap who ran it also had a sideline in letting apartments. When I managed to get hold of him, since the tourist office seemed to be closed six and a half days a week, he was able to instantly offer me a choice of two apartments with vacant possession.

He took me to the first one which I at once felt was the right place to be, so I said I would take it, so he gave me the key said I could move in tonight if I wished and we would sign an agreement when we got around to it, there was no rush. Not only was it much better than the original apartment, it was also $100US a month cheaper than the place I originally planned to take! I recalled again the Lord's faithfulness and provision for His children and scribbled, "Great is thy faithfulness" across my calendar for that day.

The apartment was quite spacious, clean and looked out over the beach and blue Mediterranean beyond.

Views from the apartment;

It was on one of these first weekends on my own that I was walking back from Beit Emmanuel one Saturday thinking "Lord, what am 1 doing here, thousands of miles from home, family and friends".

The street was empty of people except one man on the opposite side of the road about fifty yards away.

As I walked up, he crossed to the same side and made a beeline for me. From his appearance he was a poor man, probably in his thirties and he asked me for money for food. He said he was an African sleeping rough on the beach. Somehow we talked about the Lord and I felt God's sorrow for His people Israel. We talked for a few minutes before I gave him some shekels and he went on his way. I don't any of our clergy have ever had to pay their congregation to listen to them but perhaps I could claim a first!

So, finally, on the 22nd Jan. 1987, I met Denise, Gillian and Natalie at the airport and took them off to our new temporary home by the seaside. They arrived in the evening and the next day we strolled along the beach just before it got dark but that stroll was enough for Natalie to play chasing waves but of course, she tripped and got wet as they caught her!

For the first few weeks of their stay, once the rainy season had passed, lots of time was spent on the beach and exploring the markets with Maureen and another English girl, Pat, whose family had also recently arrived in similar style to ourselves. We also tried to get to Beit Emmanuel as a family but found it difficult since it was too far for us to walk, and buses don't run on Saturday and taxis were always trying to rip you off. The novelty of having the beach on our doorstep began to wear thin and everyone’s patience began to decline in direct proportion to the increase in temperature and humidity.

Natalie went to a local kindergarten but cried every day for three weeks (it didn't help that no-one spoke English!) until we really felt we couldn't send her anymore. During her time there, however, the festival of Purim arrived (see the Old Testament book of Esther) and Natalie was dressed up as a princess for the occasion but a more tearful princess you never did see!

Gillian fared much better at Tabeetha School, Jaffa (where Jonah was landed). The school was run by the Church of Scotland and, although the main language was English, everything was usually translated into Hebrew and Arabic, such was the mixture of nationalities. Unfortunately this meant everything took three times as long to explain, consequentially less actual work was done although Gillian made plenty of international friends amongst them Norwegians, Americans, Chileans Chinese, Spanish, as well as the local Israeli and Arab children.

Our visits to Beit Emmanuel were infrequent and our faith probably suffered as a result. It was with some relief that we looked forward to the approach of Easter and the chance to escape from the pressure of Israel with a week in Cyprus.

Cyprus is only 40 minutes flying time from Israel, but it seemed a world away with it's greenery, right hand drive cars and snow up in the mountains. Car hire was really cheap in Cyprus, costing less for one week than a weekend did in Israel and with a much better quality car. So we hired a Mazda 323 and took a visit to Pathos, Nicosia and the Troodos mountains as well as the famous lace making village of Lef-Kara. The week passed by quite quickly as holidays often do and before long we were winging our way back to Israel to prepare ourselves for the visit of my mother and a wartime friend of hers who were coming out to visit for two weeks. Our guests arrived and we hired a car for a weekend and set off on Friday going south to Masada, the Dead Sea, Jericho and Jerusalem and on Saturday we covered Galilee, Acre, and Nazareth.

The drive to Masada, a desert fortress built by Jewish zealots who were put under siege by the crumbling Roman empire, was pretty spectacular and when we arrived at the Masada car park we found we still had a fair climb up to the encampment itself, which was no mean feat for our visitors who are both quite large women into their sixties, with the sun beating down on us with little relief from overhanging rocks. 

                                            Masada camp

My mother and her friend returned home and the weeks ticked by with increasing speculation that the whole project I was working on was about to be cancelled and that we would all be sent home, something I suspect Denise was constantly praying for! as she was finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the pressure and becoming more homesick, thinking of our empty, home back in Worle, locked up and unlived in. Denise maintained her friendship with Pat, who I mentioned earlier, although by now John and Maureen had had enough and returned to England after five years in Israel. Pat lived a few minutes walk away from us and had a little girl called Jessica, who at least gave Gillian and Natalie someone different to play with.

Denise's homesickness eased a little when it was her parents turn to be our guests for a fortnight in July, although I think they didn't realize just how hot it would be at that time of year. Again, whilst they were with us we hired a car and planned a weekends driving itinerary to take in as much as possible.

However, when I picked up the hire car I discovered that there was to be a national petrol tanker drivers strike that weekend which meant that all filling stations would close that Thursday evening and not reopen until Sunday morning. This resulted in me chasing around trying to get petrol whilst there was still some to be had, which I eventually achieved although it meant joining a long queue and hoping the pumps didn't run dry before it was my turn. Driving around trying to find a filling station I had managed to get lost somewhere semi-rural and didn't have a clue in which direction home lay.

So it was a case of just driving around until I saw some signs to somewhere I recognized and eventually got back safely without wasting too much precious fuel.

So our traveling that weekend was a little curtailed although probably more relaxed than planned and included a night at a hotel in the desert town of Beersheba which gave Granddad plenty of time in the swimming pool with the girls. Having learnt from experience, our visit to Masada was made via the cable car and we also floated in the Dead Sea, something the girls didn't enjoy, although I must admit the temperature was really scorching and going in the sea was like having a hot bath in greasy water!

The return of Denise's parents to England brought back homesickness. We had already been in touch with St. Marks School who confirmed that places would be available for Gillian and Natalie in January 1988 when we intended to return home but they also said that the girls could start back in September 1987 if we returned earlier. So it was that we agreed they go back and on August 7th they flew out to return to home comforts. At the same time it was announced that project was to be drastically cut back, with the result that hundreds of job shoppers were given their notice. Fortunately, the area in which I was working was virtually unaffected and the twenty or so job shoppers in our office were to be kept on. After I had helped see them off at the airport I made my way back to Jaffa and was stood on a bus stop as I watched their flight pass overhead and I confess to some relief, knowing they were going back where they were happy and I could concentrate on the job of living and working there without the extra pressures that I found with them there. 

It was only a couple of weeks later, at the end of August, that the Israeli government decided to completely cancel the project and us remaining job shoppers were given two weeks notice.

Our Israeli boss tried to get us to work normally even though our work was never to be made and he soon realized the futility of it and instructed us instead to tie up any loose ends and leave it at that.

Meanwhile the trade unions (even in Israel) were actively trying to get the government to change its mind about the project and for about four days all the workers (except us job shoppers) went off in buses to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and other main towns causing as much disruption as they could and protesting outside the Knesset which was all to no avail. Whilst they were off, we were left unsupervised and with no work, we held our own small parties and did crosswords for the duration. The Israeli's then turned their attention to the factory and draped the half-built aircraft in our hangar, and the main hangar itself, in large black flags. The factory security forces moved quickly to remove the unfinished aircraft to a more secure place to prevent sabotage.

The workers also barricaded everyone inside the factory, including us, and threatened not to let anyone in or out over the weekend. The threat lasted most of the day but late in the afternoon they relented and with a sigh of relief we made it home for the weekend.

Fortunately, it was decided that we would not have to report to work for the last three days but we would still be paid.

So, on our last day we had a party in the office with the Israelis, the vast majority of whom we had become firm friends with, and they presented us each with an inscribed pen as a memento of our time in Israel. The pens themselves may not have been expensive but the thought behind the gifts really touched us and we were all lost for words, especially since their jobs were uncertain also.

I had arranged a flight home for the 15th. September (so I could be home for our wedding anniversary a few days later) and since I had several days to spare now, I decided to head south to the Red Sea resort of Eilat, world famous for its coral reef and scuba diving.

Eilat is about 200 miles south of Tel Aviv most of which is a lonely drive through the Negev desert with very little habitation.

There was a regular convoy of buses from Tel Aviv which left at midnight, and it was for one of these that I purchased a ticket, although the man at the ticket office told me I wouldn't get a seat (bringing back memories of British rail!).

Tel Aviv bus station is not very organized and at midnight, dotted around in various places, were the buses that were to make up the convoy. Several bus drivers wouldn't let me on their bus for some reason and sent me scurrying from one bus to another until at last I boarded one along with some other last minute passengers and I even managed to get a seat, ready for the long drive with only a brief stop at a snake farm service area to stretch our legs.

We pulled into Eilat around 5.30 a.m., and I trooped to the seafront where a considerable number of young people were still asleep on the beach since it was pretty warm even at night and was much cheaper than a hotel! At the waters edge large shoals of tropical fish were breaking the water, presumably to catch small flying insects, and for me to stand in the warm sea and have these fish swimming around your legs was another fascinating experience.

Eventually I made my way out of town to a campsite, which consisted of various sizes of triangular shaped plywood huts which, in my case, housed a bed on each side of the door in one end, a shelf at the other end, a window in one wall and an air conditioning unit. All these huts were arranged in neat rows and painted blue and white, the Israeli national colours.

                                         Eilat camping!

Over the next couple of days I took a trial scuba diving lesson on the coral reef which was terrific, not only for the coral and fish, but also looking up to the surface of the water to see snorkelers looking down at you! I also took in a visit to an underwater observatory which was at the end of a pier structure from where you climbed down into a chamber about 20ft. round with lots of portholes from which you could observe the seabed without getting your feet wet.

In Eilat it was very difficult to stay cool because even in the shade there was a warm, stifling breeze blowing, which pushed up my consumption of Coca-Cola several hundred percent.

All too soon I returned to Bat-Yam and made the final preparations to return home. Despite selling off some of my possessions my bags were crammed full as I made my way to the airport for the last time.

So on September 15th. 1987 I flew out and in the nine months since my last trip home I had forgotten what a green land England was until we crossed the English coastline. It seemed I could reach out from the plane and touch the London post office tower as we circled round and touched down at Heathrow.

I may have been safely back from Israel, but my adventures were not over yet!

Under English tax laws, since I had worked abroad for less than a full year and had not paid income tax in Israel, I was liable to be taxed for several thousand pounds unless I left the U.K. within about five weeks and didn't return for another five weeks after that. So I knew that my return home was only temporary and I began in earnest to pray and seek another job to take me outside the U.K.

All my efforts were frustrated until about four weeks later I remember returning home from watching Bristol City play feeling rather desperate about my situation (even though I don't think they had lost!).

As I drove along I was speaking to the Lord as if He were in the passenger seat and I was saying "Help! I went to Israel because that's where I believed you wanted me but what do I do now?". The Lord gave me His peace and it was as though he said right there "Don't panic".

Two days later Dave Kennard, our churchwarden at the time, rang me and said he'd been praying about my situation and the Lord had reminded him that he knew someone in Dublin, and he felt, if I believed it right, that I should telephone this man and ask if I could stay with him for the five weeks. Dave had never met this man, Patrick, and had only phoned him a few times on Christian business but nevertheless he gave me his number and I telephoned Dublin. When I asked Patrick if I could stay, the response could not have been warmer if I'd been a long-lost brother. Although I couldn't go into the details over the telephone Patrick said to let him know when I was arriving and he would make the necessary arrangements, and by the following Tuesday I had left the UK. with barely a day to spare, Praise the Lord for being in control again!

It turned out that Patrick ran his own business making, cleaning, and repairing all types of window blinds. Just before my arrival he had injured his arm, making it difficult, if not impossible, to go up and down ladders removing and installing blinds which was such an important part of his job. I was more than happy to do that under his direction, doesn't St. Paul say that everyone should earn his keep! Not only had the Lord met my need but also Patrick's in keeping his business ticking over. Patrick's wife, Patricia, also deserves a mention for providing me with sustenance and a laundry service, as do his sons, Padraig and Cormack who doubled up in a bedroom in order for me to have a room to myself.

Patrick belonged to an independent church, having left the Roman Catholic Church, and was also very active in the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship International (FGBMFI), being a former president of a Dublin chapter. His witnessing put me to shame, and it was something else to watch him at work as he witnessed so freely to his clients and anyone else he came across. On more than one occasion I would wait outside a house in the van whilst he "popped inside for a couple of minutes" to measure up for new blinds, only for him to emerge a couple of hours later full of the terrific time of sharing he'd had and how keen the customer had been to listen and ask questions.

A couple of weeks into my stay in Ireland I felt that I should give Patrick's household a break from me, so I joined ˜An Oige, the Irish equivalent of our youth hostel association, and planned five days walking around the County Wicklow mountains, to the south of Dublin.

Not having gone to Ireland with a walking expedition in mind, I tended to trust more to good fortune than common sense, as I set out in mid-November with no waterproofs, only jeans, a shower-proof coat, an umbrella, and a backpack borrowed from Cormack. The second day of my tour was planned to be the most walking I would have to do in one day and that was certainly the way it turned out! As I set out the second day the heavens opened and I was quickly soaked through. I knew I had planned to cover about 24 miles that day up hill and down dale, so I pushed on regardless, and fortunately it was not too long before the sun came out and my jeans started to steam themselves dry.

Before setting out from Dublin I had obtained a list of which hostels were closed for the winter and planned my route around that. Late afternoon I arrived where the hostel should have been according to my map but I could see no trace of it as I followed the winding road alongside a lake, so I continued on for about a mile before turning back, deciding I must have missed it. I returned to where I thought it should be and managed to find someone to check the whereabouts of the hostel. They assured me it was up the road I had just returned from, so I turned around and started back again.

The joint owner was there carrying out major rebuilding work, with the floor torn up and many walls torn down. He assured me he had told the An Oige office he was closed for the winter and was quite apologetic and gave me a welcome cup of tea whilst I rested and pondered where I would be sleeping that night since it was now dark and raining again. We agreed it would be best for me to return to a village I'd passed through in the afternoon, being the nearest village around where I could get bed and breakfast. He offered me sympathy but little else since his only transport was a bicycle, so once again I set off down the road in the opposite direction to the way the walk was planned for three or four miles back to the village. The only consolations were a good hot shower, a comfortable bed and a hearty breakfast before setting out early again in rain to try to make up lost mileage. I hadn't gone far when it seemed as if an angel appeared in the form of an elderly man who pulled up in his car and offered me a lift although I hadn't even been hitching a lift. He drove me a few miles, just past the hostel where I should have stayed the night before and dropped me off before departing up a sidetrack. So I quickly made up that mileage!

The rest of my walk was relatively uneventful and I was glad to walk into the coastal town of Bray on Friday for lunch before getting the train back into Dublin and Patrick's home where a good feed and a couple of hours sleep saw me ready to face the world again.

As much as I enjoyed my time with Patrick, I still missed my family so with some relief I returned home at the end of November free from any tax liability and able to start looking for work a little nearer home. When I'd been looking for work abroad in September, several companies had offered me jobs in and around Bristol, which, of course I was not in a position to accept but now I wanted a job no one wanted me!

This was because Christmas was now close and no-one was thinking of employing staff only for them to be on holiday in a couple of weeks, so at least I enjoyed a longer Christmas break than most.

Fortunately, within the first couple of weeks of the New Year, 1988, I was offered two or three jobs, which meant I could actually return home every night.

Now I've been back a couple of years and often look back with good memories of where the Lord has led us in our Israel and Ireland saga and think of the lessons we learnt from the experience and wonder what else we may go into in the future. I think of God's provision, faithfulness and plans for each of our lives, God's people faithfully worshiping in different countries, especially under difficult circumstances in Israel and living out their faith by opening their hearts and homes to others from different cultures. I think of those who stayed in Worle the whole time and probably, until now at least,

know little if anything of our adventure but have supported me and my family in prayer and practical ways especially during those dark days of unemployment that seem so long ago. Then, of course, I think of you reading this true story of God's love, guidance and provision, that you may wonder and ask questions of some of the things I have written. We are but an "ordinary" Christian family seeking to be in God's plan for our lives. Maybe you don't know this God who guides and encourages, if you want to ask questions please do, we would long that you too may proclaim 

"GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS".

AMEN

Robin Davidson