Saturday Night at St. Paul's in Shefamer

As a way of marking the end of our time together here in the Diocese of Jerusalema, we were invited by the wonderful people of St. Paul's Church in Shefamer for dinner. St. Paul's is a companion parish with St. John the Baptist Church in West Seattle, where Kate is on staff and where Shelby and Daniel are members. Hannah's family, who live in Shefamer, are members of this wonderful parish, so there were many connections to this wonderful community of faith.

For me, it was particularly wonderful because two members of last year's youth course, Raji and Nizar, were present for the dinner. I got to catch up a bit with them, as our group of youth got to know some of the youth from Shefamer.

The youth group ordered a type of Palestinian pizza for us for dinner. Kudos to Alex! She was the only youth in our group who figured out to fold the thing in half to eat it!

We hope that new connections between our two dioceses might come from this event. Kate and a young adult member of the parish, Kamir, are going to start a Facebook group for young people from the Diocese of Olympia and young people from the Diocese of Jerusalem. Hopefully this will be a wonderful new means of cross-cultural communication and friendship. - JR