Comments from Journey Home Tour Guests

Etta Kemp is a devoted Christian who loves Israel, and goes there every chance she gets. The peace she experiences when traveling in the Holy Land - "amazing peace like no other peace I have ever felt or ever feel" - is what is compelling her to join The Fellowship's 25th Anniversary Journey Home to Israel Tour.

"I have to go back. I feel such a peace in Israel. I can just see where Moses gave the Ten Commandments and Jesus walked," explains Kemp, contemplating her third Journey Home to Israel Tour Oct. 30 to Nov. 10.

The Jamaican-born71-year-old resident of White Plains, N.Y., who travels by herself, says visiting Israel "is like being transported back in time - you can just see the Scriptures come alive. It's about seeing a land that has no level place; it's about seeing rolling hills, figs, olive trees, fruit trees, oranges. And while I love every minute and every place is a favorite to me, it's about taking a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee and picturing Peter, James and John on a fishing boat and picturing Jesus walking on the water. It's about seeing the River Jordan and picturing John and Jesus at the baptismal site, and sitting in the Garden of Gethsemane. It's a lot of memories."

"Visiting Israel is a life-changing experience. Life-changing," Kemp emphasizes.

She vividly recalls getting a letter about The Fellowship's 2005 tour and deciding to go. "Before I left, a Jewish surgeon at the hospital where I worked gave me $20 with instructions to give it to the first beggar I encountered. He told me, 'If you do this, you will be blessed.' I was outside the Temple gate when I spotted a beggar and gave it to her. We didn't speak the same language, but we spoke God's language. That was such a blessing," Kemp says.

The retired nurse says she was taken aback on last year's cruise as Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of The Fellowship, played his guitar, sang softly and taught briefly on the afternoon boat ride on the Sea of Galilee. "I kept thinking this is so peaceful for such a war-torn country. How can this be? It can be because of God," Kemp remembers.

A loyal supporter of The Fellowship since first seeing Rabbi Eckstein on television on March 21, 2004 ("I was spellbound"), Kemp expresses her delight with Rabbi's involvement in the 2007 Journey Home to Israel Tour: "I enjoyed the Rabbi and his teachings on the tour so much. He's doing the work of God to save others. He's very friendly, very approachable - he's not like others with titles. He spent time with us explaining Sabbath and Jewish customs, he played his guitar and sang, and he explained what he has to do. I want him to teach me Hebrew."

Another highlight of Kemp's 2007 tour was picking turnips during a visit to the harvest fields of Table to Table, a Fellowship-supported non-profit organization that collects food from gardens and unused food from corporate cafeterias and hotel weddings to daily feed 11,000 of Israel's hungriest. Under blistering sun, Fellowship volunteers gathered 3,200 pounds of turnips in a short time.

"I loved it! Are we going to get to do that again? I never had done it [picked turnips] before. I kept laughing thinking that these nurse's fingers that helped with surgery were digging up turnips. I made a difference - that's what I loved," exclaims Kemp, a nurse in hospital neurology and urology departments for 38 years.

"Each trip brings new memories and I learn more about Israel, the Jewish people and The Fellowship each and every time. I appreciate it more - and enjoy it more - each time I go," Kemp explains.

"And remember that God tells us He will bless those that support Israel."