Testimonies

Hello tribe! My name is Olivia, I'm 22 years old from Sweden. I've had a very blessed start of my life, born in a Christian family as the youngest of 6 siblings. I always liked going to the church and faith in God came naturally.

In my late teens I had a period of doubt when I felt like the ground under my feet disappeared. In my heart I questioned everything, although I didn't really dare to ask my questions to anyone. After fighting with my heart and mind for some time, God started to lead me (or maybe it was I who started to listen?) on new ways and build me up again.

When my faith in God stabilized, my fascination for the Bible grew stronger, particularly the Old Testament prophecies about Jesus. I was also fascinated with the Hebrew language and the rich meaning it has for each word.

My brother told me I should try to learn it, he found Holy Language Institute through YouTube, and so I started my Hebrew quest in the summer 2012! I was completely amazed! What I love most about Hebrew is that it gives me a deeper understanding of the Biblical concepts and words. I love the fact that every letter has something to tell us. Genius!

Right now I'm studying apologetics at a Bible school in Stockholm, taking a year off from my work as a student-assistant. My dreams are to learn how to play violin, learn more Hebrew, know God more etc. At least for two of those dreams, Holy Language Institute is helping me (good job, Izzy!!). Learning violin I might have to look elsewhere. I want to share this wish and prayer with you all: to always keep the meaning of the cross close to heart.

The first time I had an inkling to learn Hebrew, after one glance I quickly shut the workbook and actually got rid of it. "It is a right-to-left language! I can never get my brain to read backwards," I thought. Little did I know that in reality, left-to-right languages are the backwards poor imitations of the original: Hebrew.

I am a 23-year-old lover of Yeshua, redeeming the time until my earthly bridegroom comes along (Yah willing) by sewing garments from the super healing fabric of linen for my Life-giving Linen business (filling orders from around the world at www.lifegivinglinen.com); spreading the freeing message of my book Chucking College: Achieving Success Without Corruption at www.chuckingcollege.com to young people who wish to gain a higher education without losing their faith, fidelity and finances in the process; and serving expectant mothers as a doula and birth photographer here in SW Colorado (www.devotedhandsdoula.com).

My homeschool background serves me well in the pursuit of learning Hebrew. After my first non-successful exposure to Hebrew, the heavenly Father was gracious to give me a few years to warm up to the idea of learning this life-changing language. When I was ready, He sent two friends who sat down with me at two different times and began to introduce me in a gentle way to the language of Creation and of Messiah's coming kingdom (by teaching me the alephbet and vowel points). I remember the light-bulb experience when I "got it" and finally understood how to read Hebrew. (As an aside, I think that there is probably an initial spiritual wall to learning Hebrew that has to be overcome. Understanding that can be an encouragement to stick with it!) Something clicked in that exciting moment and I fell in love with it. I listened to a beautiful CD of verses in Hebrew accompanied by classical music (which has been an important part of my life), and it was as if my very DNA responded to it. It was as if this language was a part of me (and now we wonder if Hebrew wasn't indeed the language of Creation)!

My hunger for more of this language centered around one desire: to get a Hebrew-English Bible and commune with my Father in the language of His original writings. But I didn't want just any copy of this Bible. No, I wanted to pick one up myself in Jerusalem. Well, seven months ago, Yahweh granted the desire of my heart with an invitation to come to His Land. Oh the joy of embracing (literally) that Bible for the first time! I have made it my goal to read through every word of the whole Torah in Hebrew this year, and am more than half way there (in addition, I have read the gospels, etc. in Hebrew). Izzy's Hebrew Chapters have been such a blessing in coming to deeper understanding of various words. Though I have been a believer since a very young child, to be able to read the Scriptures without a translation shading the text has brought me deeper knowledge of the Word.

As a family, we used to think that Zephaniah 3:9 — "then I will restore to the peoples a pure language" — meant that Yahweh would miraculously cause us to understand Hebrew all at once at His return. But now we are looking at the sudden mass interest in Hebrew and are wondering if maybe He is fulfilling it now, gradually! What a blessing it is that we have resources such as Holy Language Institute to help make the impossible within reach.

Shalom,
Melanie

I actually don't follow Yeshua, in the most commonly thought-of sense. I am Muslim and regard him as one of many prophets but I do not consider him the son of god or the messiah.

I began studying Christianity in detail in the fall of 2013. I flew through the basics and even the New Testament but the Old Testament really fascinated me. Being fascinated with the Old Testament obviously leads to a healthy interest in Hebrew and I started to think about studying Hebrew seriously.

I am seriously studying the Old Testament this summer and began by listening to the recitation of the Masoretic text in Hebrew. I was listening to a recitation on Youtube when I came across a video talking about holylanguage.com.

I just graduated from the University of New Mexico with a BA in Biology and will be attending medical school in the fall. I have a free summer before medical school and so am using it to pursue my academic interests: comparative religions, philosophy, and the Old Testament.

Mayeen

I was raised by a Baptist preacher, one who knew the word in depth. My journey with the Holy One has been long and varied, but I was either IN Christianity or rebelling against it for most of my life. Finally did teshuvah (started doing) in 1993. Never looked back.

In 2003, in great depression and angst, I vowed to come to the Bible and SEE for MYSELF what it said; all religion was now under scrutiny. After being raised on mostly "NT" scriptures, I wanted to see if any of it really made sense, and I wanted to start at the beginning and try to understand what had been written before. I reasoned that the NT could only be true and "Jesus" could only be the savior of the gentiles if He was actually the messiah of the Jews. How could I know unless I studied TaNaKh? So I did.

I started participating in an inductive Bible study for women at my church. This quickly took up 3 to 9 hours a week, and it varied, but I worked through almost all the TaNaKh with them. As I studied with them, they would say "Oh, This is only for the Jew. This is done away with. This we don’t have to keep since Jesus 'nailed it to the cross.' Ya da ya da blah blah blah..." I was skeptical.

I’ve been MOSTLY in the TaNaKh studying for the past 11 years, trying to bring some balance to my understanding of the written revelation of G-d as He gave it, and as He expects us to understand it. This has SHAKEN UP MY WORLD! When I was dissatisfied with the responses from my Presbyterian, Charismatic, Bible study leader, I would search the web, trying to find the traditional Jewish interpretation of what I was reading, and trying to get beyond the Christian interpretation and understanding of the TaNaKh. I spent hours and hours reading; I made my prayer’s main focus for G-d to purify me. Then this prayer:

"From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth, From the laziness that is content with half-truth, From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth, Oh, Elohim of Truth, Deliver us!" — Mordecai Kaplan

The Shabbat in the 10 commandments got me started, like it does most people. I started keeping my simple version of Shabbat, no work, no cook, no shop, starting about 7 years or so ago and increasing, and finally, my husband and family came along. We kicked Christmas to the curb finally two years ago. Etc.

I was amazed to find out that there was an entire MOVEMENT of messianic Jews, Hebrew roots, etc. believers! I thought I was the only one where I lived, and there was no one I ever met who was even momentarily interested. When I finally realized I was not the only one who believed the church was way off of the first faith once delivered (at Mt. Sinai, and reminded to us in Jude) I looked for fellowship, but the nearest messianic community of any kind I could find on the web was 2.5 hours away from me.

Eventually we moved into a different area and my husband agreed to take me to a messianic fellowship where we had our first opportunity to be a part of a messianic Jewish community, and later since have moved south to another more traditionally Jewish messianic synagogue.

I try to stay focused with my extra time on study. I am committed to continuing to study, and to subject every piece of doctrine/dogma I was taught to the clear written word. I see TaNaKh as ESSENTIAL & FOUNDATIONAL, Prophets like the frame of the house, and the writings as the beautifications of the house. The Gospels and Acts I put up as very reliable, since the Jewish writers and believers were willing to die for this testimony.

After my deep discussions with my Jewish, anti-missionary friend, I would cry out to G-d and ask Him for help after these conversations. Shortly I got a copy of the NT translated from the Aramaic Peshitta Khabouris Codex, the AENT. This helped answer many objections my T.O. Jewish friend brought to me. Really. Helped me so much.

Now I am more deeply identified with Judaism than Christianity, and I am so grateful to attend our synagogue. I believe this is the place where Abba wants me to be learning now. I appreciate getting to hear, learn, and SAY the Jewish prayers I have been reading in the siddur in English for so long. For years I was reading Jewish writings and had no idea how to pronounce many words for which I easily knew the meaning. (Wow, wasn’t that ironic!)

I am looking forward to learning to at least read and pronounce the Hebrew letters; I would love to learn to actually READ the Hebrew in my Stone TaNaKh with understanding someday. I started studying with www.holylanguage.com and we are loving it! Thank you for these lessons. I am like a baby bird being fed, but hope to grow strong enough to feed myself in Hebrew!

I think of Yeshua’s last words to his disciples saying to "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations..." I guess where I am is that I am very hungry for discipling myself, and I am actively trying to disciple my children who are still living at home. We strive to spend an hour together daily to study; don’t make it every day, but they are really growing!

Thank you for your vision to see us learn Hebrew!

Shalom, and every blessing, Keta

I'm Robin, and this is my story. I've tried so hard to pare this down, but condensing 58 years of searching into a few paragraphs, and then sharing what I do for fun and work, has been a challenge :)

I grew up in California, but our family was from Alabama - strictly Bible-belt attitudes! You went to church every Sunday because that's just what people did. I can't say that the Christian lifestyle was extremely important the rest of the week, however. My grandfather often read the Bible on his own, but he was the only one. As a child I had no idea that the desire to serve Yeshua could be all-encompassing. It was simply what one did on Sunday, just as one went to school Monday through Friday.

We all attended a Disciples of Christ congregation. The story I had been told was that earlier all our relatives had been Methodist (and indeed, that's what my cousins were), but that when my mother's parents had gotten married, that had changed. My grandmother—named Aleph—had been Episcopalian, and instead of her joining my grandfather's church or him joining hers, they had together joined a third denomination that they could both get behind. When my mother and father got married, he—a German Lutheran—had also joined the Disciples of Christ.

Where we lived there were many Jewish families, and in my class in elementary school there were few “Gentiles”. We called the winter break “Christmas vacation”, but our holiday crafts were all about Hannukah, and on High Holy Days there were very few students in school. It was intriguing to me to learn about Jewish customs, but when I'd be caught drawing a Star of David or talking about foods I had enjoyed at a friend's house I'd be told to stop it because “I wasn't Jewish”. I was never allowed to go to shul or temple with my friends. I couldn't see the harm at the time, and I wondered why there was such a concern that I might pick up any Jewish behaviors or preferences.

As I grew into a teenager, I became one of those wild kids parents hope they don't have lol. I rejected church entirely, had friends that alarmed my family, and played with the occult. One evening a fellow I had dated casually invited me to a “meeting” that turned out to be a Satanic worship service. I sat in a circle with the other attendees, knowing that sooner or later in the service I'd need to be some sort of participant. But also as I sat there, I realized that I knew there was a God. I had always known. I didn't just believe it because that had been my upbringing, I knew. And this God was as described in the Bible, and He had standards of right and wrong, and if you didn't honor His standards you could not go where He was. I had denied this knowledge, but when I was faced with a true enemy the knowledge resurfaced. I turned to my date: “You are all going to hell, and I am NOT going to go with you.” I got up and walked out and wandered around a bad neighborhood in Hollywood until the meeting broke up. Then I got in his car and he drove me home with neither of us speaking the entire time. We never spoke again.

So now…what to do? What church to attend? I looked into the Catholic Church and even contemplated becoming a nun, because to that time those were the only women I had seen who lived a life for God full-time. I also was introduced to my first serious born-again Christians, and I considered that lifestyle. I eventually gravitated back to a Disciples of Christ congregation, but when I asked questions about eternal truth I was answered with opinions and promises that “when the Board resolves that issue we will let you know”. I wanted a religion with God's truth at the center, and I was having a hard time finding it.

Then I was attracted to the Mormon Church because of their stand that the gospel never changes and their doctrine is the same as the gospel the Savior lived and espoused. Yes! This is what I've been searching for! Old Testament prophets as a bonus! I joined … but that only lasted a couple of years before I was disillusioned there, too. What was the “true church” doing celebrating HALLOWEEN, of all things? And if nothing changed, why was the sabbath on Sunday instead of Saturday? I decided that the problem must be ME. Why couldn't I settle down and be satisfied anywhere?

An equally non-devout Mormon friend moved up to Salt Lake City, and she invited me to move up with her. I was ready for a new environment, so I went. We attended a number of different churches together and remained uncommitted to any of them. We just never seemed to fit anywhere. Here we had been active Mormons in California but non-active ones in Salt Lake City. Talk about being a bit out of sync …

During this period I met my future husband. He had been born in Georgia and had recently relocated to Salt Lake City for work (marrying a Georgia boy definitely pleased my family lol). He too was initially attracted to the Mormon Church, and then also saw the inconsistencies and backed away. We home churched, attended other congregations, had just our own family for Sunday church, a variety of things. Our children—six of them—probably felt some confusion, and I wish we could have settled sooner. But, “if wishes were horses” and all that, I guess!

At some point in all this I took a genealogy class with some friends. The Mormon Church considers knowing one's ancestry to be important, and being surrounded by Mormon friends who enjoyed the pursuit, I thought I'd give it a go myself. I had never known much about my family, and I had to start right close to me. My grandmother Aleph, who had died when I was 12, had told me she had been born and raised in Piedmont, Alabama, so I thought I'd start there. Hmm. No Episcopal church there. Must have been in a nearby town. No … the closest Episcopal Church never heard of her family. They wouldn't have driven farther than that, would they? I'll try. No Episcopal Church in northern Alabama knows her family. Maybe the church they attended is no longer there! I'll write the diocese and national organization … again, no. No Alexanders. This is CRAZY!

I tried many other avenues, all pointless. At one point I was sitting in the Genealogical Library rolling through microfiche for hours, looking at the names of all the people buried in all Alabama cemeteries, all handwritten and hard to discern at times. Scroll. Scroll. Roll. Blur. Spin. WAIT. WHAT? Alexanders! A bunch of them! What cemetery is this? … A Jewish cemetery … must be a coincidence, right? I'm looking for other Alexanders. No, I'm not. Those are her parents. Right there. And look at the relatives named Moshe and Ira and Avram ….

Now it all made sense … “ 'What an unusual name, Aleph. Where'd you get it?' 'It's a family name, and I wish I didn't have it.' ” “Don't draw Stars of David. You're not Jewish!” “I'm so glad you didn't inherit the Alexander nose.” “I don't know where my olive skin came from.”

I called my mom and told her she was Jewish! She sounded okay with it, but it never meant anything to her really, and she continued attending the Disciples of Christ Church. For me, at first it was just a fun factoid about myself, but it didn't particularly change the way I lived, either.

As our children grew into teens themselves, we met some people who observed the Feasts, eschewed pork and shellfish, learned Hebrew, and used different names for Biblical figures: Reb Shaul, Yeshua, Yochanan the Immerser. The more we studied, the more consistent all this seemed, but we didn't talk to our kids too much about it, because we didn't want to just add more confusion or dead-ends to their lives. What really turned the tide for us was one of our married sons and his wife calling and asking if they could come over and talk to us about something important. They were expecting their first baby, and they started by saying that they wanted to raise their family with one set of standards and beliefs. Therefore, they would not be celebrating Christmas with us anymore, because if it wasn't in Torah, they wouldn't be doing it. (Completely unknown to us, they had been studying Hebrew Roots as well.) I don't even remember moving from my chair. I just found myself on my knees in front of them asking, “Can we please do it with you?”

So that began the slow withdrawal from “Christianity” and the journey into a Torah-observant lifestyle. To be honest, my husband still has a couple of toes in Sunday church, but he has been entirely compassionate and supportive of my observances. This is ME. I am JEWISH. My ancestors have called me home, and I feel as though I've finally found my soul, and then set that soul free. I went and visited an Orthodox Synagogue, and the Rabbi proclaimed me 100% Jewish and a member. I actually had my kitchen redone and officially kashered and approved … not that it was allowed to stay that way hahah! Ah well! I don't often get to Bais Menachem for services, but when I do, I love to look through the clouded glass to the men's side, watching them daven and dance. I always feel like I'm looking back through time, watching my Master worshiping His Father. (The Rabbi didn't exactly ask me if I believed in the Messiah, and I, um, didn't exactly volunteer it.)

Have any of you watched the aish.com music video about “Rosh Hashanah's Beautiful”? The fall it came out, just a couple of years ago I think, I watched it over and over. And over and over and over. “When you're true to yourself you set your soul free.” “You're tired of being confused.” “Look to your roots”. “Bring out the Ultimate You”. “The shofar blows”. That song sums up my odyssey and its destination. Now my daughter has claimed it as her song as well.

There isn't much of a local congregation, officially anyway, where we are. So we meet on an irregular basis in homes and get together for study sessions or holy days. We've been to a couple of Hebraic Roots Network Conventions. In the “wilderness” we develop strong bonds, living as spread apart as we are. For Pesach, we now have extended family for big seders: us, my son and his growing family, my daughter-in-law's older brother and his family, his mother-in-law (who has become a good friend of mine), usually others of our adult children, friends without family to celebrate with, and invariably half a dozen “investigators”. We gave away all the Christmas decorations and wrapping years ago. I light the shabbat candles every erev shabbat. We're hosting a big Shavuot celebration in a couple of weeks with a bonfire and lesson and—of course—a dairy dessert bar.

I wanted to learn Hebrew because I had had all I wanted of others telling me what the scriptures “really” meant. I wanted to read it in God's own tongue for myself, pray over the wording myself, let the Ruach HaKodesh direct me without a middle-man. I want to speak the language my ancestors spoke. I want to learn more about my God by understanding how He phrases things.

Facebook is awesome! Through Facebook I've found an online community of believers in Yeshua, and places to ask questions and bat around halacha. I'm one of those who feels some of my best and closest friends have been made online. Another Canadian believer, Sombra, that I met on Facebook, suggested holylanguage.com to me when I was looking for a less expensive way to continue studying Hebrew than taking the next semester at eTeacher. I LOVED my instructor there, and I learned a lot, and I made friends there as well. But I felt I couldn't keep up with the cost, and yet I wanted to learn more. So many free or inexpensive venues online do little more than teach the aleph-bet. I have LOVED Holy Language Institute! Thank you for your encouragement, and most of all, thank you, Izzy, for all your insights and for such a quality program!

I love my King. The only thing I want to do, all the rest of my days, is submit myself to His service. May He be the only thing I look to. May He always be in the center, as if He were frontlets between my eyes. May my every thought and word be acceptable before Him, and as for the rest, may my soul be as dust. And may He always grant all of us who love to do His will our portion in His Torah.

Shalom!!

Being raised with a Pentecostal Holy Roller grandmother taught me that religion was weird. She would say things that sounded like gibberish and lay hands on people. Little did I know the reality of the power of the Gospel. Nor did I realize that laying hands on the sick is something we are commanded by Yeshua to do. My grandmother taught me, by example, how to passionately pursue.

During the summer years of my early life I would attend Vacation Bible Schools. Memories of stories about a man named Jesus and how much He loved me are still etched in my heart and mind. My small child’s heart opened up and accepted Yeshua as my Savior at six years old.

Being from a broken home, learning about love was life altering for me. Having different step-fathers and several half-sisters and step-brothers and sisters, I learned about family but it was not always a healthy one. Let’s face it... most families are dysfunctional in one way or another, right? As an only child though, I always felt this gap, this place in my heart that needed more than what it was getting. Love.

It was not until my mid-twenties that I came to the realization that Yeshua, that G-d was not just some god in the sky that I prayed to. He became real. His love became real. He filled my heart with a love for Him and for His Holy Word. I wish I could say that I followed Yeshua from that moment on, but I cannot. I went through a divorce, lived a life of sin for a few years, and became a work-a-holic.

The Father kept wooing me into a more intimate relationship with Him. I would draw near to Him. I would back away and pursue other things. I would draw near again only to go backwards again. I did this for several years. One day the Lord spoke to my heart through the Scripture and told me to be cold or hot, and that today was the day of salvation. I knew what He wanted me to do: submit completely and totally; yield myself to Him and His ways; to give of myself and to open my heart to receive the Love I had only barely began to understand.

I did. I yielded and submitted by dedicating my life to Yeshua in 1993. Since that day my life became His. I took a vow of celibacy. The desire of my heart was to raise my two children and have a family. Since I was codependent, I did not have the ability to choose a mate that was emotionally available. The Lord began a healing process in my heart which I am eternally grateful for.

Twenty-one days after the vow, my friend brought a man to my house that had lost his wife in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. He happened to be driving when the fatal crash happened. He lost his wife and his step-daughter in the crash. The day I saw him the Lord spoke to me audibly and said, “This is the man you are going to marry and spend the rest of your life with.” As a Baptist girl, I did not know G-d spoke to people. It startled me!

In 1994 I married the man of my dreams. We combined our children, homeschooled them and we have served the Lord together for the past 20 years. Currently we are pastors, we are the CEO/Founders of the East Texas Healing Center which is a nonprofit organization that provides pastoral Biblical-based counseling, professional life coaching, concentrated times of prayer, and a school of ministry for those who are seeking to serve the Lord in any capacity or who are seeking credentials.

We have seen many signs, wonders, and miracles. For instance, a young boy’s leg grew out four inches while we were praying. He was able to run for the first time in his life. A woman came for prayer; she had just left the doctor’s office with a diagnosis of breast cancer. The tumor disappeared as soon as she found out the Lord loved her and wanted her healed. The tumor was gone before she even received prayer. Blind eyes have opened, deaf ears are hearing, broken hearts are mended, lives are transformed as the Gospel is shared and we walk in obedience to do the work of the ministry as Yeshua outlined in the 16th chapter of Mark.

My journey with Biblical Hebrew has been one of great interest but lacking participation until a couple of week ago. A Pentecostal man came into my life who began to share some of the Hebrew word pictures with me. I was hooked. I had to know more. We went through a workbook by Valerie Moody called My Big Fat Greek Mindset. This was such an eye opener for me. To realize that my Greek mindset is in opposition to the Hebrew mindset challenged me to change it!

I was looking on YouTube for some Hebrew teachings. Yeshua led my steps straight to Izzy and Holy Language Institute. I watched the first lesson once on YouTube, then again after subscribing. Just knowing how much Hebrew I already know is so encouraging. I am no longer willing to be hoodwinked, deceived, and lied to! I want truth. The only way I am going to get the truth is learn the Holy language of Hebrew.

I want to say thank you Izzy for all your hard work putting these lessons and all the materials together. The videos are so encouraging. Thank you for saying you believe in me. That really was effective. I am a committed student now and have encouraged others to join me. I am hungry.

Shalom. Cindy

I possess a testimony that is colorful and richly alive with Yeshua's persistent forgiveness and authority, but at this moment, I will only tell you of my Hebrew experience thus far.

I am a professional dancer/instructor, and the artistic director for Kadosh Dance Company here in Bozeman, MT. A very close friend of mine, Krista, is also a dancer; we share a large motivation in common: to bring Esteem to Adonai with our movement and prayerfully worship Him with the gift of dance. The main difference in Krista's and my lives, stems from the fact that she has 2 children (the youngest is not yet a year old) and I have a cat and a gigantic dog... not quite the same as having kiddos. We are both married though, to wonderful men, that fully support and guide us in our walk following the Lord.

About 1.5-2 years ago, or so I would estimate (time moves so incalculably for me these days), I was consumed by an intense desire to learn the Hebrew tongue. Youtube, and many textbooks on grammar and verbal roots, facilitated this passion in the beginning, but it was discovering Izzy and Genevieve that really opened the door into this new chapter of my life. I had just started the dance company at that time and we had only a few students, so we weren't even breaking even (monetarily speaking). I sent an email to Holy Language Institute with a request to set up an account on an "I owe you" basis. In the true spirit of our heavenly Abba, Izzy and his wife completely waived the start-up fee and granted me access to the site.

I was so elated with this new development, that I drove my husband crazy with constant Hebrew in the background of our daily life. We both loved the teaching style and how deep even just the letters could be. I began to see parallels in English words I didn't recognize, ascribing definitions to them just by cross-examining the Hebrew letters that influenced their English equivalents. Studying this foundational language was not like learning German or French, it was as though I was being brought back to a child-like state; learning for the first time the composition of the universe...the flowers, the trees, a man and his family, a home...Everything outside my window began to take a new shape. An Agri-Bio Linguistically driven atmosphere replaced my once ambiguous surroundings, and I shared this discovery with anyone who would listen, and a few that probably didn't want to. I had made all things complex up to this point, Hebrew was correcting my views back to a simple, concrete, truth-based understanding.

Subsequently, Krista, the dancer I mentioned earlier, had a dream about me: I was bustling around getting "ready" for something. She asked me what I was doing, and in a hurried way I grabbed her and said, "What are you doing? We need to get ready for the wedding, and you aren't even dressed!"

Upon waking from her dream, she prayed and was told to call me and request that I teach her, despite my rudimentary knowledge, the Hebrew language.

I was so excited to do the lessons, and spent hours upon hours putting together packets for a visual aid. We started with just 1 letter per 2-3 hour "midrash". The conversations flowed like living waters from our mouths, and several ideas formed amidst them, including: to paint each letter and images depicting their deeper teachings (this way she could line the living room of her home with the Holy Language and remember better what she had learned) and to create a dance-style specifically geared towards teaching others Hebrew (assign a movement to each letter, then construct words by stringing the moves together in different combinations). Needless to say, Adonai was with us in this endeavor to draw closer to Him.

Not long after I started teaching Krista, I acquired a very young student for private ballet lesson. Her mother invited us over for a Sukkot dinner (our first) and we were floored by the sheer beauty of the event. A few weeks later the same family invited us to attend a Saturday meeting of their Hebrew Roots group. Being that Kyle, my husband, and I, have been burnt repeatedly by the "church", we had an incredibly difficult spiritual attack the Shabbat morning of the meeting. We cried, we fought, we panicked, but in the end, we attended. The group of rejects from surrounding churches and synagogues in the area were extremely sensitive to our position and made us feel loved, appreciated, and welcome. We sang, we read, we prayed, we ate, and then we discussed (for hours) the Torah portion for the week. Both of us left the gathering feeling fulfilled and exhausted. We are now regular members of the congregation.

I was reading the sermon on the mount one night, a few weeks after joining, and felt the conviction of the Ruach Ha'Kodesh as I read that even the least of the mitzvot were to be guarded and observed. Psalm 119, one of my favorite passages to study in Hebrew, was what I chose to delve into, juxtapose the sermon. The insight given to me was tangible...We now do our best to keep all of the loving instructions offered by Adonai in both the Old and New Testaments.

The joy swelling within me from studying His language of creation has brought all I thought I knew into question. I now feel the humility of one once believing she knew everything, when in reality I had been staring at Westernized Christianity's Puppet Show all along. I now advocate towards listening to the words given to you in the Torah, living them, and loving all those around you through The Law Giver's Spirit.

There is no greater commission than this: To tell the world they have hope in a sacrifice made by their heavenly Father, and that He hasn't left us up a creek without a paddle, but given us a book with instructions on just how to please Him, ourselves, and those around us without tolerance of sin, but true acceptance through unconditional love. We are made to bring a weight of esteem to a Father who chooses to love us despite our fallen nature, a Righteous Judge and worthy King over all that is.

You are called to give, trust, and be innocent as a child. It's only fitting that the language through which all things came into being is framed around the understanding of simple children.

May He cause His face to shine down upon you, and be gracious unto you,

Katy

I was introduced to Jesus over 30 years ago after escaping from the Cambodian communist regime and while I was in a refugee camp in Thailand. I'm in Los Angeles serving God as an inspirational speaker, author, and a health coach.

I'm recently called to study Hebrew. I know it has to be from God because there's no way I could add one more thing to my plate. Lately, the Holy Spirit inspires me to get up at 5am every morning to do research about Hebrew language. I began studying intensively for hours each day on my own. God led me to the Holy Language website one morning and I immediately subscribed to this program. This is my first week into the program and I'm passionately immersing myself into it like I have no other things to do. LOL, I'm bringing Izzy along with me via my iPhone all day long. I listen to his teaching throughout the day and while eating my breakfast and lunch.

I'm very new to the tribe, but it feels like I've been here months ago. I appreciate Izzy's work on his website. It's so powerful and convenient that I can get into my learning on my pace. Through God's grace, for me being in the program for less than a week, I already know my Aleph-Tav. I'm also learning how to read and write Hebrew in both ancient and modern, book print and cursive. Right now, my play time is practicing my Hebrew with my husband and friends. It's so much fun! I cannot wait what my heavenly Abba has in store for me with my Hebrew knowledge.

I will share with you more as I learn more later. Thank you for my opportunity to share my early Hebrew journey with you.

Shalom,

Julie

Where do I start to tell the story of love with Yeshua my Lord. For His perfect love and grace, here I am.

The parents of eight sons and daughters, who used to be a Buddist couple, are my Mom and Dad.

In 1969, my Dad was passed away and I was 12 years old.

I came to Canada in November 1979 to work at the Korean Consulate General in Toronto and five months after in April 1980, I married a man of the Christian family.

In order to please my mother-in-law, I attended to the Korean Presbyterian Church. But I had found the same struggle of miserableness over myself after many years past. I lived the same lifestyle I used to live with even more selfish heart of attitude and practiced the same old bad habits.

Years after like that I had a chance to study the Christian Church Music at the one of the Korean community Church for a few years. One of the teachers who was there taught the basic music but not only the music but also how to praise and worship to the LORD and why. Learning of those lessons brings me to see the different view and perspective of the Christianity.

And a very painful time was came to me. I've had to faced my past and dealt with it which I never wanted. So many years were gone from it but those wounded heart was still there with agony. I've had sexual abuse anwantedly by a family member and got an abortion caused by a boss I was working for temporarily.

It was very hard to accept as a part of my life those reality. From time to time through a journey of the pastoral counselling, Lord Yeshua was there for me full of Humbled Loving Heart and the Mighty Healing Grace. He TOUCHES a little girl's broken heart and was CRYING with a girl who cried out in pain like crazy.

After it all, I noticed myself I had changed...the way to see myself and to the others were not the same as before.

I was starving for the spiritual food since. And I traveled to the Churches and Seminaries here and there. At that period of time, I had found a Messianic Jews Church in Toronto from the yellow pages and attended their Services joyfully. I longed and wanted to have a relationship with Yeshua more intimately like some mates over there.

In my eyes, people who speak with Hebrew language seemed more closer to Yeshua than those who are not. But it seemed to me never be able to learn those hard languages at that time.

Recently, I was searching for things on the YouTube, I saw the video of the "Izzy's Hebrew class". In the beginning, watched for fun and then I became one of his student. Many good experiences arise to me while listening and learning Hebrew language. The reason why I'm learning this language is for me to have a more intimate relationship with Yeshua.

I give thanks and praise to You Lord Yeshua, who is Messiah. Will never stop loving you cause first you loved me. Thank you, thank you....

"I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you." Isaiah 44:22. I cooked big turkey December 24th last year. :)

Cheering from northern Sweden for 2014!! Your radio is on every day here in this house, for all to hear! I've been teaching philosophy for many years and my students still come to talk over spiritual matters. I tell them to listen to Yeshua Radio! Doesn't matter whether they are agnostics, skeptics, Jews, Christians or Zen Buddhists. They can all get something out of it.

When I came across your online free Hebrew lessons, I realized it was time for my learning the language of our Salvation. I mean, here was a gift from above handed to me by you.

It was a short course, but it was enough for my learning to pronounce the Hebrew letters, diacriticals, and words. I still am not proficient in Hebrew, but with the help of an interlinear Tanakh with clickable definitions and the English right alongside, I was given to be able to read from Genesis through and including Malachi.

I still cannot conjugate a verb, but that is my next project before beginning the Tanakh again. Also I will be studying the other parts of speech. I have begun reading HaBrit HaHadasha, unhappily I do not have a copy of this with clickable definitions, but this is proving to help my understanding, that is with the Hebrew and the English

This approach is more as a growing newborn learns a language, first saying the words, then spelling and grammar. Although I did study language and linguistics at my University, I never learned a language in this manner. I like it a lot.

One of the most outstanding lessons I have learned from the Word in Hebrew is what many Christians call the Trinity. There is no need for that word when we read in Hebrew. Yahweh declares on many occasions, “I am your King,” and “I am your Salvation.” Then I realized Yahweh is the King of the Jews. Yes, I always knew that , but never so clearly as now. Yeshua may be translated as Salvation, and this makes all quite understood. Elohim is One. Oh the depth of understanding in this area.

There are many more areas understood much better, thanks to Hebrew and study of the Torah. Praise Yahweh, now and forever, amen. 

Jack

I am a 72 years young Mother of three married children and blessed to be Grandmother of seven, all believers in Yeshua. Bless and praise his holy name with great thanksgiving. Over the years I have worked as office help for a group of psychologist, a printing firm, a doctor of Internal Medicine, a flight attendant, wife and mother, a student of horticulture achieving an associates degree, five years working in the plant nursery business, a companion and cook for my mother-in-love, office clerk for my husband and now traveling companion and whatever called for in retirement (to me no such thing).

My number one activity is study/worship time with my Abba Yah and travel, working out whatever exercise available, cooking and looking for recipes for glutten intolerance and other food sensitivities I cook around for my husband, Marvin, taking photographs of Yah's Creation, and being with family and friends and my favorite topic of conversation, the Kingdom of Yah. And another biggie, I love Israel and would move there in a heart beat.

So, now you have a better idea of who Dolly is.

My story began with Yah before I was born as He formed in my Mother's womb I can recall from my childhood the first time I knew there was an evil one and he was under my crib. I talked with Yah all my life and was sent to Church where I learned traditions and the fear of The Lord, but always felt myself a sinner with a black heart, no hope, rejected by myself and all others. How could anyone love such a one?

So, at about the age of thirty, married with three children, I found myself alone with the TV watching Billy Graham; who I had watched before, but this time was different, I heard the invitation to pray to receive Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I recall thinking I have never done this even though I knew who Jesus was, so got on my knees and repeated the prayer with Billy and truly my life has never been the same since that moment. I have been on a journey of reformation orchestrated by Yah, often delayed by my wrong choices, but even so, always loved.

I came into Jewish Roots by way of a hunger Yah placed in my heart after returning from my first visit to Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship where revival had begun two years earlier and the World was literally flocking to that door, millions of hungry, hurting and lost. When I returned home a hunger to connect to find a Messianic fellowship would not be denied. As Yah would have two of my friends who also attended the same conference also were smitten and so we found. During that time I listened to a Christian radio station out of Greenville, South Carolina and heard an advertisement for such a fellowship in Greenville. Needless to say we were present on the next Shabbat. That is another story in itself. Sorry to say due to strife in the fellowship over the Holy Spirit that community fell apart for me. At any rate my friends knew of a Christian minister who was willing to teach us Hebrew, but that was short lived due to his indiscretion that ruined his ministry and family. Since that time I have been trucking along with all the demands of living and only in the past year has my life moved back on course; not to say I was off as Yah has used the time to refine me an ongoing process.

Last year after leaving a certain denomination and wandering in the wilderness once again praying where to connect I found myself attending a loose knit fellowship of hungry seekers of the Truth, Torah and our Jewish Root, now known as Tekoa Messianic Fellowship. Yah has shaken me every way possible as He through His Torah has planted me in His Tree. I have actually felt like one that was blind coming to the Light and only my persistence in this time of reconstruction kept me. But, I know, it was not me, but Yah.

During this time one of the members knowledgeable in Hebrew began a class, but it only lasted a short time as life circumstances got in the way of this instructor, so last Friday as I was walking up my driveway to retrieve the mail I thought to myself, "I would really like to learn Hebrew". I knew because of my experience with Torah study that Hebrew, the mother language of Torah opened the understanding of the Word like no other. I have been like a child at Yah's Banquet Table wanting to eat it all as I was starving for more of Him.

My daughter, Margy, introduced me to Pinterest in November as she thought it would be fun for me a new iPad owner. The rest is His Story. One day last week Pinterest notified me that Izzy Avraham had pinned one of my pins off of my Messianic Board and I decided to check his Boards out thinking perhaps I could find some new things. Was I in for a surprise! A mother load, a treasure chest of Hebrew resources appeared before my eyes. Due to interruptions of daily life I only pinned a couple of pins until Friday evening and then I found Holy Language Institute and the light went off in my head, I have seen this guy before. I had pinned a video from another person on Pinterest back in November and had been too busy with the demands of life and later the flu to get back. So, here I am jumping in head first, so excited, putting together a Hebrew study group with a wonderful teacher whose mission is to teach the language of Creation, Yah's language. I know I can learn.

Shalom,

Dolly

My birth in the mid-1950's to a Midwestern family, where I was the youngest of three children, was uneventful, except it was... my birth! Everyone is the center of his or her own universe, my father used to say. That notwithstanding, I cannot recall a time in my life where Yeshua seemed a stranger or when I did not love Him. I called Him "Jesus" of course, as He was referred to in the Baptist church we attended as a family. My family stopped attending church together when I was pretty young, about six years old, and never again attended church as a family regularly, although my parents and older siblings encouraged me to do so. Faith and trust in the Lord ran deep in my parents and older sister, even my older brother for the most part, and all of that greatly influenced my childhood. We were a God-fearing family of non-church attenders who loved Yeshua dearly.

When I was seven years old, we moved from the house that my parents had built in Ohio to the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Soon after, my older sister took me to Sunday services at a Presbyterian church where I received my first Bible as a gift. It was a cold winter with deep snow and lots of time to read. I knew that books were meant to be read, my new Bible was obviously a book, and it was mine (hence, my responsibility to read it) so I opened it to the beginning, to Genesis, and began reading. I continued to read at least through Exodus, with my family's strong encouragement. I was in second grade and barely reading chapter books at that time, but the Bible, that was something different altogether.

After two years, we moved from the suburbs to a small town on the Allegheny River, and I finished growing up there. The town had a number of churches, and over the remainder of my childhood, I attended every one. Many of my friends there were Roman Catholic as well. One particularly boring summer when I was about twelve years old, some of them taught me to recite the rosary. That group included two boys who were preparing to go into the priesthood. I did not keep in touch with them, so do not know whether they followed through on that. It is exciting to me that recently through social media (Facebook) I have reconnected with quite a number of the Christian youth I knew then, and even the youth leader, and all have remained true to the Cross, deeply in love still with Yeshua, having raised their children and now grandchildren to do likewise. Something very right was happening back then, over forty years ago.

Although I had Jewish classmates in school, I knew little about Judaism. I learned of Chanukah first from a Jewish girl in my fourth-grade class. That was during recess when we were discussing Christmas, and she explained that she and her family did not observe that holiday, but did observe Chanukah. She seemed embarrassed, shy about talking about it. It all seemed confusing and sad to me.

During my teens in the early 1970's, I jumped into the "Jesus Freak" movement with both feet. I sang and played guitar at the local Christian coffeehouse, and participated in other activities, such as "Young Life" meetings of Christian youth which were held in various homes each week. I was even invited to act in a school production of Godspell, but declined as I was taking a full class load in order to graduate high school early. Even though I identified myself as Christian, I was very open minded about religions other than the ones to which I had been exposed.

At fifteen, I started dating a young man a few years older who I had known slightly through my brother. Our first date was to a Bible study at the Presbyterian church where several generations of his family had attended. A few months later, the youth from that church attended a retreat in the snowy mountains of Pennsylvania. The scripture-saturated sermons were delivered by a man who pounded home the message that if you are not for Yeshua (Jesus) then you are against Him. There is no middle of the road. Realizing I had been trying to stay in the middle of the road, I repented and accepted Yeshua as Savior and Lord of my life and never looked back. From that day, my life, including my way of thinking, changed dramatically.

The Presbyterian group we were involved with was evangelical, and cosponsored Jews for Jesus outreaches being organized by a Messianic Jewish man our pastor knew. There it was again, this Jewish element. I did not know yet how much the Lord was preparing me then for future revelations.

Ten days after my eighteenth birthday I married my boyfriend. Throughout our courtship, we had been very active in church and church-related activities, and that continued after marriage. By that time, we had left the Presbyterian church and were involved in an independent fundamental Baptist church, very strict in its teaching, but with rousing song services led by the pastor who had a great voice. Consistent with the church's teachings, I stopped wearing slacks or jeans or any other clothing that might be construed as a man's clothing. My life was otherwise guided by strict rules, as the teachings were pretty legalistic in some respects, but not so in other respects. "Nothing but the Blood," was not only a hymn we sang, but a theme that was taught strongly.

Around 1998 through 2001, my sister was studying our genealogy and verified what she had always suspected: we are Jews! She began attending a Messianic Jewish temple affiliated with the Seventh Day Adventists and had been doing so for several years by the time I also started attending services with her. My sister studied Hebrew during that time, but I did not. We attended a really nice regional retreat of the SDA and the Messianic groups affiliated with them.

Our former rabbi leads two assemblies, so two different Shabbat services, one which meets on Friday nights, and the other which meets on Saturday nights, after Shabbat is technically over, but he is only one person. For a while, my sister and I held Shabbat services for our families in my home on Friday nights. We lit the candles and prayed the Hebrew prayers and sang the Hebrew songs. Our families humored us and went along with it all. It was a lovely chapter of our lives and a practice I would like to do again.

In time, we left that Messianic group (although we still keep in touch) and after not attending services anywhere regularly for a few years, began attending services at an Apostolic Pentecostal ("Oneness") church at my then-ten-year-old grandson's strong insistence. In a short time, I received the baptism of the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in tongues, which came as a complete shock as I had not been seeking that experience and wasn't even sure I really believed in it. That experience made a believer of me. From that time, Yeshua has taken my life by storm, taking me deeper and deeper into fellowship and intimacy with Himself.

Within the past few years, I have learned that our new neighbors are Jews. The great-grandmother said that one of her daughters is now a Christian and keeps trying to talk to her about that. Her other daughter leans that way too. They know our former rabbi and have an interest in attending services there. She said some things about Yeshua are hard for her to reconcile, but perhaps when He returns He will reconcile those things for her. I agreed that He will.

As much as I can, I like to immerse myself in what I am learning. I really enjoy Messianic music, especially in Hebrew, and have had intense spiritual experiences while listening to music. A few examples that come to mind now are: "Vayikra Shemo," and at another time "Ki T'hilati Attah," both by Steve McConnell and "L'David Mizmor," by Zemer Levav.

There are many details I am leaving out, but the gist of my story is that I grew up Protestant and then found out I am a Jew, and I am loving all that Yeshua is revealing to me about that. What a fantastic adventure! Yeshua called me as a prophet when I had no idea what that means, and layer by layer He guides me through all of that. I have been feeling the need to study Hebrew increasingly as Yeshua has revealed more clearly my identities in Him, His calling upon my life.

I found out about Holy Language Institute through a video that singer/songwriter Beckah Shae put together explaining why she uses Hebrew in her songs. I am a writer as well, having written some spiritual and scriptural songs. Within the past year I have started to learn the mandolin, in addition to guitar and dulcimer.

Studying Hebrew means so much to me I could cry thinking about it. The cadence of the language feels like home to me, like a homecoming. I love the knowledgeable, yet down-to-earth way that Izzy teaches about the language and the Hebrew letters, and also about the culture and perspective of Jews. I particularly enjoy how he presents a really good case for the position that the New Testament was originally written in Hebrew. It amazes me that as much as I have studied the Bible all of my life and have really immersed myself in study, I do not recall ever hearing that before.

During my doctoral studies, I focused on the resilience of distributed communities. From that perspective, I appreciate so much what Izzy does to foster that, the resilience of the "Holy Language Tribe" as we affectionately call it.

Yeshua is healing me deeply and making me whole through my study of the Hebrew language, the "DNA of Creation," as the language has been described, and that is not at all an overstatement.

The State of Israel has certain criteria for citizenship which include proving one's Jewishness. Prophetically, and by revelation of the Ruach HaKodesh I have learned that our Abba does not care in the same way how Jewish we may be. Even one molecule of Abraham and Sarah's blood in us is enough to house the power of all of Yahweh's covenant promises to Abraham. Yes, I know that the Gentiles are grafted in, but when Yeshua makes His return known it will be in a manner that astonishes everyone by the extent of His commitment to the blood covenant, to His people Israel.

In short, the Hebrew language to me is very much a part of health and wholeness, both of which are inherent in, inseparable from the gospel of Yeshua. Not only that, but it is through the Hebrew language -- including my study of it, immersion in it -- that the Lord is bringing order to my life, and through my testimony and who I am in Him, He is also bringing order far beyond.

The Jews are my people, and I long for them intensely, even though I feel a stranger still among them. I am sent to lead them as a little child. The Jews are my past, my present, my future; God's promises to Abraham glow in my DNA and circulate through my body with every beat of my heart. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven," is brought home to me moment by moment in that very concrete way, in my body, which is a canvas for God's glory.

In the picture, I am reading The Bedtime Sh'ma: A Good Night Book to my youngest grandchild, Totiyanna, who is five whose birth I mention in my story. The book has some Hebrew letters and transliterated Hebrew in it (the Sh'ma).

I became saved while staying with my Grandmother one summer when I was 7. I prayed and felt his presence in the room in a real way. In junior high school I turned my back on Yeshua and got heavily involved in alcohol and drugs. In my early 20s I landed in a treatment center for the 7th time, and prayed and asked Yeshua to just be my friend... (all my prayers while I was using were "foxhole" prayers: get me out of jail, keep me alive, get my parents off my back...) and we have been walking together ever since. My path has been very jagged and crooked at times, however He is always faithful. About 5 years ago, he told us to leave Babylon and we found ourselves studying the Old Testament in a new light. We soon met others in the Hebrew Roots movement and now fellowship with them in our homes.

Our desire to know Yeshua for who He really is brought us to a desire to learn His language. I hope to be able to pray to Him in His own language someday. I love that Hebrew is multidimensional and soooo literal. I have always been a person who takes things literally! I used to get teased about it when I was little. Now I am proud of that because He speaks so concretely and literally to His people. I wish I had a good list of Hebrew Cultural Idioms I could reference!

My friends from Colorado are friends with Izzy on Facebook so I was reading posts from him every now and then. I really respect how he uses social media to teach others! I was really angry at the church for teaching me all those pagan customs until I started hearing/reading his perspective. Izzy said one time that he even visits some of the churches so that they come to see him as a friend. It taught me that you just never know when or how Yeshua will use you to reach out to the lost. Even the lost in the church.

I home school three beautiful children and I am an Independent Distributor for Young Living Essential Oils...we use them for everything we used to use antibiotics and over the counter meds for! We all play music too, daughter plays drums, husband plays guitar and I play piano.

I am very grateful to have an opportunity to learn Hebrew at my own pace...In fact with a teenager and two children under 2, I wish my learning pace was a little faster, but I am getting the basics down! 

I grew up in Southern Baptist churches with Protestant views most of my life. As an adult, it didn't take long to stray from my knowledge of God as I had never made any real connection to Him. It took my world crashing down around me almost two years ago to realize I was desperately in need of a Savior. I've grown a lot in these last several months and have turned my life over to God/Jesus - the Almighty One. I began attending a wonderful non-denominational church that is respectful of Jewish roots without fully centering around it. One particular family at this church was very centered on Jewish roots and got me thinking a lot about the Bible and how it still fully, 100% applies today. Just watching how they lived and reached so many people was a powerful testimony.

As I try to learn more on my own, sometimes it feels like a puzzle box has been handed to me and all the pieces are dumped and scattered on the floor. I still feel like I can't fully grasp who God is. For the longest time, I felt like the God of the Old Testament was so different from God/Jesus of the New Testament. When I finally started reading the whole book, I saw all the times He forgave and wanted His people to just return to him in the Old Testament. I had always thought that God of the Old Testament was such a punishing God while God of the New Testament was so forgiving. Reading the Bible with a new heart and opened eyes brought so many revelations.

In the middle of this new journey, I've encountered pressure from a few other religions that say they've re-established order in the Bible, but now I'm seeing that order never really left and we just went our own way ourselves. I have a new perspective that the whole Bible really is living and active, without error. There are many false things that resemble the truth.

I am so excited to begin learning Hebrew. I just really want to be able to read the Bible more clearly and know exactly what it says. I want to know what I've allowed to consume my life. I want to know more about who God is, what He's commanded and what his plan is for me and others. There are some incredibly difficult topics that society wants to glaze over as a whole. I've had many different people preaching different meanings to words in the Bible to try and prove that God really meant something different to validate their personal views.

I feel like God is really drawing His people in again and uniting what was lost. I feel like going back to the root and honoring all of God's commands will strengthen and unite ties with Jew and Gentile. I am so excited to learn Hebrew with Holy Language Institute, and I look forward to another year of personal and spiritual growth as I continue to learn more about God!

Jules

My name is Collette. I have been in Messiah since May 1999.

Abba has been growing me through a process, the seeds of which were planted by my Dad.

Clement Gaskin, from the very start of his walk with the Lord, had a love for the the Scriptures and also for Israel and the Jewish people. In learning about the Hebrew roots of his faith, he would try to teach others, receiving mixed reactions.

I believe his mantle has fallen on me.

Right after Dad passed, about two years ago, The Urban Ministry Institute (TUMI) Riverside asked me to become one of their first Bible teaching mentors.

Around the same time, I was helping Mom go through Dad's things and found a book on biblical health by a Jewish believer, Jordan Rubin, The Maker's Diet.

In the book, Jordan explained how his former "evangelical" lifestyle led to dis-stress, dis-function and deadly dis-ease. He told his story of being delivered from death by following the Maker's instructions for life and health.

As I implemented the instructions my energy increased, constant cravings ceased and un-wanted weight was released. People started asking how I was getting such results. I shared how I was simply following principles of biblical health.

There was an immediate resistance. People, even Christians, were more interested in a "miracle" product or program than in the miracle of healing our bodies are designed to be IF handled with care.

Christians would quote NT scripture to cancel the OT instructions. Meanwhile, they are suffering from the same lifestyle-related illnesses as the rest of the world.

I became angry. I asked, "If Christians are physically suffering by ignoring the OT instructions about health, what else are we ignoring that is causing unnecessary pain?"

Abba heard my cry. Just like Ezra, I had prepared my heart to "seek the Law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances."

He sent me to a fledgling Hebraic school of Judeo-Christian theology, learning basics of the Hebrew language as well as the Hebraic foundation of the "new covenant".

As I learned, I started doing: first eating biblically clean, then remembering and keeping Shabbat, then celebrating the feasts of the Lord from Pesach to Succot.

As a TUMI mentor, I was given increasing opportunities to teach what I was doing. To the point where the director changed the format so I could teach Intro to the Torah and OT Survey not just to my class, but to all TUMI Riverside students.

And my students really get a kick out of it when I read the Hebrew scriptures in the original language or recite Hebrew blessings.

Barukh Adonai for blessing my heart to love not only the holy people, but also the holy land and the holy language.

I thank Avinu for brothers like Izzy, without whom I might be made to believe that what I am learning has little value. I've been sharing the holylanguage.com site with others. I only get rave reviews back. Keep it up.

Thanks for provoking me to write out my story. Lately, I've also been coaching others to use storytelling for LIFE & HEALTH change.

So that's my story, Tribe, and I'm sticking to it. What's yours?

I started following Jesus intimately about 4 years ago. It was when I realized that I need him more than anything else and I made a commitment that day to seek him with all my heart at all times until I see him face to face.

As I sought Jesus, I got more curious of what the Bible means in specific areas. I soon found out that the origins of the Tanakh is Hebrew. As I got more interested in this language, I researched for hours a month. Through my research I found out that 40% of the words and meaning are taken out when you translate the Bible from Hebrew to English because of the dramatic differences in the language. So then I started a search to find a reliable Hebrew course. At first I was planning to teach myself and I thought it would work out easily because I speak Arabic, turns out that it was extremely difficult.

So I searched more and more online and I asked the Lord to please bless me with a good Hebrew course. Eventually, I found you guys on Google. So after I received my account, I started right away, but shortly after, I quit. I told myself I will just wait until college. But as I got more closer to Yeshua I kept being drawn near to the desire to learn the Holy Language. So I finally agreed to start again, but this time, with eight other friends. We just finished Aleph and we started officially last week. We meet up every Saturday to do it at my house, and throughout the lesson we acknowledge the talent and the gift of Izzy, to be a such an informative Rabbi and at the same time a spiritaul mentor.

I am a Jr. in Temple City High school, and I have an extreme passion for serving Jehovah. I am also the Christian Club President at my school and we are actually experiencing a REAL revival in this High school. My work is simply the ministry the Lord puts me in. He has blessed me with the supernatural gift of speaking (Glory to God). I absolutely love this Hebrew Course and I cannot wait until I can go deeper and deeper into this course with my friends. God bless this ministry and this institute, you guys have been such a blessing to me and my friends, may the Lord provide more and more.

This one has a story, a beginning that extends back over four decades. I was molested by a stranger at the age of 13; this one act changed a boy, took away all he had ever known and turned me toward the only relief for the pain, shame and anger of this deed I could find, rage or drugs. So began a nightmare of drug use and abuse that would last forty years. No one knew what had happened, for I kept it all inside, my secret, for honestly I did not know how to articulate it. Too young to truly understand what had occurred, I blamed myself though I had done nothing wrong to bring this upon me. I then blamed my parents, and eventually God for surly this was all someone else fault. By the age of sixteen I was addicted, a heavy drug user; I enlisted in the military at seventeen, and became a life taker by eighteen. By the time of my 21st birthday I was totally lost to the world and fully embraced the ways of the enemy. I joined an outlaw motorcycle club, became a "cook" (manufacturing meth) and became the type of man you would cross the street to avoid.

My life continued to spiral downhill at breakneck speed. I got married, then divorced; then married again. I have four boys (all men now) but my addictions marred their childhoods. Things got so bad that I abandoned my family and began been living on the streets for almost two years, separated from wife and children, divorced from life, without hope. The drugs had ravaged me, turned my life upside down, and all I wanted was for my heart to finally stop beating, for the drugs to end my pain.

Then someone spoke to me three words, three words that broke a dam in the heart. At a homeless feed under a bridge, a little ten or eleven year old boy ran up to me with a can of soda and a blueberry muffin and spoke these words:

"Jesus loves you."

Three words that led to the next three words that saved a soul. In the darkness, surrounded by pain and despair, with no hope, those words led me my knees to say the next three words:

"God help me."

Six words changed a life. A life that wouldn't have been moved if the Ruach hadn't caused a young boy to speak the first three. In that moment, the heavens opened and the right hand of God descended and touched a broken lost heart.

Tribe, you don't always know if what you do has an impact. I'm here to say, you have no idea. What each of us do has the potential to change a life. Eternal. That is what three words were, words that sometimes we speak just as an afterthought. Don't ever deny the power in those words. When you speak them, know that they carry life, that God's hand extends at that moment to the one you speak these words to.

The journey did not stop there. It took God to lead the way, but finally on my fifty-third birthday, forty years in the wilderness ended when God gave me these words: "All the commandments that I am commanding you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the LORD swore to give to your forefathers. You shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD." (Deuteronomy 8:1-3)

What the Father began, Yeshua finished. I discovered His mitzvot, I discovered the Hebraic Roots to my faith, I discovered that the name of my Messiah was Yeshua; I learned how to walk by Torah and my life truly began when all was laid down at His feet in 2008. Then I discovered you, my tribe, in 2012.

This testimony is meant for this tribe, to lift you up and encourage you to not give up. This testimony is meant to give to Yahweh Elohim all the glory, all the honor and praise for a life saved. I am learning now the holy language, the lashon kodesh so that I can praise my Master even more. This testimony is to say thank you tribe, and to encourage you all to speak those three words of life, "...Yeshua loves you..." because if they could change my life, they can change anyone's.

It was the power of the Living God that broke the bad, for it is truly that we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the words of our testimony. I have had for the first time in my life freedom in my Lord. No pain, no depression, no drugs, no guilt, no shame. Delivered and redeemed, glory to God. Thank you Father. Thank you Yeshua. And thank you Izzy and the tribe. It is nice to be part of a family, the family of God.

Yours in faith,

David

Although my humble beginnings on a tiny Caribbean island brought many challenges and trials as a child, I found an unshakable childlike faith that came about from the direct guidance of the awesome Ruach. Someday I will write more on my experiences, but one very influential happening that plunged me into my journey was the call by Yeshua (Jesus) to follow him through a dream where the room lit up with a very bright intense white light. A very frightening but awesome experience that left me seeking for truths and a desire to draw closer to Him. At the age of eleven, I left the island and later was adopted into an American family in California. My life in a new culture and region brought about new challenges and lessons that served to increase that desire to find out more of the one that spoke to me through that pure light from dreams.

The Light of YHWH gave me a freedom that the world failed to offer me, so I committed myself to live for the Father and follow in His footsteps according to his teachings in the Scripture. I am the mother to four and we currently reside in Pennsylvania. I am committed to teaching my children the truths about being in covenant with the Creator and what it means to live under the authority of YHWH and His instructions - Torah. As believers in the Messiah Yeshua, my kiddos and I are grateful for the grace and mercy He gave and continues to give, so that we can teshuva - return back - into the original covenant with Him that we may eat from the Tree of Life.

Apart from being a full time mom, I had an opportunity to run my own talent and modeling agency and be part of the entertainment and modeling industry for the last 5 years. Although being president of a modeling agency offered lessons as a business woman, a need to mentor and guide the talent I represent grew in me. My mission with the agency had been to empower other young models/actors and to encourage them to pursue and achieve their passions no matter what the circumstances were in their lives. Working with a network in this industry brought a realization of the great need for the true light to shine in their world and how broken even the "beautiful" really were. I wanted to help but the business was very limiting and restricted my efforts. After much prayer and a strong pull from YHWH, I decided to go ahead and leave the modeling agency and create an organization that would focus on shedding that light that had touched me.

Be Light Ministries was birthed because of a deep desire to allow the Ruach of YHWH to consume me and flow through me. It is an organization of service, outreach programs, that promotes wellness and showcasing those that are making a difference in others through the Light shining through them. This allows the Father to use my skills and gift to glorify His kingdom better than anything I have been able to do on my own.

Recently, in the last year or so my rewiring of what I thought I was certain of as far as my faith and belief has been audited and reformed for a fullness of His glory and will for my life. My desire to learn the ways of Yeshua the Messiah drew me to wanting to understand his words through a Hebraic perspective. It became clear to me that the Ruach has been leading me all this time towards "the burning bush" right at mount Sinai. My hunger for truth quadrupled in such a short time that I would stay up all night long studying the word and listening to different Torah teachers. I ran into the teachings of Jim Staley from Passion for Truth ministries and their Hebrew Alphabet series. I spent weeks studying the Hebrew language but needed more. That's where Izzy from Holy Language came in. Because of Be Light Ministries and a random post on Facebook our paths crossed. After getting to know him a bit I decided to go ahead and make him my holy language instructor. I am excited to draw closer to our Abba Father through His anointed language and to be able to allow His Spirit to speak through me as He refines me to be a walking blessing for others.

My family started to recognize the Shabbat in 1997 and since then has continued to become interested in the Torah and the Hebrew roots movement. The first time that I thought about learning Hebrew was probably in 2002 or so, my mother had bought a little Hebrew book that taught the Alephbet and a few basic vocabulary words. I learned how to read and a few of the words that the book taught. Looking back I see that it was the Father's hand directing me, because at the time I really had no thought that I would ever go to Israel in my lifetime. In 2009 my family attended a family camp in Kentucky, and heard about an organization that was doing volunteer work in Israel. We continued to attend the family camp each year as well as a camp done by the same people in Colorado. It wasn't until 2010 that I seriously thought about going to Israel myself. My oldest brother went that fall and had a lot of good things to say about it.

I ended up going to Israel for the first time in the spring of 2011. While I was there I picked up a few more Hebrew words and a huge desire to learn the language. Shortly after I returned home I started learning Hebrew using Rosetta Stone. It took me a little over a year to finish all three levels of Rosetta Stone's Hebrew program. During the time that I was using this course I went back to Israel two more times. Each time that I came home I couldn't wait to get back to learning Hebrew. It was so encouraging when I actually started to be able to have conversations in Hebrew.

Another thing that really helped me with my Hebrew was speaking with a friend of mine named Ben, who is also learning Hebrew. Ben was a huge inspiration to me to keep learning Hebrew. During 2012 I used everything that I could get my hands on to help me learn.

At the end of 2012 my friend invited me to come to a "Hebrew school" of sorts, that he was going to be teaching in Tennessee. At first I thought that I would just be learning Hebrew there, but as things progressed we realized that I would also need to teach a class there. So I taught the beginners and Ben taught the more advanced students. It was a great time and I learned a lot of Hebrew while speaking with Ben.

I made it to Israel again in the spring of 2013 and really felt the effects of all my studying as I was able to help translate between the Israelis and the people that I was there with. After I returned home I started teaching a Hebrew class in my town, and making a beginner Hebrew course that really started from the beginning.

Right now I'm doing another Hebrew School with my friend Ben and another friend, David, who happens to be Izzy's brother. There are about 50 students between the three classes. Ben, David, and I are rotating between the classes each day, so the students have a different teacher each day. It is so encouraging to see all the people that the Father is moving to learn his language. The classes are taking place Sunday through Thursday, from 8:00 to 12:30, with a 30 minute break in the middle. About half of the students are in the first (beginner) class, they arrived knowing about what I knew two and a half years ago, how to sound out the letters, but not much more. Now we're two weeks into the six week school, and they already know over 100 Hebrew words and can piece together a lot of sentences. I just printed my new book, so we've been teaching from it in the beginner class.

The more Hebrew I learn the more I realize that it is an amazing and special language. I love reading my Bible in Hebrew and praying in Hebrew. There is something special about talking to my beloved in his language.