Shalom from Jerusalem,

After over three months of delays as a result of rocket attacks on major cities and the tens of thousands of students who reported for reserve duty, most of the universities and colleges have now officially returned to full activity. In light of this, we held our first major group training event for our program for believing university students and transferred our scholarship students their first semester’s tuition. This year, we have 15 students in our program, including reserve duty soldiers and the wives of reserve duty soldiers.

During this first main in-person meeting with our scholarship students, Tigist shared content to support and encourage the students during this difficult period and we appreciated also having the time to hear from them how they are handling the situation. There was also time for fellowship over food and drink.

We also delivered care packages this month to the students who are serving in reserve duty or whose spouses are serving – an additional way of showing them that we care about the difficult situation that they are in and that we are here to help in any way that we can! We helped some of the families do their grocery shopping, buying essential goods such as diapers, baby formula, food and more. Many of these individuals, couples and families face a complicated and uncertain reality which includes facing months on end of separation from their spouses while completing a degree.

Here are some of their responses to the care packages:

“Thank you all. [The package] was encouraging and heartwarming.”

“Thank you so much! I’ve been sick since the beginning of the war, and this is the first time I’m seeing people! You really made me happy.”

Thank you for entrusting your offering to Hope for Israel. Your partnership means a great deal to me, my team, and the many people who are blessed by the ministry’s work. May we continue to be a light and a blessing to the people of Israel during this dark and difficult time.