Twenty years ago.

Twenty years ago from this past July Ron and I made a brave decision, took a huge risk, sold practically all that we owned and moved our family to Israel.  Our children were ages 2,4,6,8, and 10.  Many of our friends (out in north Orem) will remember that time.  Some of you thought it sounded like and adventure but more of you thought we were crazy.

One of the first things Ron and I knew we would do when we arrived  two weeks ago was to go visit the area where we lived with our family.  This is a picture of Janus Korchek elementary school where we enrolled our three oldest children.  It is a Hebrew speaking school and at the time we told our children that the only thing we wanted them to do was learn one new word in Hebrew each day.  It was from this very spot that I cried for the first and only time while sending my kids to school.  There were times when we wondered if it was the right thing to do but as the years have gone by we have never had any regrets.

Something else on our "to do while we are in Israel" list was to see if we could locate the woman who came to our home 5 days a week and tutored  the kids to learn Hebrew.  We kept in touch with her for years but then as things will have it sometimes, we lost track of each other.  I still had her address so last sabbath we drove around and LOOK WHAT WE  FOUND!  We found her apt., with her family name still on it.  As we approached her door both Ron and I got butterflies in our stomachs.  She was such a wonderful woman and so good to our children and I give her a lot of credit for helping our kids survive for the time we were here.  We knocked...no answer.  We rang the doorbell....no answer. We decided to drive a little bit more to be sure we knew where some key shopping stores were and then went back to try her apt. again.  Still no answer.  We wrote a note in Hebrew and English and left it in her mailbox with our phone number. Have not heard from her yet so maybe we will try again this sabbath to find our dear friend Michal Shor.

Here we are now....look at those kids all growed up!  They are all married and so far we have eight grandchildren.  They are husbands and wives, mothers and fathers and from what I can tell those 18 months we spent living in Israel served them well.