The best stay, however, was probably the two-week stay in Jerusalem.  Every time I went UP to Jerusalem, which was every other week when we had a free weekend, there was something special about the time.  Never dull or boring.  Always with that mystical spiritual something (je no se cua) in the air. Never got tired of it.

And still haven’t to this day.

When March rolled around, it was time to return to Colombia.  I might have stayed in Israel, but I had 33 youngsters that I had to return to their parents.  When we had left Bogota in November, the students were not united, they were in their groups against each other.  When we returned, after four months, they had been fused into one united group:  a fascinating sight to see. Certainly well worth all the sacrifice and effort their parents had made to send them.

And I was different myself.  I tell people:  Go to Israel. It will change your life, your perspective.  You will never be the same.

Perhaps one of the most important spiritual events in the last one hundred years was not only the Independence of the State of Israel in 1948, but the reunification of Jerusalem in the Six Day War of 1967.

What was happening in 1967? I was in high school. The world was totally distracted, listening to the Beatles and the Stones, getting high on LSD and marijuana. But something happened in the spiritual realm that changed spiritual reality: Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Jewish state, Israel. In just six days. This was no ordinary war. Nor was it a chance happening.

Evangelical Christian Zionists consider it to be a fulfillment of prophecy, including a prophecy by Jesus himself: "Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled." (Luke 21:24). For two thousand (and more) years, the nations, goyim, trampled Jerusalem under foot. Now it was back in Jewish hands. "In our hands". And this reality was powerful stuff.