Our Pentecostal Guest

Hubby had been working for these past two weeks for an old Toronto friend of his - a doctor - who had taken along his construction guy to work together with Hubby on building his home. The Canadian construction guy is here for another week. Hubby got chummy with him and invited him to our house for a Shabbat meal. The doctor warned Hubby - when the Canadian starts talking about religion, he don't shut up.

Since I'm already into Compassionate Listening, it didn't matter if someone talks for hours. We had him over and he was a very pleasant guest. He lives waaaay up in Northern Ontario where the summers are over by August. He's a born-again Pentecostal church guy and I just love listening to these fire-and-brimstone people. He was telling me how the Sabbath is made for man and man is not made for the Sabbath. And how people in his community may be good Christians on Sunday, going to church and all that - but live like the Devil the rest of the week. He made Hubby seem like a silent Buddhist monk. We laughed because he doesn't use profanity at all and he reminded me about Milton Berle on the Ed Sullivan show years back telling the audience he had gone to Arizona to visit the Hoover Darn and went riding in a heck-icopter. While Hubby was just about falling asleep on the couch, I thought our guest would never leave until I was "saved", which meant that he may be staying at my place for quite a while.

Today, we picked him up at his hotel and perused all the Christian sites. We went to Gethsemene Gardens, then to the place on Mt. Zion where the Last Supper took place and off to the Haas Promenade before going to Ein Karem to see where John the Baptist was born. It's been awhile since we had hooked up with any authentic great white northerners. When he agreed with what we said, he'd say " oh, right on!" and regaled us with stories about bears coming up to his kitchen window, and packs of wolves in his driveway and moose drinking in his lake. Even though coming face to face with that kind of wildlife is common where he is, it now sounded as exotic to me as him seeing a camel on the road in East Jerusalem. He told us about the different partridges he used to hunt and all about the Spring Bear hunt when their fur was fresh and shiny, not tired looking as they do in the Fall. I felt I had come face to face with a real live Little House on the Prairie character. He was charming, pronouncing "picture" - "pitcher", and he just felt so priviledged to be in the Holy Land, as he looked in awe at just about everything here. It just reinforced my feelings for the whole country, even though life here is difficult. While taking others on a tour of the land for the very first time, it's like you're also seeing it for the first time.