In October and November, the nine JPC olive trees were ready to be harvested. For the new JPC directors who had never harvested olives before, it was a steep learning curve! “Beating” the branches with sticks or shaking them did not cause all those ripe olives to just fall to the ground…and without a lot of rainfall, standing underneath the trees, thick in need of pruning, led to faces full of dust and leaves! It was an adventure and a learning experience for everyone. It also led to a unique appreciation for the words of Jesus in Luke 10:2, that “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers in to his harvest field.”

After much effort, over 200 pounds of olives were collected. The directors had visited Nazareth Village and watched their donkey and lever-powered olive presses, amazed while learning how olives were pressed in the time of Jesus! Looking and praying for a more modern operation…the Lord connected them with a new friend in the Tel Aviv area. All those olives were dumped into a vat from where, along a conveyer belt, they were sifted and sorted and washed and mashed and pressed… In the end, producing almost 5 gallons of beautiful, golden olive oil. Later that same day, the JPC ministry team gave thanks to the Lord of the harvest, and then sat around the guest kitchen table dipping pita bread into that fresh oil, sprinkled with a little salt, and experienced the slight burning sensation of eating fresh pressed olive oil!