From Deanne Bellinger: It has been two weeks since I returned from my month's stay in East Jerusalem. I was a short term volunteer for Global Ministries and was working at one of our partners, Radat El Zuhur School. This is a grade school, K-6, and the children are taught both Arabic and English, as well as those subjects taught in all schools.

They have a large number of English books in their library, but they needed to be cataloged. That was my job. As such, I did not have a lot of interaction with the children except when they came to the library for class.

While I was there, classes K-2 went on a field trip to pick olives, as it was olive picking season. Naturally, the children were very excited. The were bussed to Beit Hanina, still in Palestine, on the way to Ramalla. It was a small orchard of perhaps eight trees and the children sat around while the teachers spoke to them about the olives and then a gentleman dressed in Palestinian garb read them a story. Later I asked what the story was about. The story was about a grandfather who had olive trees and every morning he would get up, get dressed and go out to attend to his trees. One day when the trees matured, and the olives were ripe, the soldiers came to take the trees but the grandfather and his grandchildren held hands to form a ring around the trees to protect them. When I asked how the story ended, I was told that was the end and when I asked if that was kind of scary for the children, I was told that probably some had already witnessed something similar.