Tag Archives: Israel

February 2017: Detour to New Zealand

More Jewish followers of Jesus live in Israel today than any other time in history. At the time of Pentecost (Shavuot) there were only 3,000 Jewish believers in the Land. Today, there are 30,000.

Though, God allowed a partial hardening of Jewish hearts, He promised that there would always be a remnant of Jewish people who are faithful to Him, (Romans 11:1-4). Our work – your work – is not in vain. Jewish people will continue to come to faith in Yeshua our Messiah. That’s a promise.

It encouraged our hearts to see this enduring truth fulfilled again in our own generation at Muchan, Chosen People Ministry’s international conference for Messianic young adults. Young Jewish and Gentile believers from across the globe gathered together to fellowship, look into Scripture, be challenged, and worship God together.

While there, we got to connect face-to-face with our ministry partner and friend, Stephen (Shmueli) Arnold, and hear more detail on his recent trip to Rio de Janeiro. There are many preparations to make before we move there as a team, as planned, in 2018. So, we are thankful for the ways that God has gone before us and for the groundwork Shmueli has laid to begin establishing a Brazilian board of directors for Chosen People Ministries, Brazil. God willing, this will be a step into further outreach to the Jewish community in Brazil.

After our Hebrew course in Tel Aviv and return to the States in March, our primary goal for this year will be growing our partnership team and raising 100% of our required monthly donations by October 2017, before we travel to New Zealand for our team’s first full backpacker season of ministry together. The three of us plan to work together at Zula Lodge, an extension of Chosen People Ministries, in New Zealand from November 2017 – April 2018. BJ and I look forward to finally working full time directly with Israeli outreach, as well as gaining experience and mentorship and further team bonding with Shmueli before we pioneer a new work together in Brazil.

As always, we covet your prayers for each piece of this extensive process, and are endlessly grateful for your faithful support each step of the way. We are not exagerating when we say, we could not do this without you.

Love in Yeshua,

BJ & Carissa

January 2017: Muchan [Ready]

Happy New Year to you and love from Prague! We’ve started 2017 off at full speed here at Chosen People Ministries’ Muchan conference and our calendar is packed into 2018! Every month this year is full of plans, from Hebrew studies in Tel Aviv to an exciting outreach destination for Fall 2017 (that we’re going to keep you guessing about just a little longer). Perhaps our most exciting plans this year are the ones we want to make with you!

After we complete our Hebrew program and return to the States in March, our priority for 2017 is growing and connecting with our incredible team of prayer warriors and financial partners (we love you!). This means that from May into September we will be crisscrossing the nation to catch up with you over coffee, update you on all you have enabled us to do thus far, share our heart for Israel and ministry vision with your Bible study or small group and pray together about how we can be a part of God’s great rescue mission for a lost and broken world.

Even as we return to the classroom and Hebrew grammar books this month, we are praying about how God will grow our partner team this summer. If you share our heart to reach young Israelis with the love of Yeshua, would you join us in advocating for this exciting opportunity to love on them in real and tangible ways? Perhaps you have friends who love Israel or share our heart for Jewish ministry, or maybe your Bible study has been praying about how to be a part of the Great Commission. Please email us if you are interested in hosting a ministry presentation or would like to sit down with us and talk about how you can join our team as a financial partner. It is only by the generous donations and fervent prayers of dedicated partners, such as you, that we can do this vital work. We are already setting dates on our calendar, so let us know soon if you want to put us on yours!

And please continue in prayer for us as we dive back into intensive language studies and stretch our brains and energy to their limits. We are so thankful for you and hope you will be overwhelmed by the Peace and Joy of our Messiah as we trust Him with each day and moment of this new year.

Love in Yeshua,

BJ and Carissa

Kerstetter Chronicles: Your Holiday “Done” List

That time of year has come again! With crisp air and frosted mornings come puffy winter layers and your holiday to-do list. So, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all that you have already done!

Together, we have accomplished a lot this year! Because of you Israelis have heard the Gospel. Because of your prayers, encouragement, service and financial support, the name of Jesus has been proclaimed and the Christmas story shared.

Together with you, we shared the Gospel of Messiah at the Shelter on the Lake in Argentina, prayerfully selected Rio de Janeiro as our future ministry location, led Passover Seders and taught about God’s heart for the Jewish people in numerous churches, served Holocaust survivors, foster children, Russian believers, and elderly immigrants in Israel.

Because of you, we had powerful Gospel conversations with Tali, Binyamin, Idan, Yosef, Dov and many others. Because you took action, they heard that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. And when we suffered the tragic loss of our brother, Levi, and our Israel outreach was cut short, your prayers, service and outpouring of love encouraged – and continue to encourage us- through our heartbreak.

As we continue our journey through this intense grief and look to the next year with mingled pain and joy, we are more thankful than ever for your place on this team. It is harder than ever to make plans or share them with you, with this heavy reminder so fresh in our minds that God alone knows what the days ahead will hold. But, with complete trust that our lives and futures are secure in His hands, we continue to make plans and move forward.

God willing, we will welcome 2017 in Prague at Muchan – Chosen People Ministry’s international conference – looking into God’s Word with great speakers, connecting with Messianic young adults, forging valuable connections, sharing our heart and vision for reaching Israeli backpackers with new friends, and looking for potential workers to join us in the ministry! Following Muchan, we will return to the Hebrew studies we started in Tel Aviv. And when we return to the States in March, we begin the exciting work of growing our partnership team – raising funds and recruiting prayer warriors to enable us to take the next step in Fall 2017 (to be announced soon).

So, as you celebrate the birth of our Messiah this Christmas season, please continue to pray for our travels, studies, health and family; but most of all please remember Yeshua’s heart for his people and continue to pray with us for their salvation.

With love and grateful hearts,

BJ and Carissa

Kerstetter Chronicles: November 2016 Location Reveal

Towering 2,300 feet above the largest urban jungle in the world looms one of South America’s most beloved icons. Israelis call him “Yeshu.” Literally translated, it is an acronym meaning “may His name be blotted out forever.” Some know what they’re saying. But many don’t even know that isn’t his real name. We cringe when we hear it, and gently inform them that his mother would have called him “Yeshu-a,” (which literally means “salvation”).

But of the more than 10,000 Israelis who backpack through South America each year, about one-third will visit the city, and many of those will make the journey up the mountain to see the iconic statue, regardless of how they might feel about the man himself.

What an incredible opportunity it could be to make that journey up that mountain with them, don’t you think? To pose to them the question, “Did you know that Yeshua is Jewish?” Or, perhaps, “Did you know that Yeshua kept Torah and taught in the synagogues?” Imagine the conversations we might have!

After months of discussion, consideration and prayer as a team, and with the leadership of Chosen People Ministries, it is with great excitement that we would like to announce to you, that we have every intention of having those incredible conversations on that iconic mountain! Because we have decided that, God willing, we will be opening our guesthouse in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil!

Not only is Rio host to thousands of Israeli backpackers, it is also home to a vibrant community of between 20 and 30,000 Jewish Brazilians. With a Jewish Community Center, numerous synagogues, kosher restaurants and a small, vibrant congregation of Jewish believers, we will have many opportunities to interact with Jewish community both during busy backpacker seasons and off seasons.

We are eager to see what God has planned for our future in Rio; but while you might remember that it has been our goal to open the work in Brazil in 2017, we believe God is asking us to wait another year. Not everything is settled yet, so check our next letters to find out the crazy amazing plans in the works for 2017! Brazil or somewhere else?! We can’t wait to tell you! In the meantime, we’re soaking up every bit of studies and preparing ourselves as much as we can for the intense and exciting road ahead. We are so thankful you’re walking it with us!

Love,

BJ & Carissa

 

 

Kerstetter Chronicles: October 2016

Chills ran down my spine. Young hands ran across the keys, and the notes reverberated powerfully through the hall, compelling every guest to rise to their feet and wrinkled hands to wipe tears from wizened eyes. The song was HaTkivah “The Hope,” Israel’s national anthem. And a banquet hall of Holocaust survivors joined their voices with the notes of the piano in impassioned song.

We thanked them for their bravery. Because of their courageous determination to survive and to become pioneers in the land of Israel, the next generations – my generation – can return to a settled land. And they asked us to make them a promise. They asked us to be their voices. To tell their stories. To stand for Israel. To stand in the gap and say, “Never again.” To do what it takes. And we promised. We will be their voices.

We won’t have them in our midst much longer. Are there Jewish elderly homes near you? Is a survivor speaking at your school or community center? Go. Hold their hands and hear their stories. Be their voices. Stand in the gap with us. Stand for Israel, and stand for humanity. If we won’t push back into the dark, who will? We have the light, and it is imperative that we let it shine.

Over our month in Israel this summer, we served both believers and unbelievers in numerous ways, including the aforementioned banquet for Holocaust survivors in Sderot, a pizza and game night in a foster children’s home outside of Jerusalem, packing supplies at food distribution centers in Sderot and Jerusalem, sharing the Gospel with students at Jerusalem University and on the beach in Tel Aviv, and reconnecting with friends we made in Argentina. We learned so much and our years of studies came to life more fully as we immersed ourselves in the beautiful complexities of Israeli culture.

Because of our early return to the States, we only made it through one week of Hebrew studies, so we have prayerfully applied to restart the Hebrew course at Tel Aviv University in 2017. Please pray with us as we seek God’s will in this and every area of our lives, and to use our time for His best during BJ’s last full semester at Moody. We look forward to the next steps of this journey, as God guides us and you walk prayerfully beside us. Thank you for your faithful support through the valleys and mountain tops.

With love,

BJ and Carissa

Kerstetter Chronicles: September 2016

You know the moment. When God has put something on your heart, but everything in you is trying to talk you out of it. Four weeks into our trip, exhausted, brains spinning from Hebrew studies, and ready for a break from the heat, we were running on empty and we had one of those moments. We had made plans to meet up with Yosef that evening and we knew it would be a late night, with class in the morning. We almost called off the plans, but we sensed an urgency in our hearts to see Yosef that night.

When he showed up at 10 pm with a friend we knew right away that we had made the right call. And the life-changing Gospel conversations we had with those guys that night made it clear that, once again, our steps were guided by our all-knowing God. It would have been worth it to us to make this trip for that conversation alone. And we didn’t know at the time that only three days later we would be on a plane back home. If we had ignored God’s prompting in that moment we would have missed out on perhaps the most important conversation of our trip.

Although our time in Israel was cut shorter than we planned, we know with confidence that God has a plan to use even this most tragic loss of our beloved brother and return from our long anticipated trip. Such tragedy is certainly not His will, but He allows nothing to unfold that He cannot use for good beyond our wildest imaginations. As Joni Ericson Tada wisely said, “God uses things that He hates to accomplish things that He loves.” We are eager to see what incredible goodness He will bring out of this brokenness. And we have no doubt that He will continue the work that He started through us in the conversations we shared with Yosef and his friend, and many others. Please be praying with us for their eyes to be opened; for God to use this great loss for even greater gain to His family; for our broken hearts and the new challenges BJ and I face in our personal lives, family and ministry because of it; and above all for His will to be done in all of this. Thank you for your continued support and encouragement, without which, this trip would not have been possible.

 

Love,

BJ and Carissa

Kerstetter Chronicles: July 2016

You can’t plan for it. There’s no good timing. You pray it will never happen. Maybe you think you know how you’ll react, but you can’t really be sure. Until your worst fear becomes reality. Until you lose a loved one.
 
We slept in that morning, and woke rested and refreshed. We were four weeks into our eight week trip in Israel, and had just finished our first week of Modern Hebrew studies the day before. When we saw the missed calls, my breath caught in my throat. I prayed and wished hard and silently as BJ made the call. And as that worst-fear-truth unfolded, I collapsed, hyperventilating, on the cold bathroom floor. With no warning whatsoever, my nineteen-year-old baby brother, Levi, is gone to be with Jesus.
 
Shock. Horror. Disbelief. Agony. Before that moment, I had never thought about how complex grief is. Stunned, we moved about the room like robots. Too shocked even to keep crying, we wondered what to do next. What do you do when you get that call on the other side of the world? As I opened the shades to let the morning light penetrate the heavy darkness that I felt, I looked over the waking city and to the beautiful Mediterranean, sparkling in the morning light. And God spoke quietly to my aching heart.

“Look, what I have done. I bring life from the dead. I have kept my promises to Israel, and I will keep my promises to you.”

And my heart knew what it was too numb to feel. It knew peace that passes understanding. It knew hope. It knew that comfort – which doesn’t always come as a feeling. And I knew that it wasn’t by accident that we got that call in that corner apartment on the twenty-fifth floor, overlooking the bustling city of Tel Aviv, at the heart of the thriving nation in which God has proven over and over again, that He. Has conquered. Death. For everything that God allows into our lives, He has a purpose – even for this.
 
So, we made the necessary calls and got on a plane back to home. And there we said “See you later,” to one of the best friends we’ve had the blessing of knowing. We’ll know we’ll see you again, Levi. Because our God brings life from the dead.

Afikomen: He Came

Shalom dear friends!

This last of eight Passover devotionals falls one day after the end of Passover. For eight days we abstained from leaven and meditated on the the importance of removing sin from our lives; the atonement made for us by Jesus, our perfect Passover Lamb; the significance of “one house” of Jews and Gentiles united spiritually in one Savior; the birth of Israel through the Exodus and new life we have in Jesus; the bitterness of suffering; and the sweetness of God’s grace.

We hope you have been blessed by these articles as much as we have been, and have a fuller understanding of the incredible symbolism that God gave us when He commanded the celebration of this ancient holiday.

I am especially excited to share this final devotional with you by none other than my dad, Ernie Richards.

Next year in Jerusalem!


 

Another Pesach Seder and Elijah has not come.

The cup remains on the table, untouched. The child has been to the door and returned with no sighting to report. The seder has ended and Elijah has not appeared to herald the coming of One infinitely greater: Mashiach ben David.

Yet something truly wonderful HAS taken place in our very midst. In the Yachatz, the middle matzoh was removed from its abode in the unity bag and lifted up for us to behold.

It is unleavened, of course, as our Lord Jesus was pure, without the slightest trace of the leaven of sin. It bears the stripes of the oven, as our Lord bore the stripes of the whip that lacerated His back. It is pierced, as He was so cruelly pierced by the nails mercilessly driven through ankle and wrist.

The middle matzoh is broken for us, even as our Savior’s body was broken on that Roman cross. Half is returned to its former place.

The other half immediately commands our attention. It is wrapped in linen and hidden away, out of our sight, even as the Son’s body was shrouded in linen cloths and hidden away in a cold earthen tomb.

Later we rejoiced as the broken piece of unleavened bread appeared again, in plain sight of all. The shroud was removed, and we all gladly partook of the middle matzoh, sang our Hallel, and brought our Passover Seder to its conclusion.

Hametz, Kiddush, Urehatz, Zerah. We so enjoy the many Hebrew words we use each Pesach; they add to the authenticity as we celebrate our Jewish heritage!

All the more vividly stands out one uncommon word . . . for it is not Hebrew. The name given to our celebrated middle matzoh IS GREEK – the one and only Greek word in the entire haggadah:

Afikomen.

It means, “He came.”

Yes, another Pesach has come and gone. We sang Dayenu with zest, and Eliahu Ha-Navi with a twinge of melancholy. Elijah’s cup sits in mute, significant stillness – untouched. He has not come.

But Jesus, our Messiah and Lord, has.

And our afikomen eloquently proclaims that wonderful truth at every Seder table in every Jewish home around the world, each and every year.

“It is a faithful saying, worthy of all acceptation: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners . . .” I Timothy 1:15


mom & dad

 

Ernie Richards, with his wife, Karen, have served as missionaries with New Tribes Mission for 27 years. Ernie’s passion for studying and teaching the Scripture in it’s true context and Karen’s Jewish heritage are a perfect blend, enriching their ministry at New Tribes Bible Institute, in Waukesha, Wisconsin, of teaching, training and mentoring students to reach unreached tribal groups around the world with the Gospel. 

 

On the Seder Plate: Charoset

A devotional for Passover by Ryan Karp


 

Most people can’t even say the word.  You have to use the back of your throat and the result is a little bit of spit coming out. And no, there is no English translation for it.

 

The way my Gentile wife described charoset when she first saw it was that it was sort of like the filling for an apple pie.  However you relate to the mixture of apples, honey, nuts, juice, and cinnamon, it is DELICIOUS!  It is one of my favorite parts of Passover.  Every Jewish person knows when it is coming because it follows the awfully bitter horseradish.  But the peculiar part is that it is not one of the three parts of the Passover as mandated by the book of Exodus and reiterated by Rabbi Gamaliel in rabbinic literature.  So why do we have it?

 

You can tell by the ingredients that the mixture, which is described as a reminder of the mortar that the Hebrew slaves used, is incredibly sweet.

 

“The Egyptians compelled the sons of Israel to labor rigorously; and they made their lives bitter with hard labor in mortar and bricks and at all kinds of labor in the field, all their labors which they rigorously imposed on them.”   

Exodus 1:13-14

 

And more than the mortar explanation, I like the concept of what the sweetness brings to the Passover meal.  As a family sits around the Passover dinner table, they partake of parsley and salt water, dry matzah and horseradish.  These are not exactly the most enjoyable treats.  But while all of these elements remind us of the trials that we suffered in Egypt as slaves, there are very few occasions within the order of the service that remind us that God did indeed deliver us from slavery.

 

Yet when we take the matzah with the horseradish and then cover it with the sweet charoset so that the bitterness of the horseradish is masked, I love that picture. Yes we suffered, but let’s not forget that all of those ill feelings or thoughts of our tribulations pale in comparison of the sweetness of God’s deliverance.  That is why we don’t taste the bitterness, only the sweetness.

 

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”  

Romans 8:18

 

“For the Lord is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting. And His faithfulness to all generations.”

Psalm 100:5

 


ryan karp Ryan Karp grew up in suburban Maryland with a Jewish father and Gentile mother. His family celebrated the occasional Jewish holidays but other than that, there was no real connection to the Jewish religion except the occasional synagogue visit. When Ryan was eight, his father accepted Jesus as his Messiah after experiencing a Passover presentation by a Chosen People Ministries missionary. After seeing how the Jewish celebration of Passover foreshadows Jesus’ death and resurrection, his father came to faith and the family changed forever.

Ryan came to faith when he was ten years old. While on a tour to Israel with a group of young Jewish people, he shared that he believed that Jesus is the Messiah; the organization, with whom Ryan had traveled to Israel, made him leave the trip. His heart broke for the people on the tour. It was at this time that the Lord placed in him a desire to learn more about the scriptures and to share his faith with his Jewish people.

Ryan is now serving with Chosen People Ministries as Chicago Branch & Ministries Director and National Director of Young Adult Mobilization & Outreach. He enjoys speaking in churches about the Jewish roots of the Christian faith and has a deep and sincere desire to share the Gospel with the Jewish people and to share with churches how to do the same.

Easter and Passover: Is There a Connection?

Passover was instituted by God in Exodus 12. The Israelites were commanded to choose an unblemished lamb on the 10th of the month of Nisan. They had to watch the lamb until the 14th to ensure no harm came to it. It had to be a pure lamb. When the 14th arrived, the Israelites were to slaughter the lamb. Upon killing it, the Israelites were to take the blood and apply it to the doorposts and lintels of their homes. This act of faith, the application of the lamb’s blood, ensured that God’s judgment would “pass over” any Israelite home. The firstborn males, both people and beasts, would be spared.

Around 1500 years after the Passover event, Jesus arrived on the scene. The divinely ordained parallels between the Messiah and the Passover event are fascinating. Knowledge of the Passover story brings appreciation for Messiah’s story. For example, did you know that Jesus entered Jerusalem on the 10th of Nisan? Of course, this is the same date that the unblemished lamb had to be chosen by the Israelites in Egypt. Just as the Passover lamb was slain on the 14th of Nisan, so Jesus was slain on the 14th of Nisan. Just as the Passover lamb in Egypt could not have any broken bones, so Jesus did not have any broken bones. None of this is a coincidence.

Aside from dates, there are other ways the Easter event is connected to the Passover event. One way in which the New Testament authors teach is through their use of Passover imagery. For example, in John 1:29 we read about Jesus’ appearance to John the Baptist. John sees Jesus coming towards him and says, “Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” John’s readers were familiar with the Passover. They would have understood the divine weight that John’s words carried.

Another reference to Passover is found in 1 Corinthians 5:6-8. Paul admonishes the Corinthians that their “boasting is not good.” He uses leaven as an illustration for their sin. Leaven is like yeast and Israelites were commanded by God to remove all leaven from their home for Passover. One could not keep or eat leaven. Paul used this concept from Passover to illustrate the importance of removing sin.

Just as Israelites in ancient Egypt had to apply the blood of the unblemished lamb to the doorpost and lintels of their homes, so people today must apply the blood of the unblemished Lamb to the doorposts and lintels of their hearts. If a Hebrew slave chose not to listen to Moses’ instructions about applying the blood to their doorposts, they would have suffered the consequences of losing the firstborn. So today, if someone chooses not to apply the blood of the unblemished Lamb, Jesus the Messiah, they will suffer the judgment of God for their sins, namely death and separation from God for eternity. The blood of the lamb was God’s way of escaping judgment back in Egypt. Not much has changed. The blood of the Lamb is still God’s way of escaping judgment. Have you applied the blood of the Lamb, Jesus the Messiah, for the forgiveness of your sins?

13016592_10153844597884998_732290537_oLevi H., and his wife Stephanie, live in Chicago where they work as Field Ministry Directors with Life in Messiah and he studies at Moody Theological Seminary. As Gentile followers of our Jewish Messiah, they are passionate about sharing the good news of Yeshua with unbelieving Israel and educating the Church about the rich Jewish foundation of our faith.