Sid Roth

Sid: I have on the telephone my sister Shirley and my brother-in-law Marc who have made Aliyah. They have immigrated to Israel and there’s no reason they should have gone short of what you’re going to hear especially with the life they had in America.  Especially with what is going on in Israel right now.  They were successful she retired as a school teacher at Montgomery County Maryland and one of the wealthiest counties in the United States.  Good retirement program, my brother-in-in-law Marc retired from the government Customs Service.  Good retirement program; they have savings, they have 3 children 2 are married; they have grandchildren; they have wonderful children; they have wonderful family and their financially independent these are the wonderful, most wonderful years of their life to look forward to be with their children and grandchildren.  And all of a sudden my sister who never remembers dreams had such a vivid dream.  Out of curiosity Shirley were you thinking about going to Israel when you had that dream?  Were you planning on it?

Shirley:  No, we had no plans at all to move to Israel; we did love Israel; we had been there a few times in fact our youngest son was bar-mitzvah’ed in Israel, but we never thought in a millions years we’d move to Israel until we had this dream.

Sid: Tell me the dream again.

Shirley:  Okay, well when I said we had this dream my husband agreed with the dream.    The dream was Marc turns to me in the dream and says “Shirley we have to go to Israel now.”  And I said “Okay, that’s fine, however we’ll go in a year from now; we’ll sell our house, we’ll cash in on our assets our stocks, bonds, all our annuities and we’ll go to Israel.”  He turns to me and says “Shirley, we have to go now!”  And I started getting a little anxious in the dream and I said “Well, how about 6 months from now? We can sell our house at least and go with some of our money.”

Sid: By the way my sister has a very very practical side; go ahead. (Laughing)

Shirley:  (Laughing) You know I was saying this in the dream, “We’ve saved all our lives for our retirement and how can we just leave it here we have to cash some of it in.  And Marc turns to me again and says “No, we have to go now!”  And I really got anxious and again I went through the scenario; “Let’s wait just two months, you know cash in something.”  And then Marc says to me “Shirley you are putting your trust in your money, and not in God.”  And something in the Spirit just clicked in the dream and I said “You’re right I was trusting our money rather than God.”  And at that point we each picked up just one suitcase; we held hands and we went running to the plane for Israel.  I looked behind me and I saw fires; I saw rioting going on, I knew my life was in danger.  I felt somebody was chasing us and I was running with all my might to that plane to get out of the United States and we just made the last plane to Israel.  And that’s when I woke up and I woke up I was actually huffing and puffing like I had actually ran in that dream.  So and then afterword’s when I discussed this dream with Marc we felt God was telling us we should start preparing to go to Israel.  And we were both in agreement with it and you know the dream also made us think of Jeremiah 16:16 where it says “God says I will first send fisherman and then I will send the hunters.”  And I felt the hunters were after us and we were running with everything we had to get away from them.  So that’s when we started making plans and we started going to Israel looking for a place to maybe invest some money there at first. And then God showed us we should start our citizenship while we were there.

Sid: Do you remember a brother-in-law when he heard that dream he said, “You got to go, you have to go yesterday.”  Every time I would walk up to you I would say that because God knows we’re all made different.  Here’s the way I operate “I have a dream, I will do what that dream says the second I get it.  My sister on the other hand is the more conservative, practical person, planning things out.  But all of your conservatism every one of your friends was shocked when you told them you were moving to Israel.

Shirley: Especially our sons they couldn’t believe it.

Sid: Yeah, and by the way one son is an engineer an attorney; he has a top very high government job.  Another son, is a dentist and another son has a wonderful job with the federal government.  They’re all successful.

Shirley: Sid you don’t know this but he’s just enrolled in an MBA program; he’s getting his Master’s now.

Sid: And with your grandchildren I mean I don’t think anything short of God could have caused you to leave your family Shirley.

Shirley: In the natural why would we want to leave we love them so much; we’re a very close family.  God just gave us both my husband and myself such a desire.

Sid: Now when you decided to go when you finally made up your mind you put your house on the market; how long did it take to sell?

Shirley:  (Laughing) Well, let me preface this first before I tell you.  Our Real Estate Agent told us one price what we should sell out house for and we prayed about it and felt we should ask for like 40,000 more, it was ridiculous.

Sid: $40,000 more!

Shirley: We said “Put it on the market for this amount.”  She said “It will never sell.”  We said “We’ll try it for a week and if it doesn’t sell we’ll change it.”  You know our house sold in 1 day!

Sid: Tell, me what you recall, you cut all your ties; said all your goodbye’s no one believes that you’re going that you’ll turn around and come back.  Number 1 how long ago was that?

Shirley:  Three years ago.

Sid: Number 2 “When it’s final you’re on the El Al jet and your flying to Israel; you have cut all your ties.

Shirley:  Sid, can I go back just one little thing I need to tell you; when we made Aliyah it was at the peak of the Intifada, there was suicide bombings there every single day; sometimes more than one a day.

Sid: Wait a second; remember that girl 30 years earlier with that demon of fear do you remember that?  You should have been fearful!

Shirley:  I turned to Marc like a week before we were to go and I said “Maybe this isn’t the right time to go; you know common sense says you don’t go into a war zone.”  And that’s how the news was presenting it; it’s like a war zone over there and fear started coming on me.  I was thinking “Maybe we should wait until it dies down a little bit and not so many suicide bombings over there.”  And so Marc and I prayed about it and we went to bed and we woke up the next morning and you know “All fear left me.”  And I looked at Marc and said “No, this is when we’re supposed to go; I just no it.”  And I felt God was saying “There are other believers over in the land who are fearful too because of the suicide bombings and because God took away all that fear from me that was trying to come on me we should lay hands on other believers who are fearful who are in the land and they also would be relieved of that fear if wouldn’t bother them anymore.”

Sid: Okay, you’re on that El Al jet

Shirley: Hm hm.  

Sid:  You’ve cut all your ties you’re walking into what appears to be a war-zone.  What’s going on inside of you?

Shirley:  We are as excited as can be this is our biggest adventure with God that we’ve ever had.  We feel like God has sent us there; we’re not even 100% sure now why we’re there but we know…

Sid: Oops we’re out of time… I want to pick up right here on tomorrow’s broadcast.