Preparing for a kibbutz move
It was time to pack my little belongings in one handbag and suitcase. I gave my new winter coat for free to a believer and close brother in the Jesus House. I said goodbye to my Christian friends and Braine Berlin, apartment owner, and traveled by train from Helsinki to Tampere, where we, the new volunteers, were taken to Carmel Home in Hämeenkyrö.
There we were instructed on how to meet different people in the different environments in Israel compared to Finland. We were also taught about Israel's history. We lived a week in a modest cottages two in every.
I was reminded of the men's sauna evening, in particular, by Pastor Seppo Seppälä's story on how the Karmel Association in Finland took over the Karmelkoti area. Seppo said he was in his car on the way Hämeenkyrö and driving past the current Karmelkoti, the Holy Spirit came upon him and he heard the message:
"Go and buy that big mansion, which you can see on the right side of the near the forest. You need it as your lodging and training center."
As Seppo was speaking that night in a country house, after the meeting, an elderly woman stood up and strongly prophesied with the new tongues. After that, there was a deep silence. Seppo opened his mouth in astonishment and said, "No one needs to explain that message of the Spirit brought by the new tongues, for the woman spoke Ancient Hebrew and I understood the message."
Seppo continued, "The message was as follows: 'I ask you, my servant, go and buy that big mansion I showed you when you came here. Pay the required down payment and take a loan, I'll help you with the loan repayments in due course. That mansion is needed because…' " I hide the rest of the prophecy because its contents belong only to selected Christians.
Seppo said that this was also the case, that is, prophecy had been fulfilled exactly. The manor, with its fields, forest and lakeside areas, was bought for a down payment and loan repayments came in due time. This proved to him and to the people of the Karmel Association that the project had been run from above.
Direct flight from Helsinki to Tel Aviv
We flew as a group on a Finnair plane from Helsinki to Lydda near Tel Aviv at, Ben Gurion airport on 9. Jan 1977. We arrived in Finland from fair -10 ºC to Tel Aviv +20 ºC! (So from 14 ºF to 68 ºF) Two Israeli men picked us up by car and drove we Kibbutz Kiryat Anavim, about 14 km (about 8 miles) northwest of Jerusalem. It is translated as "The Village Community of the Grape Valley". Kibbutz stands for voluntary collective mode. Kiryat means a smaller village.
Previously, Anavim's name was 'Avanim', it means 'Stone Valley'. When the stones were cleared and the soil was fertilized, it became a very fertile farmland. I was placed with the new volunteers from Finland in the so-called Finnish Village, which consisted of several small cottages with two rooms with two private entrances, and them led to one room for two persons.
To my surprise, I became a roommate of a believer already known in Finnish times. His alias Heimo Sundström. He had been there a year earlier and had learned to speak Hebrew quite well because he had also studied it.
Behind the wall lived Rantanen's sisters, Mirva and Arja. They were from Turku and good at playing the guitar and sung the duo in two voices. The eldest of them, Mirva, worked part-time as a dentist in kibbutz and did other miscellaneous work. Arja worked in the kibbutz kitchen. I had met them in Pori at an evangelization event. I also remember the young women Laila Ristola from Turku and the familiar Laila Kuusela I had met in Helsinki before.
Heavy and sweaty farm work
My job was to work as a farmer. I fed dairy cattle and young calves. There were about 300 dairy cows and about 200 calves. There were 100 smaller calves in a barn that was outside my work area. My colleagues were volunteers from the US, Canada and Germany. There were also Israelis from the kibbutz and Arab workers from the nearby Abu Gosha village.
The most Israelis were young, as I was then. We did 6 h working days 6 days a week. On every Sabbath was a delicious Sabbath dinner in the kibbutz dining room. A special dish was the "Chicken á la Kiryat". Kibbuts had a buffet three times a day. There were enough chickens and eggs as there was a big chicken with 60,000 chickens in the kibbutz. Oh, what a horrible cluck and noice there was heard up to hundreds of meters away!
I remember how Laila sighed in relief when she couldn't get to the big henhouse to work, instead she was lead to a kibbutz dining room to make salads. Before that, still being in Finland, she had hoped to get to work in the henhouse, but a look there was enough to her.
She said that with that daily chicken's cluck and noise, she would have gone crazy in a short while! The intention was to work there for a year. Then you would have the opportunity to experience all the seasons and get to know Israel on a regular domestic tour called "Tiuul" (that is "trip").
I had time to attend only one of these, as I worked in kibbutz only for 8 weeks until I was deported. The wake-up was early, and so was the breakfast just before to get to work by 7am. Because Kibbutz is located in the mountains of Judea, it means that the nights are much cooler than the days, especially if it was rainy, or winter, when I arrived there.
During the day temperature could be up to +30 ºC (+86 ºF), but at night it dropped to near zero. Often it was only +7 ºC (+44.6º F) by work in the mornings, so it was necessary to think carefully about how to wear on!
Miserable living conditions for livestock
Because the cottages were very fragile, with the wind blowing in and out of one wall, the so-called "tanuri" oil heater was needed in the evenings and at night. I had brought long-leg rubber boots from Finland, because Karl Saarinen, who had worked in kibbutz before me, said they were necessary.
They really were, because when I moved the dairy cattle from the outer fenced area to the inner one I had to go a walkway with of a thick layer about 20 cm of wet manure. That wet manures was throughout the outer and inner fenced areas, including the area for calves.
I felt sorry for the calves hanging their heads low, standing in their own defecation without any dry place to stand, or even lying down at night. So were conditions for cows too. I complained about the kibbutz to the Israelis. They were 150 in the 250-person kibbutz. There were about 50 Finns, about 50 English speakers and one German. In addition, around 50 friendly Arabs worked there during the day. They lived in a nearby Arab village called Abu Gosha.
I heard from Finns who had been working in kibbutz for years that a few years earlier the Israelis had been trying to move those piles of manure out of the inner and outer areas with a bulldozer, but the big tractor had been stuck for weeks! To my delight, however, they now accepted my suggestion and managed to remove all manure from the enclosed areas of cows and calves!
When I went to feed the cattle the next morning, the calves jumped up and down in dry ecstasy and the cows mooed for joy. I had never seen anything like it before. The Israelis and the Arabs also rejoiced to see it.
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