and baby Maddie
My electronic contact is my cousin, Jamison Creel. Jamison is thirty-five. He's a pastor at the Mount of Olives Church of God and director of the Jerusalem Urban Discipleship Center in Jerusalem, Israel. Jamison teaches History, English, Social Studies and whatever else is needed at Jerusalem School. He lives on the Mount of Olives with his wife, Kelli and their four children.
Jamison's blog, Life and Ministry on the Mount of Olives, can be reached at http://abushakra.blogspot.com/. The following are a few of his posts from that blog:
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Teaching
My wife Kelli and I are both certified school teachers. She's an elementary teacher and I am certified in high school social studies. Because of this we have always used education as a gateway into the community here. We teach English, History, Religion, or whatever as a service to the people here. My ministry, here in Jerusalem, has always revolved around students and schools. We now have a team of interns here at the church and so I, naturally, have them doing a lot of work in local schools. Mondays and Wednesdays are our long days. On Mondays and Wednesdays we leave the house at seven and drive an hour to a little West Bank village called Aboud. Aboud is one of the few remaining villages here that is largely Christian. The Church of God has a school there. (I detailed their struggles in a previous post.) We are there for three hours, from 8-11, teaching English. We leave there and go to Jerusalem school where we teach Bible classes and aid teachers for three more hours. When that is over, I send the interns to Ramallah to teach another English class, this time to University students. I stay in Jerusalem and coach basketball. The Ramallah classes end at six and the interns get home a seven, just in time on Wednesday for Bible study.
It sounds, from reading this, like I'm a slave driver. And, honestly running full-speed from seven to seven can be taxing, but it's worth it because we encounter a different segment of the population at each stop. In the village, we are trying to be a blessing to village dwelling Christian Arabs. At Jerusalem School, we are working with secularized, Westernized, wealthy Arabs. And, at Ramallah we are working with a more "normal" segment of the population. I guess you would call them city Muslims. Educationally, I think that it's important to understand that the Arab world is not homogeneous. There are great variations between different regions and people groups. My students are exposed to this by interacting with some of the different segments of the society. I also think that it's important for ministry. By getting to know all of these different people, we get a chance to be witnesses to them. All of this work is paying off. Thursday night, we had about thirty people here for our youth night. The vast majority of them were kids we know from Jerusalem school. I would ask you to pray for us on Mondays and Wednesdays. They are long hard days, but they are also when we do most of our relationship building. Pray that God will put the right people in front of us and that He will gives us the right words to say to them. We don't want to work just to do something. We want to impact the land and society here for the Kingdom of God.
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Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Learning the Land: Caesarea
Now that we have students here at the discipleship center, part of what we are doing with them is teaching them the land of Israel and how it relates to their Bibles. This past Friday, we took them to the Mediterranean coast to see Ceasarea. I was a history teacher before I became a pastor and the historian in me gets excited to go to the places where important events happened.
Caesarea was Herod's capitol city. He built it in Greco-Roman style with aqueducts, bath houses, and theatres. The city, which has a very limited natural supply of fresh water, was made possible by Roman engineering. They built an aqueduct that brought water from Mt. Carmel, over 70 miles away.
The Romans also invented hydraulic concrete, concrete that hardens under water. Herod made extensive use of this substance in Caesarea. He built two giant piers that extend out into the ocean and create an artificial harbor to facilitate shipping. He also built a palace that extended out into the ocean. One of its many luxuries was a swimming pool that was bordered by the sea on three sides. Herod built his palace extending into the sea because it was beautiful, but also because he was paranoid. He kept a boat docked at the end of the palace at all times. The boat was there so that he could escape if he needed to.
The palace was later taken over by the Roman governors. I wondered as I walked there Friday, just where Paul stood before Felix and Festus. The Bible says that Paul was sent for, so probably somewhere in the palace. It's pretty cool to walk around thinking "maybe Paul stood here" and trying to imagine the scene.
Caesarea is also important in recent Biblical archeology. For years, critics of the Bible complained that there was no extra-Biblical source naming Pontius Pilate. They pointed out that the Romans were great record keepers and that there should be some document somewhere with his name on it. They used the absence of such a document as evidence against the Bible.
When Israeli archaeologists began to excavate Caesarea they made an interesting find. The found a cornerstone for one of the buildings there. The cornerstone had an inscription. In Latin it said roughly, " built under Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea." It's funny how the truth defends itself.
As the weeks go by, and as we visit more of the country's sites, I'll keep you posted on what we see and learn.
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Abu Shakra???
Several years ago I was volunteering at a local Christian missions school that ministers to Arabs. I was teaching religion and history to high-schoolers. The girls in my tenth grade history class decided that Mr. Jamison was too much to say and not sufficiently descriptive. They started calling me Abu Shakra. It means "father of the blond". The name stuck and for quite some time I answered to it. I don't get called that as much as I used to, but I think that it is pretty representative of my life here. First of all it was given to me and used by the Jerusalem students that I love so much. Secondly, it symbolizes a life lived in a place where every single person who sees you immediately knows that you are a foreigner. And lastly, it's exactly where I am now. I am currently the father of four beautiful blond children.
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Jamison's passions are God, his family, his students, and the people of Israel. He truly puts himself out there for them. Israel is a dangerous place to live these days. My family and I do not watch any news segments about Israel or read anything in the newspapers about Israel because we worry enough about Jamison, Kelli and their four young children (all under the age of six) as it is. Jamison rarely tells us any bad news because he doesn't want to frighten us with what they must face living in a war torn country. They choose to stay there and face the dangers because of their love and devotion to the people.
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