One of our members in Israel/Palestine with CPT

I had begunThree weeks ago when Amy left for Israel/Palestine on a two month delegation with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) and then I forgot to post it. Three weeks latter I go to post again after some busy weeks and realize that I never posted about Amy in Israel/Palestine. So, here it is, she still has five weeks left so there is still reason to post this.
Amy is a member of our community and is Office Manager for CPT's offic here in Chicago, this means also going on delegations to the places CPT has its peacemakers (at the moment CPT has 5 places in the world). We are very glad to be afiliated with CPT through Amy.
Amy has a blog about her time in Israel Palestine. She has not had the opportunity to post to it very often over the past few weeks. But there she hopes to post her thoughts and reflections on her time there and just let us back home know what is going on while she is there. We ask your prayers for Amy and for our community as since we are small her absence will be very obvious and will affect the dynamic of the community.But prayers for Amy especially as she is potentially in harms way and being part of an important effort to bring peace to that region of the globe. This is brought into stark releif as the president of Iran speaks of "wiping Israel off the map", and various saber rattling is echoed in responce. There are forces on both sides of the Palestinian/Isreali conflict that do not want peace or more accurately perhaps want peace only if their side can have complete victory. Understaning these realities and hoping to offer an alternative CPT stands witnessing for peace without victors, the peace that is expemplified by laying down oneself, rather than self preservation. Self assertion and preservation is in the end what this conflict is about as well as a denial of the existence of the other. Neither side really wants to lay down thier claims and admit the claims of the other.
We pray for the peace of Jerusalem.