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Eitan and Orit
Kashtan
Missionaries
with The Master's Mission since 1990
Visit the
homepage of HaChotam
Publishing to learn of the translated and original Christian books,
magazines and music published in Hebrew. Here is a small sample.
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News From Israel
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YHaChotam –
Recently we published “The Big Book of questions and answers” by Sinclair
Ferguson. The book is a kind of guide in the Christian faith and can be used
for family or children’s classes in the church. We pray that the kids will
be able to learn more about God’s love and turn to Him through Jesus.
We also work on
a music CD for youth and adults. This project takes much effort.
- We now at the end of developing the interface concept for HaChotam’s web
site. It seems that it will have all the information and study tools as well
as a tool for communication between believers in Israel. Soon we will need
to hire someone to be the site manager. Please pray that God will give us
the right person. When we think about the site we think mainly about youth
and children. We would like them to spend their “computer time” within a
Christian site. We also want the site to be a help to those who seek to
learn the word of God.
YChurch
– Last month we had a Baptism of seven people! One of them was a 14 years
old girl Daria – Liel’s best friend and daughter of Anya – Orit’s best
friend. Another guy that was baptized is a deaf man from our church. We have
about 15 deaf people and this guy comes with his wife for several months and
what a joy it was to see him saved. Another man that was baptized on the
same Sabbath was a man that was deep in the alcohol and drags. When he was
addicted to drugs he left his family and become homeless. He was taken by a
house for homeless people and he heard about the Lord there. Alex, who works
for HaChotam goes to this home once a week, as part of his work with us and
teaches God’s word. What a blessing to see God’s work in this dark place
too.
- Please pray
for my dear friend Juju. Juju is an Arab Israeli lady. Juju suffer from MS.
Last month she was on her way out from the mall when the doors closed on her
and pushed her down. She broke her hip and now lies in her home after a long
surgery. It hearts her so much. Please pray for her.
Two of the guys
in Eitan’s youth group asked to be baptized. Boris is a nice young boy – 17
years old. He was part of a rock music band and left the band as he realizes
that he can not worship the Lord in one hand and worship the world in the
other.
You may
remember Yoni. A year and a half ago he found out that he has cancer. The
last year and a half were hard, but with God grace the doctors think that he
is clean now. He went through difficult time spiritually and recently
repented and turned to the Lord. Please pray for him and for Boris.
- Our pastor
Baruch is going to finish his work on December. Our church is looking for a
new pastor. Please pray for us and if you know of someone that you would
like to see him as your pastor please send him to us.
YFamily – Busy as
always. But what a privilege it is to serve God.
Last month was
very busy. There was a women conference that Orit was teaching in it. It was
for Christian Arab and Jewish ladies.
We met by the
Dead Sea for three days. Orit was teaching about prejudice. Part of the
teaching was a short video asking Jewish about Arabs and Arabs about Jews.
The next weekend we had a youth national conference for girls. About 40
girls from all over Israel came to hear God’s word. Orit and Liel were there
too. Orit was teaching about Rahab. Two other ladies were teaching about
Esther and about proverbs 31. We also had two hours of Q&A where we had a
panel of women answering the girl’s questions. They asked so many good
questions such as: How can I know who is the right guy for me? What to do
when I meet a nice guy with different doctrine? In what age can I start
dating? How to respect my mom even when we are arguing? And more….
On the next weekend there was a national youth conference for boys. About
100 boys came to it. Now it was Eitan and the boys turn to go -(Liel Ehud
and me stayed at home we were so sad so we had strawberries with whip cream
and ice cream… it was not easy). In the conference Eitan was teaching about
Epaphroditus. Alon helped with the music and computer and Amir was one of
the guys. They said that it was very good. Different than the girls they
also spent time running after a ball.
Alon is very happy in the place where he serves in the Air Force.
He also serves
in church with the young youth group and it is so nice to see how he loves
his group.
Amir passed all
the most difficult physical and mental tests for the army and is looking
forward for summer time (July) where he will join the army. We still don’t
know where he will be. He tries to join one of the elite units. Please pray
for him. We trust God will place Amir where he will serve Him.
Liel is in 9th
grade. Not in the best school. It is a local public school but it is good to
have her close so we can protect her. Please pray for her salvation.
Ehud had his
school report yesterday and got a “best student” certificate. He is a good
student and we are already praying for wisdom where to send him to study in
middle and high school. Please pray with us. Please pray for his salvation
as well.
Judah is a guy
that we know for 6 years. He lives in a children home. His parents have
mental problems. The last thing that they did is trying to bomb the biggest
church in Nazareth. His father sits now in jail. We used to have him with us
for the holydays and weekends till the manager of the children’s home was
worried about our Christian influence on him. Judah is 18 years old now. We
are allowed to share the gospel with him. Amir is in touch with him again
and he came for Sabbath meal with our family. Please pray that we will be
able to show God’s love to him, and that God will work in his heart.
We are thankful to you all for your prayers and love.
In Him
Eitan and Orit
Israel
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News From Israel
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Dear
friends in Christ,
We want to thank you for your prayers. We are so thankful to God to have
you and we appreciate your love and partnership.
It is the end of the summer vacation. The kids are back in school on
September 1st. But it is still so hot that even people like Orit
that likes summer and hot weather think that it is almost hard to breath on
this summer.
YChurch
– Eitan was busy with the youth, taking them for trips and work with them to
serve others. As an elder there is so much work to do. Our church has 90%
Russians new immigrants so many are single moms and other great needs. Many
have social and financial problems and of course spiritual problems and the
elders have to take care of all these problems with the help of God.
Orit had arranged a trip for the teachers in the church. It was so
interesting that we suggest you to do it too. We had the best tour guide in
Israel. He is an Israeli that served for many years in the army and was born
in a Christian family in Jerusalem – one of the first Christian Israeli
families. We went together to study the book of judges. We followed some of
the judges and saw the whole picture of where they lived and served God.
What a blessing this tour was. We are blessed with many good Sabbath school
teachers and it is important to thank them and to teach them new things that
they can teach our children in church.
This is a time of Holydays in Israel. New Year - the fest of trumpets and
next week it will be atonement day. In ten days will be the feast of boots.
The deacons will build a big booth in our yard and the people from our
church will come to celebrate this Holyday. We will sing hear a short
massage and …eat good cakes (we have to suffer in these Holydays).
YHaChotam
Publishing
Alex, our musician was also on a summer vacation, but now he is back in
Lotem – the school for Autistic children. He teaches the kids once a week. I
don’t know who is more excited about him coming back to the school, the kids
or him. It is so exciting to see these kids and their love and joy towards
Alex. We keep working on the children Bible, It is big project but also
enjoyable. We have most of the text ready. We still have to do the editing
and some 400 illustrations. This is beside the three magazines that we keep
doing. We are so blessed to do these magazines and to see how much the
church in Israel benefit from it.
In the coming months we plan to produce a book for parents and children that
was written by Sinclair Ferguson. We are so thankful to be able to serve the
Christians in Israel.
YFamily
– Alon finished his studies in the university and is back in the army. He is
in officers’ course for the next six months. He doesn’t know yet what unit
he will join. He belongs to the air forces and will serve as a computer
expert. Please pray for him. As part of his duties he has to lecture twice.
The first one – for twenty minuets, he lectured on friendship, love and
brotherhood. He based his lectured on 2Pet. Chapter one. The second message
– for 60 minuets he chose to speak about Gideon (Judges 6 and 7). Alon wants
to show Gideon as the humble obeying person and how God used him as a
commander to save Israel in his time. He will lecture sometime in the next
two weeks.
Please pray for Alon as he brings God’s word to unbelievers in the army. We
are so thankful for it.
Amir is in his last year in school. In a month he will have a big test that
he had study for it the whole summer. This test is the main tool the
universities use in order to accept or reject a candidate. Amir wants to go
to the army first and then to study. At the moment he wants to join an elite
unit. Anyway he still has a year before joining the army. Amir still plays
as the point guard in his basketball team and he is a very busy guy.
Liel goes to 9th grade and she will keep dancing through this
year. Last week she had to make a big decision. She realized that she has to
choose between being part of the top team of dancing and the youth activity
in the church. We did not want to tell her what to choose. Finally she came
and with many tears said she knows that the right thing to do was to come to
the church activity. We were happy for her decision and we pray that God
will bless her for this good choice. Please continue to pray for her that
she will trust the Lord.
Ehud grew up and he is now our computer expert at home since Alon is not
here. He swims and learns some science that he likes so much. Please keep
praying for his salvation too.
In this month of Holydays, Please pray for the salvation of Israel.
Thank you for taking time to read and pray for us. We cherish your concern
for us and for the ministry God put in our hands.
With much Love of our Lord Jesus,
Eitan
and Orit Kashtan
Dear Friends,
Last week we celebrated the feast of lights
and the birth of our Lord. In the feast of lights we emphasized on the fact
that Jesus is light, and in Christmas we celebrated our redemption as we
remembered the incarnation. Indeed God is great, Indeed we have wonderful
light!
The light in Kashtan's family
God in His grace gives us the privilege to
serve Him. We enjoy having singing praise nights in our home. From time to
time, on Friday evening, families from our churches and from other churches
gather together in our home to sing and praise the Lord. We sing joyfully to
the Lord for two hours or so, then we eat and spend some time together. When
each family return to it's home, we all feel ready for the Sabbath day.
It is a joy to see all the kids and youth
that feel so comfortable to come and spend time with our family. The fact
that both Eitan and Orit teach children and youth helps us to have good
relationships with so many kids from church. Also the fact that we have four
kids in four different schools brings more kids to our home. Thank you for
your prayers for Alon. Please keep praying for him, He is going through so
many tests for the army to try to place him in the right unit. He will
actively join the army on July 2004. We pray that God will put him in the
place where he will be able to serve Him during his army service and after
it. Amir is under a lot of school pressure. He also keep playing
basketball. Liel is busy with school and dancing. Ehud (first grade) is his
teacher helper. He helps the kids with their missions in class. We pray for
their salvation.
The light in church
The youth group has grown lately and it
contain 21 kids, four of them are not Christians and are not coming from
Christian homes, Please pray for Lina. She was exposed to the gospel when
Alon showed the movie from the mission trip to Kenya in his school. She was
impressed with the message and recently she told Alon that she knows she can
not stand before the holiness of God but can not, yet, accept the fact that
He is God and that the New Testament is part of God's word. We pray that God
would open her heart. Recently we studied with the group about the Trinity,
especially the inner relationships between the Father, the Son and the
Spirit. It was so exciting. We have a big group of deaf people in our
church (about 20) and it is excited to watch them through the years. Many of
them were baptized, more and more young women from our church study the sign
language and are able to translate for them in church. Many of the children
from the church study some of the songs in sign language. It is exciting to
see how they become part of the church. Our dream is to see one or some of
them in key position in the church. From January and on, for 6 months Eitan
is going to teach the Sabbath school in the church. He was asked by the
church to teach on "Family according to God's
word". This subject is so important especially in our church where we have
so many single mothers and families
that are new Christians or grew in a culture that the family is not an
important matter, Please pray for Eitan that put many hours on studying the
subject.
Our family took the task (as the elders had
been asked) to take care of the many single mom's families. The main thing
that the mothers brought up on our meeting with them is to give the children
an example of a "healthy' Godly family. So as they asked we are trying to
have these children spend some time with families, especially on weekends
and holidays. Please pray for us for wisdom as we want to help and not
always sure how.
* We had a very nice evening in church
celebrating Chanukah - the feast of light. the subject was "Jesus - the
light of the world". The kids light the candles dedicated each of them to
one item of the "fruit of the spirit" it went so well since we light nine
candles and there are
nine items, last week we celebrated
Christmas church. We celebrated few days later than all of you because
Chanukah and Christmas where on the same week and we could not do both. Any
way, since no one knows the exact date of the Lord's birthday, we has the
opportunity to celebrate it with joy,
The light in HaChotam Publishing
* It was very excited for us to hear from so
many churches around Israel, Hebrew and Russian speaking, that they
celebrated the Christmas in the church by using our CD and book as a show
for Christmas. We are happy to see how God is using HaChotam for the
churches benefits. (Not to forget that this is the one and only Christian
children CD and Only one that deals with the birth of Christ in Israel). Our
church used our CID for a play too. On August we published the book "The
Life of Jesus". The book was accepted very warmly and with a happiness by
the churches. * Now we are very excited about a new "baby" that we work on -
a new magazine for young children (ages 6-10). It looks wonderful thanks to
our graphic artist (Michell) and we believe that the kids can learn from it
more about God and about the Christian faith. In the new magazine there are
some articles about creation, the ancient church, facts about the Christian
faith, two games which teaches Bible verses and more. The first magazine
will be sent by March - God's willing. It's name is "Yaldei Yah" - the
children of God. Needless to say that this is the only magazine for young
children from Christian homes.
We are so thankful to God that gave us this
privilege to serve Him.
Thank you God for your light.
In Yeshua's name
Eitan and Orit Kashtan
Israel |
